Sitting in a room outlooking the Costa Rica jungle, amongst bugs bigger than his hand, friendly toucans, other crazy bugs and birds, lizards, and ‘weird lifeforms’, Dave the founder of one the most popular live video websites in the whole world, sent back these replies about www.audiovisualizers.com.
How’d the Audiovisualizers site come about, & your own involvement with live video?
In university I explored interactive 3D video/installation, had a gallery showing, then soon found myself at raves doing live A/V mixing. In 1999 the site evolved as a sort of online photo album about my life and interests in video performance art and related fields.
What sort of shifts have you noticed within video since developing the site?
What really interests me is human interface technology for directly controlling the video stream. I think the real shift on the live performance angle, will result in a synchrony of audio, video, laser, and true performance art, navigated by a single person.
What are today’s interesting developments in vidi-yo soft/hard-ware?
The future of VJ software will combine realtime 3D models with texture mapped live and digital video, with integrated video mixing, realtime FX & layering, as well as sound responsive FFT based visuals.
What hardware do you play with?
I was always into electronics from a young age, and took things apart, modified them, built many kooky circuits to bend and twist video every which way. Disregard what people say you can’t do with a technology. Void your warranty, pull something apart and try and decipher how it works, route outputs back into inputs creating electronic fractal loops, and inject and pull off signals anywhere that suits your fancy.
You’ve recently added links for building your own LCD projector – how hard is it?
I made a prototype several years ago, essentially a slide projector with a small colour LCD in place of the slide. It was approximately as bright as a slide projector, although more pixelated than I’d hoped for. I’ve been meaning to put something more professional together, but there’s ample info on the site to allow anyone to put together a decent video projector for under $US300.
Tell us about your VJ Loop exchange?
I figured that it made sense for VJ’s from around the world to share and trade content, being that a VJ from Sydney, Amsterdam and Miami don’t likely infringe in each others market areas. So the CDR Exchange came about, and in the past year I’ve mailed out over 3.5 Terabytes of content on CDR & DVDR, mostly for free. Email me at freecdrs@audiovisualizers.com with your mailing address, and I’ll happily send some off to you.
What’s your favourite live vidi-yo software then (mac /PC) ?
On the PC, my favorite is the original Channel 3 software. On the mac, I mostly burn cdrs/dvdrs, use Final Cut Pro, and run my VJ Loop Server, and can ensure cross platform compatibility. I sell about a dozen or so apps each month ( hard to get and otherwise cool visual performance software), and the profits help subsidize the site.
Some urls with your video work on them?
I have a 300 meg quicktime version of an interactive video at: http://www.audiovisualizers.com/library/dvj_1.htm The file name is psyberflight.mov in the root folder.
Future interests?
I’m really intrigued by esoteric electronic consciousness alteration technology, & hope to integrate it into my performances in the near future. Think of the bass bins on stage…they are TRANSDUCERS. In this case taking an electrical signal and translating it into an acoustic one. Imagine a synthesizer that generates complex waveforms that effect the audio and video but also drive a transducer array, pumping out electromagnetic fields. This may give us the ability to DJ another person’s head if you will. I’ve experimented with forefront technologies for some time now, and although synchronized binaural sound and 3D visuals & lasers are quite amazing, I believe the future of entertainment and consciousness alteration lends itself to the use of bioelectromagnetic neural interfacing technology.