Content

rbn_esc » urban escape

2006

‘rbn_esc’ is a project fusing cinema and live experimental visuals. Presenting a series of character scenarios, it invites the audience to construct narrative and cultural critique: rbn_esc >> urban escape. It is also a vj project of some development, with its premiere as a silent ‘vj film’ accompanying four tet in front of thousands at the big chill festival back in 2004. Thanks to a commission to perform at the 20/20 event in Newcastle as part of AV Festival 2006, the clip library has been worked over in a soho sound house, a soundtrack selected and resequenced, and the means to perform a refined, multichannel audio-visual whole developed. The resulting 45 minute performance work rbn_esc___av is a prominent example of what ‘live cinema’ can be.

rbn_esc was my response to seeing vjing being stuck in nightclubs and treated as wallpaper when i knew the potential was so much more. It was self-consciously the ‘next generation vj set’ in my own personal development, but also a challenge to others to really push the idea of ‘vj works’, to create performances with identity and meaning… something that an audience might actually want to watch, centre stage. I’d also just been booked to perform at the Big Chill, alongside Four Tet and on a LED wall, which was a very big thing for me. It was 2004, I’d been vjing for a few years, it was definitely time to pull out all the stops.

From the promo edit I made at the time, here is what it was all about

it started in 2003

  • born in vj mixes in club night residencies
  • a project to make the next-generation vj set
  • crossing club culture with cinema

the plan

  • create episodes of different characters
  • sequence within and between episodes live
  • watch audience construct narrative

into the studio // the first four episodes completed july’04

  • from footage shot and acquired worldwide
  • achieving soho-grade production for vjing

onto the live machine

  • from individual clips to a flowing mix
  • guiding and reacting to the soundtrack
  • using advanced live compositing

premiere » big chill '04

  • headline slot with four tet
  • 22 sq. meters of LED screen
  • thousands watching

01_a_walk_in_the_park

  • is it nature? its a park
  • she seems happy away from the city
  • but who is watching her?

02_a_man_a_foil/

  • pacing the streets
  • dancing on the rooftops
  • the cane his secret?

03_running_jumping

  • omnipresent technology
  • people breaking the rules
  • urban or over?

04_out_of_the_bunker

  • old concrete
  • older trees
  • escape?

rbn_esc thanks

  • narrative lab, avit.info
  • marion davies, london
  • grant davis, san francisco
  • jim henson’s creature shop

rbn_esc additional content

premiere thanks

The gig was great, there’s the cliché moments like looking up at the end and seeing thousands of people stretching out and the beautiful setting, but what was extra special was the approach Keiran aka Four Tet took to performing the music. Normally, whether a band or a dj, the set is formed from a series of songs. Keiran, rather, encompassed the same musical variety but by taking four songs and exploding them out into 15 minute remixes. So firstly its Four Tet, Rounds era, which is simply some of the finest music out there, and secondly its being remixed into four sections, for which I have four acts of rbn_esc. Totally special gig, and really inspirational for me.

In the 2006 20/20 event[1], I saw the opportunity to take this silent vj set and turn it into a fully audio-visual whole I always wanted, akin to cinema with soundtrack, sound design and the visual. This allowed me to take the vj footage to a sound designer and work in a studio usally dedicated to cinema to make the clips audio-visual, ranging from adding ambience and foley for the more straight film footage to out-there sound design for the vj loops. During all this, I had been searching for the right music to base my soundtrack on. Every time I had perfomed rbn_esc, there was a conflict between the musical arc I wanted for the narrative and the arc a musician will take for a gig, and just playing dj/vj didn’t allow for real audio-visual syncronicity I envisaged. So I’d scoured record collections, bought Ableton Live and learnt how to mix tracks and get midi out of it, but I still wasn’t happy with what I had. The thing was, nothing was coming close to my memories of the Four Tet gig, or rather, my imagination of what it could have been in a live cinema fantasy, and once I realised that the path was clear: it was going to hang together beautifully as an exclusively Four Tet soundtrack, and I was going to splice it all up into a resequenced whole to perfectly suit the narrative flow and fit the a/v loops to its phrasing exactly.

