Tuesday 7 April 2009

MULTI-TOUCH

In terms of MIDI control and Multi-touch devices, the Lemur was truly king, until people started making their own alternatives - and alternatives that were ultimately a lot more customisable (in terms of it's control abilities and how pretty you want to make it...)

This example shows someone using MAX/MSP as an app that works in exactly the same way as the lemur, with multi-touch abilities, a whole load of functions running at once - now if we all had touch screens (and a copy of MAX) we'd all be taking a big step in terms of music/visuals...

And I would make mine look far more attractive than this screengrab:

VDMX STRUCTURE

I came across this post in Create Digital Motion a while back called 'Structuring a VJ set' by Momo the monster. In it he explains to the viewer how he would go about creating various types of media that would run in different media sets - and be on specific layers- thus allowing more control over what is being displayed on screen. I had tried exactly the same method before (and assigning the clips to Ableton tracks) with a degree of success. The limitations were that movies being triggered in fast sequences would either run with a delay - or in the worst case, crash the machine.

Click on the shots of my set-up, the output, and what I was trying to achieve...

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1.

The first is a shot of Ableton, with a number of MIDI tracks, all sending signals out that can be read by VDMX. There are a couple of 'audio in' tracks for any incoming music that I want the visuals to sync with.

In the MIDI slots, I have a number of pre-made sequences that are sending signals out. What this set-up also allows for is creating sequences (and therefore visual patterns) on the fly - by using a MIDI keyboard, such as the M-Audio Oxygen8 that I have.

There are 12 MIDI slots in total - 2 for background patterns, 2 for drum patterns, 2 for percussion (or other random sound effect) patterns, 2 for bass patterns, and 4 more called 'Main' - which can contain main song patterns or live input - so it would literally like playing videos as a piano

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2.

The second shot is of VDMX - with 12 Media bins, linking back to the 12 MIDI slots that I have. From the shot you can see that there isn't much in the way of Media here, however They could be filled with large amounts of clips that can represent each sound or note - it is here however that the ambitious size of the project starts to enter pitfalls as literally trying to render out so many videos at such speeds uses up massive chunks of power. And thus crashes horribly.

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3.
This is a shot of the output window, displaying several layers of video - all reacting to MIDI.

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4.

And this is an Illustrator image of the kind of visuals scene I was trying to achieve...
Each of these elements would be linked to MIDI and thus react (changing shape, colour, or animating in an entirely different way) to each signal.

I'd like to try a set-up such as this on Modul8, just to check speeds and the ease of linking videos - though the Modul8 demo is, alas, quite limiting because of the lack of module support.

SCI-FI-O-RAMA

A new favourite site of mine -

SCI-FI-O-RAMA

- contains a collection of sci-fi related images by various illustrators and artists - ranging back to really old-skool painted book covers depicting fantasy lands, to modern day symbol-like vector art.

Check it out...

OHM 64

And now an impressive piece of hardware...

THE OHM 64


It is a MIDI controller awesomely suited to visuals - with it 64 button square that could be used to trigger a mass of clips, and array of knobs and sliders for layer control, it jsut leaves me drooling (though probably not quite as much as a Lemur).

PIXEL ADDICTS

I recently stumbled across these guys - The Pixel Addicts. A bunch of designers who create some stunning installations and visuals across a whole range of events. They even created the visuals set-up that runs within Matter (the new sister club to Fabric).

It seems the have some impressive custom hardware (and software) for running their visuals on as well. It'd be sweet to get to see some of it close up...

Click the image to see more...

Sunday 5 April 2009

QBRK

Some awesome graffiti/illustration work from QBRK, found on flickr.

EXYZT

Some more fantastic examples of projection mapping here from the collective 'Exyzt'. I particularly like the building that has been mapped so perfectly and completely trannsformed by the projections on it.

See them on Youtube and Vimeo

AUGMENTED REALITY TOYS

I came across this site recently, demonstrating the use of augmented reality in toys. I'm looking forward having kids just so that I have an excuse to be able to play with stuff like this...

OMEGA CODE

I recently entered this competition for Omega Code with a version of my Crazy Landscape series. There has been a load of great work submitted for it so far, and the official posters are also stunning pieces of design work - an example is shown below.
I find the work of Omega Code interesting, as for every song they accompany it with visuals, their site even has a cool flash visualiser thing...



My image can be seen here at my flickr account...