vdmx

the thomas dolby gig was a test for bringing in live photography as well as live video, and it was really rewarding to see it working. live video turned out to be appropriate for the songs, and then a slideshow of the recent photos for all the catching-up that was happening between songs. it was also good to run the screen and framing graphics at native res, giving strong, defined and intricate output, and see that completely mask - figuratively - the much lower quality PAL video feed.

special props to neil guy: testing the reception of the eye-fi card in his own 5DmkII, he took it apart and removed the shielding around the media slots!

there’s no denying its like a flight deck of buttons, but props to vdmx’s configurability and plug-in friendliness. full playback control of both single screens and the dualhead spanning as quicktime sources, and a hardcore quartz composer patch wrapping a lot of custom openGL code, fronted by an interface builder laid out UI panel.

in barcelona on a solo d-fuse mission: particle to audio by asférico, refactored down to a dualhead screen setup. good gig: refactoring prep worked out, no nasty surprises throughout, performance felt smooth.

with the standard in the bank, it was onto the experiemental performance, the world premiere of ‘particle’.

Particle explores urban conditions on an abstracted level. While projects like Undercurrent, Latitude and Surface look at city life in its social and psychogeographical dimensions, Particle zooms in on details of the urban fabric and reveals a web of rhythms, patterns and textures.

particle is also in many ways a rite of passage for me; its not often you get the chance to take an HD film and transform it into the next-generation ‘we wrote the book on vjing’ d-fuse performance. there’s a lot more work to do, especially in creating an audio-visual syncronicity in collaboration with particle’s musician matthais kispert, but we rocked it and got such a positive response. there is a video showing some excerpts of the performance here: http://vimeo.com/5787905

i’m really happy with
- the staging with an 8x3 ‘cinematic’ canvas behind us and a mesh screen in front, with that projector throwing forward through the mesh into the venue+audience. people loved the ‘holographic’ or ‘3D’ nature this gave to the performance, and i personally love how the forward throwing projector beams the dancing lines and other abstractions of the performance throughout the venue, immersing the audience in the ‘trip’.
- the twin laptop setup enabled by the dvi crossfader i created and our solid state drives. the ability to tag-team the performance really transforms things, allowing the breathing space to check pace and prepare for the next section. and within each laptop, being able to seamlessly scale from cinematic playback to ultra-noodle is so empowering as a visualist.
- the customisation of my vj tool of choice, vdmx, allowing panels dedicated to doing creative things with 4x3 and 8x3 sources within the 12x3 canvas. this was achieved with a combination of quartz composer sources i made, fronted by an experimental vdmx feature allowing you to build your own interface plugins, and backed by a set of quartz composer plug-ins i’m working on that scale to any canvas rather than working per-pixel in the source resolution.

thanks to itaú cultural for the photo

abertura was the first time i really got to throw myself into a ‘particle-esque’ performance, using the d-fuse content with the live setup i’d created. as a warm-up for são paulo, it was a great one: the music and visuals really came together to give an intense show in the relatively small space of abertura’s hall, it really gave me a confidence boost.

i captured five minutes worth from abertura’s documentary footage, and its on vimeo here: http://vimeo.com/5731407

beyond visible things like keane3D, lots of work has been going on in the background with d-fuse this past year or so. some of it pitching, some of it pushing along internal projects, and at the moment a massive commercial job under NDA: all things which don’t really get to this diary. but i’m glad to announce a little preview of something i’ve been working on a while, which is transforming d-fuse live.

as part of electrovision on saturday the 18th july at roxy bar and screen, d-fuse will be performing for the first time with their high-def laptop live setup. it will be something between a test of the setup and a preview of the performance that will become ‘particle’, so all are welcome and beta-tester feedback appreciated!

there’s much more to say about what has been developed for this setup, but in the meantime here is the blurb i wrote for electrovision:
D-Fuse present a work-in-progress viewing of their new live performance, an experimental audio-visual triptych exploring urban conditions. Having mastered an HD production process for films such as Brilliant City and Surface, they have challenged themselves to bring this back into the live arena and with the graphical sensibility they are noted for.

pictured: vdmx work-in-progress setup, with amongst other things custom quartz composer 4x3 into 12x3 layer, backed by unreleased open-gl based qc plugins, and fronted by a native vidvox control layout.

kinetxt over, onto the evening’s ‘live cinema’ performance ‘the nature of being’ by scanner and olga mink. two quality artists, some super-beautiful moments and a ‘state-of-flux-cinematic-experience’ achieved. as neatly summed up by nik tho’, the path well travelled.

…and the laptop looking positively dwarfed by nasa* mission control, aka d-fuse live. setup finished the day before the gig, soundcheck and all: definitely the way forward. especially when your 45 minute render for the led panels crashes after an hour and a half right near the end.
* actually we’re european. esa!

just finished a week production making the video content for the blackberry bold launch in the uk. while not the first time i’ve made stuff for led screens, its both amazing and terrifying seeing your seemingly perfect after effects composition playing out so big and so bright… any tiny mistake becomes crystal clear. also a test for live camera + laptop, combining band ‘the feeling’ with the neon backing comps. not as sucessful as i’d like, but still good to see and a good proving ground.
we rocked it tho’, with the goalposts changed at the last minute due to a sudden corporate influx from worldwide headquarters we pulled off a really nice balance of brand and bespoke imagery, to the point where said corporate types were overheard talking about ‘messing with the brand’ as a wonderful and mysterious thing: in short, london did itself proud.

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