The sampler video below shows the results, five minutes of clips taken from a performance of rbn_esc___av with the exact same setup as 20/20. There was a jinx at 20/20 itself, however, with something happing to the feed after sound-checking which reduced it to something not far off white noise. Gutting, but at least it was nobody’s fault: the production was faultless otherwise, what happened to that cable since the soundcheck nobody shall know for sure. There’s more on the preparation and gig in the diary posts 119 clips, 76 scenes, one piece and 2020: beauty and horror.

Since then rbn_esc___av has been published, had a technological upgrade[2], and been performed all around europe, and even in the round. The sampler edit even got into the Tate.

The project is still alive, somehow it still hasn’t been performed internationally, and it will be the debut performance of my *spark cinema project, which should hopefully facilitate that international aspect. We’ll see…


  1. For what its worth, 20/20 and its organisers name deserve to have greater recognition in the UK, being pretty much unique in having commissioned a range of audio-visual works and then presented them to the highest standard and done it more than once. ↩︎

  2. Finally mixing at the SD resolution the footage was originally produced at, despite suitable vj software of the time being 320x240. I love this progress, where its gone from an iMac and laptop only producing 320x240, to one laptop doing it all at four times the number of pixels. ↩︎

Files

Diary entries

vv.mod.midi.hack = a/v ok

you can have a deadline in your head, but theres nothing like it viscerally hitting you as you make your nth cup of tea, seeing it scribed coldly in the best before field of your milk carton. some kind of techo-primordial early warning system. works for me, anyway.
and so it was today that with joy and relief chasing each other round my head, finally watching the pieces of my audiovisual ideal slot into place and the proverbial engine stutter into life, that i saw that date on the milk and thought - yup, its a week from this very moment.

so i now have ableton live with the music cut up and laid out alongside midi clips corresponding to vj clips. that midi control goes to the visuals program, so i can mix the visuals with the material synced to the flow of the music i’m laying down. the sound work laid into the vj clips will then flow back into ableton to be tweaked as part of the audio mix. a rich audiovisual brew, an indistinguishable whole… cinematic motion graphics. fingers crossed.

the two visuals apps i feel are suitable for the long-form video-fused-motion-graphics i’m doing both don’t quite a the midi control i specifically require, but today i got the fruits of a little commission to retrofit my midi spec onto vdmx 4.2, and ye gads its working - i can actually do this for real now! the other contender, grid pro, will smash vdmx4.2 for me once they’ve got two features down, but as i write this they’re not quite there yet - but they’re working on it, and working on it as in right now - we’ll see which app makes it to the post! the picture is the moment of genesis, jdk’s hacked vv.mod.midi piping ableton control into each movie player. oh, and where did jdk code and send this? in a car on a 18 hour journey down america armed with powerbook and gprs phone, naturally.

so now the pieces are in place - music, vj clips with sound effects, sequencer, audio and visuals apps… its time to create the whole setup for real, and time to ensure all the remaining production tasks get finished - a chunk of the performance finished is not the whole thing!

no sleep, newcastle and lumen

with the final vj clips rendered and no sleep for 36 hours, hit the train to newcastle. passing durham is one of my favourite scenes, i somehow caught it perfectly at sunset despite being comotose the rest of the time… but that is one confined to memory alone, so heres a final render grab instead.
been worrying about playing a set at lumen, a kind of monthly partner to 2020 that showcases established vjs alongside encouraging first-timers… a social, i guess. turns out, its good to be challenged, as i rediscovered some of vdmx’s flexibility and audio-reactive complexity, not to mention a few clips in the back-catalogue as i went for minimal and refined motion graphics suitable for a bar.
by the time i got to bed, it had been quite a day - powering through content creation on paul’s twin-view G5 tower, hitting the final render, dying on a train but waking up to castles, cathedrals and the dramatic entrance to newcastle, having fine, fine tapas with equally fine fellows of name, a set that surprised me, and all rounded off with the discovery of sailor jerry rum.

painted green, somehow ok?

breakfast on the day of 2020 at the council cafe set in the manor house cunningly just down the road from the two-up-two-down terraces i’m staying in. no escape from the cctv iconography though, from dreams of cctvs cameras outlined in vj clips to these in the landscaped gardens. somebody thinks painting them green makes them invisible, acceptable?

