visual berlin

local live cinema authority falk gaertner gives a rare work-in-progress performance of his magnum opus kalkin revelation.

bram delving into audio-visual midi matters. photo by todd thille.

…aka stuff we like, photo complete with dmy design stall. here are some links to the people/acts/work we talked about.

http://flight404.com
http://transphormetic.com
http://abstrakt.vade.info
http://sanchtv.com
http://antivj.com
http://bigartgroup.com

gave a complete overview to quartz composer from a vjs perspective, and got some really nice feedback. photo by todd thille.

the basics

1. getting beyond quicktime clips: what qc can do for you
   ie. dancing abstract 3d a la toneburst and memo
   ie. animating text files in your vj sets
   ie. making dynamic installations
2. quartz composer 101
   your first patch
   dynamic controls
   the key idea of time
   common pitfalls

applying it and getting advanced

1. qc and vdmx
   qc as dynamic clips
   qc as filters
   qc as rendering stacks
2. shaders
   image kernels
    glsl
3. 3rd party plug-ins

putting the visual berlin t-shirt on their mascot… check this to get the full picture.

On the horizon: Visual Berlin and Live Performer’s Meeting

On a more peer-to-peer tip, late May will see a one-two with Visual Berlin organising a formal one day event of workshops and showcases amongst their ongoing antics at the design fair dmy-berlin, followed the next week by the four day collaborative frenzy of Live Performer’s Meeting in Rome, now in its fifth edition, more successful than ever, and expanding into a cool new venue. Its submissions are still open too. The formal disclaimer should state I have a hand in both, probably doing an in-depth Quartz Composer day-long workshop in Berlin and hosting vj talks in Rome. Come!

• http://www.visualberlin.org/
• http://dmy-berlin.com/
• http://www.liveperformersmeeting.net/

• project grid
• mark out shapes in flash
• create custom visuals
• project
• cool

…love to see people moving things on (and a cool bar too: M12)

photo credit: todd thille (flickr -> artificial eyes)

rbn_esc in audiovisual form used an iMac G5 and a titanium laptop working as video and audio machine respectively, both operating on the edge… kinda scary. now, they fit on the same screen on the same laptop, thanks to the cocoa rewrite of vdmx5 and a macbook pro… and barely stress the machine. add in motorised faders (loving my new behringer bcf2000, wondering how long it will last), and its quite the revolution.

first chance to speak with falk of the live cinema blog since his summer superproduction followed by autumn of declaring the tools just not ready. so the piece wasn’t performed, but we did hear a run through of his thesis. how i would love to take that to hollywood to see the culture clash. followed that with a quick talk on my piece rbn_esc, and some of the ideas and processes behind it. and then the first performance with new toys, ableton and vdmx running on the same machine…

a real highlight, and a great way to start a new year, was lawrence lessig talking CC at the CCC. obviously the creative commons idea was the thrust of the speech, but it was framed by comparing the free / open source software movement with that of media culture. in those terms, media and culture is an upstart by comparison, and the window of opportunity is probably shorter than we realise. makes the work of vjs and others in the coming decade even more important.