119 clips, 76 scenes, one piece

4.30 am on the day of 2020, and rbn_esc__av is at v1.0.

119 mostly audiovisual vj clips in vdmx.spk
76 scenes in ableton live
7 channels of sound
3 channels of video
one spark

the week has been a blur, 24/7 production is pretty accurate what with two nights without sleep at all, but i’m here in newcastle, noodled some ambient bar visuals back at lumen on thursday and even managed to get the opening gala of the wider av festival that 2020 is a part of. but all that is by the by: i’ve got to the magic 1.0, with less than 12 hours to the sound check, cutting it fine but so happy…if a little tired.

2020: beauty and horror

its still a bit sharp, but there were beautiful things at 2020 and there was horror. the horror bit was coursing through my veins when after i finally stood up, walked to my equipment, took a breath and proverbially hit ‘play’… the screen, the image, well, it wasn’t right.

i’d soundchecked first, everything had been fine - i even had a dj mixer to tweak my somewhat untested levels on. my ‘cinematic’ visuals were cinematic, and the crazy section certainly was full-on with such a big screen and booming PA. so it was distressing to the core that when mid-event it became my turn, that ideal audiovisual environment turned to a nightmare, my clear, tuned pallette turning to grey fuzz. if you’ve ever seen ntsc on a pal tv, think that. and as you couldn’t really see any of it properly - and you certainly couldn’t read the text, which is central to the experience - all i could do was wince and crash through it all as quickly as possible. to compound things, this meant there was no time to massage the audio as i went along, and so the piece largely became a series of jolts between audio sections. it was so disappointing, on so many levels.

unbelievably, people still applauded and apparently there was still a really positive reaction - though i still haven’t quite got a handle on that. i wasn’t around to hear it first hand, as all my seething mind could do was trace the source of the failure… i had rebooted after the sound/vision check, which kinda breaks the golden rule and meant i was too afraid to try and really troubleshoot as the performance started, but it turned out to be some interference on the cable as it was routed around the stage, somebody must have tidied it up against a transformer or a lighting signal passing nearby with some voodoo frequency turned on when it wasn’t before.

the bottom line though, is that shit happens, there was nothing that could be done, and the work, the commission, still stands. its not cinderella territory here, this has been my ongoing project for two years, and it now exists as an audiovisual whole - a paradigm shift not just for it but my practice. the technology to realise my approach is now there, and my concept and visual production has matured to be able to really exploit the potential. suffice to say, its like having entered the golden kingdom having seen it glimmering over the horizon for so long.

and so a thousand props to the organisers of 2020, for the commission is what it took, and they built an outstanding event on a series of them. their piece was also stunning, a meditation on memory and feelings, and perhaps appreciated even more by myself as it fits perfectly with the narrative lab agenda. andrew and nik - respect!

v1.0 back home

…well at least it worked plugged into the tv, back home and comfy on a sunday night. so even if i don’t have the glories of live event footage, i now at least have a v1.0 mix recorded: a marker in the sand.

published! spark in xárene’s 've-"ja book

just got through a copy of the final *spark spread from xárene eskandar’s being-published-now-right-now book on vjing. four pages! preview of the first spread above, to read the words and see the pictures filling the other spread, you’ll just have to buy the book =]

xarene and grant (aka vjculture) are the best of people and have been working on this for years - i really hope this gets the recognition it deserves

http://vjbook.com

avit>c23 » live cinema

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…

avit>c23 » ableton live & vdmx5

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.

moments that make it all worthwhile

#1 - performing the audiovisual rbn_esc to an attentive room, the idea of live cinema becoming visceral, having an out-of body experience while performing, feeling the work, feeling the audience, feeling the energy
#2 - meeting an inspiring person, and then them producing their avituk2005 pass from their wallet. its getting on for two years after that epic, not to mention the years of organisation and build-up from avit the worldwide vj network’s inception in 2002… knocked me for six.

istanbul » rbn_esc at live cinema nights

thanks to artificial eyes for bringing me to istanbul to perform rbn_esc. 4 layers of image floating behind me, layers of scrim hung all around. that and ae’s own thrill software hooked up to a moving-mirror video projector setup (think gobo) made it all a den for the senses. cool to be able to soundcheck for hours too, headphones just aren’t quite the same as a club PA…

mapping festival say yes to nlab

huzzah. the narrative lab proposal for the mapping festival has been accepted, and i was even in geneva at the time so had dinner with boris and ilan. there’ll be three narrative led vj sets and two big talks by us, so i’ll be performing ‘rbn_esc’ as the vj film example to my presentation on ‘live cinema and vjing’.

late at tate » narrative lab

i feel the screening programme made by paul and lara is a really important review of works to have come out of the “vj” scene, or rather the collision of vj practice with ideas beyond wallpaper. i’m also proud to be part of that, with rbn_esc and a hand in the story collector, but more so that such a programme has been assembled for posterity. bravo!

A specially curated screening and presentation by the Narrative Lab, inviting the Editors of the VJTheory book to show and tell some experimental works alongside screened material from artists all over Europe including Solu, Visual Kitchen, Girrafentoast, Ben Sheppee, Visualnaut, Oxygen, ZooZooZoo, Spark and Lucidhouse.
The Narrative Lab is a creative network and group of friends, who love to VJ and make moving images. Our work, and the work we love, use narrative techniques to enrich our work and bring emotion and potency to it. We don’t think VJing should be like film, rather we see other VJs and AV performers using narrative structures and devices in creative and unusual ways, and we want to showcase a cross-section of performers using narrative to create a language of VJing, and to engage the audience in alternative ways.We have selected a screening programme which will run as follows. Information on the artists, where given, is included below.
The Narrative Lab - Screening Programme - Av Social - Late at Tate
April 4th 2008 - Tate Britain - 6.30 - 9.30
Marginalia 2
Dur: 10.00
Embolex (2007)
Marginalia 2 is an audiovisual remix of footage from the films Bang Bang, by Andréa Tonacci, and A Mulher de Todos, by Rogério Sganzerla, creating a dialog between two characters that were originally in different films. Spliced into these are new scenes inspired by the films, which reinforce this dialog according to the interpretation that unfolds in the live remake. The soundtrack was produced using selections from the original films and their respective remakes in a way that blurs the boundaries between soundtrack and dialogs. Ideas of low-tech are also explored through effects and textures produced with diverse non-digital processing techniques. Marginalia 2 explores the possibilities for re-contextualizing by applying original and non-original samples to recreate a story/dream of visual and sound textures.
Space-Travel
Dur: 1.15
Dr Mo (2008)
www.morishuz.com
During his performance, Dr Mo mixes video generated by a novel stop-motion technique he terms ‘space-lapse.’ This type of photography continually changes camera viewpoints to produce breathtaking perspective shifts. Material for this sequence has been shot around the world and reflects Dr Mo’s interest in architecture and photography. His shadow weaves through the narrative reflecting traces of the protagonist. This is the story of a traveller - finding that which is constant in a continually changing environment.
Brilliant City
Dur: 13.43
D-Fuse (2007)
www.dfuse.com
Produced during a stay in Shanghai with the British Council Artist Links program, Brilliant City was made with Axel Stockburger and the musician Matthias Kispert. The title refers to the location, a residential complex comprised of 25 high rises in the northern part of Shanghai, China. It is entirely shot from the 34th floor of one of the buildings and stages a peeping tom view of the city below, capturing everyday activities that can be observed from this vantage point, such as training soldiers, building activity, traffic, gardening. The camera hovers above the entire panorama and focuses on details in the everyday life of this rapidly changing metropolis.
Jack’s Back (Get Carter Redux)
Dur: 9.51
Addictive TV (2007)
www.addictive.com
Addictive TV are known for their audio-visual remixes and dynamic live shows. They’ve been twice voted #1 VJs in DJ Mag’s annual poll. The Addicitive TV duo were commissioned by The Northern Lights Film Festival and Arts Council of England to remix cult 1970’s movie Get Carter, one of the most celebrated British gangster films. Jack’s Back defies cinematic convention by applying audio-visual sampling techniques, creating a new breakbeat driven cinematic syntax.
Fire Organ
Dur: 6.37
Lucidhouse (2008)
www.lucidhouse.com
Morris La Mantia, aka Lucidhouse in one of Brightons most prolific VJs working with imagery that is always infused with a sense of narrative. In this short mix Morris took a spontaneous, dirty approach making 4 live recordings and then remixing the entire sequence to create a piece with a frenetic life of it’s own: a split up, multi threaded, abstract narrative with an angry, choppy rhythm, that induces a bit of discomfort.
Mixmasters Submission
Dur: 10.00
Girraffentoast (2005)
www.giraffentoast.de
Thumbnail Express
Dur: 6.12
Light Surgeons(2006)
www.lightsurgeons.com
The Light Surgeons debut documentary short film commissioned by onedotzero festival in 2000, the first chapter of “Gilligan’s Travels”, a series of experiemntal short films based around an interview with the Venice Beach street philosopher Robert Alan Weiser and his travels across America. This landmark project combines Super 8 and DV footage with motion graphics and has been screened as part of the onedotzero festival internationally. While Thumbnail Express is an old piece of work in our view it one of the most seminal pieces of narrative in live audiovisual performance to date, staking a position in this programme.
V.E.R.A. / TELEFON
Dur: 8.55
Secret Films (2007)
www.secretfilms.co.uk
Two separate video tracks edited and produced by Secret Films are remixed here ‘back to back’ for this special Narrative Lab screening. Together they form a study in both telephonic and televisual
hypnotism. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep but I have promises still to keep. I have miles to go before I sleep”
In Telefon a mass-hypnotism appears to take place via the telephone. Visual and audio phenomena act as forms of mind control. The riddle enunciated by a voice from afar acts as a potent trigger on those listening to it. It’s recipients seem under threat as something terrible is transmitted as if by a spell. Opening out to a void, the message becomes an undoing of the pleasure principle as the mesmeric voice evokes the links between sleep and death. In VERA there are further intimations of brainwashing and social control. Sound becomes the master of everything ..controlling perceptions of space, time and possibility. Man is mastered and
defined by his own technology in a succession of loops and fatal repetitions.
These themes are often explored by Secret Films in the format of a live AV show, usually ( as here ) through the use of appropriated film and sound. “Are you listening?”
Urban Nature
Dur: 10.06
Video: Olga Mink / Music: Michel Banabila & Eric Vloeimans (2006)
www.videology.nu
Urban Nature is an atmospheric audio-visual collage accomplished by visually dramatic movements and atmospheric sounds. Urban Nature observes public behavior in a post-modern urban environment. The individual almost becomes non-existent, whilst surveillance is part of a new social infrastructure. A ’sophistication of modern living’ becomes almost apparent, by use of images that appear as frozen moments over time.
Synken
Dur: 10:00
Video: Transforma / Music: O.S.T. (2007) Producers: Visual Kitchen
http://www.synken.com/
With a mix of abstract images, graphic animation, digital image effects and complex film sequences, Synken creates a fantastically spaced out, darkly romantic image-world. Forests filled with distorted organic forms are contrasted against an architectural abyss, as strange and fantastic characters try to make sense of their surroundings. A mysterious vagabond works as a medium between these parallel worlds, transporting artefacts that become recurring symbols in the dual system and means of communication between the creatures which inhabit them. As sound and image merge and fall apart again over time, they form a synergy that opens up subtle leads which can never be read only as linear. As plot fragments refract and reoccur, Synken continuously confronts the viewer with a modular narrative that can be potentially combined to create any number of interpretations.
RBN ESC
Dur: 5.00
Spark Audio Visual (2006)
www.sparkav.co.uk
*spark is an audio-visual producer and performer, the alter-ego of Toby Harris. Spanning art, design and engineering, Toby is interested in anything that uses media to make people interact or think in unexpected ways.
‘rbn_esc’ is a project fusing cinema and live experimental visuals. presenting a series of character scenarios, it invites the audience to construct a narrative around the key theme ‘urban escape’. The clip library has been worked over in a Soho sound house, a soundtrack selected and resequenced, and the means to perform a refined, multichannel audio-visual whole developed. The resulting 45 minute performance work rbn_esc___av is an example of what ‘live cinema’ can be, and presented here is a five minute sampler.
Autometa
Dur: 8:50
Labmeta / Paul Mumford (2007)
www.labmeta.net
Paul Mumford is a director and designer currently working through the fields of VJing, motion graphics, animation and special effects across a range of music promos, live audio visual performances, short films and commercials with various London based companies. At the heart of his work though is a love for stories, people and dreams, something that has driven his research and personal work; manifesting itself as intricate, sensitive and contemporary motion graphics for live audiences and audio visual lovers. Building on early works and collaborations with the Narrative Lab, Paul’s intentions were always to continue building graphic narrative films. This is the first of his solo attempts to create a feature length audiovisual performance. Autometa is the story of a corporation, one that we see running a sinister machine, that operates upon the people of the city, taking their dreams and hopes, harvesting them and selling them around the world in a global economy. In a politically unstable landscape what happens when the public uprise? The world of Autometa erupts, forcing a world of the hybrids and dreamy constructions to collide and recombine in impossible ways.
KAAMOS
Dur: 5:25
Video: Solu / Audio: Circle: Jäljet (Traces), Kontackto : Mustikkaa Silmissä (Blueberries in the Eyes)
Mika Vainio : Kotiin (On the Way to Home) (2008)
www.solu.org
A journey into the heart of darkness. Kaamos is a Finnish term for the darkest period of the year in the north, when the light turns into shades of grey and sun is a rare visitor. Two women travel to a spring in the middle of the forest. This spring is known for its magical healing powers, that can cure from blindness. On their return it becomes obvious that the way back home is not what it used to be.
Insects
Dur: 3.43
Ben Sheppee (2007)
www.lightrhythmvisuals.com/sheppee
A tightly synchronized text based work based on ideas of modesty and genuiness. This hip hop electrock sound palette produced by “Back Ted n’ Ted” provides a rich audioscape for the evolving 3d graphic narrative executed by Tokyo based Ben Sheppee. A premiere screening for the UK - set for release on Lightrhythm Visuals label – Notations 02 - Autumn 2008.
1+1=3
Dur: 6:49
Rafael (2008)
www.leafar.be
In our view Rafael is one of the european stars of narrative performance, always witty, challenging, senstive and engaging in a way unlike anyone else we’ve ever come across. This is an extract from his latest audiovisual project that takes the form of an audiovisual puzzle. What more can we say apart make sure you see this.
Latitude
Dur: 3.43
D-Fuse (2007)
www.dfuse.com
Latitude [31°10N/121°28E] follows the emotive qualities of the space that surrounds us. Fragments of conversations, crowds, journeys, lights, deserted spaces, architectural contrasts are reconstructed to form a unique live performance that traces the multitude of paths, identities, encounters and influences that constitute everyday life in the city.
Les Projections Aléatoires
Dur:3:43
Stéphane Abboud - Le projectionniste (2003)
Les Projections Aléatoires (”the chance screenings”) are multi screen projection works made with several projectors (super 8 and 16mm). The movie combinations are realised live with found footage (family movies) and also original movies. Over the period of many years Stéphane Abboud has performed them with sound performers Plimplim and Philippe Fernandez.
The Story Collector
Dur: 15.02
Narrative Lab (2006)
www.nlab.org.uk
The Story Collector is the project that originally brought together the Narrative lab group. The performance shows Blake, an urban city dweller whose alienation with his surroundings prompts him to start collecting stories. VJ-ed graphic overlays help to build and explore the new world Blake creates as he layers multi-sensory information over the gritty cityscapes that are his home. In the performance jigsaw pieces demand narrative interpretation, activate memory, search the mental database and compare structures to give rise to a periodically shifting map of shared cultural meaning. Follow his character’s growth through the development of a magical second sight through which all the events in his life become connected.
True Fictions - Organised Lies
Dur: 15.02
Light Surgeons 2006
www.lightsurgeons.com
The result of a year long digital performance art project produced and directed by Christopher Thomas Allen and commissioned by EMPAC, The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Centre in Troy, New York. The final piece was completed and presented in September 2007 and has begun touring to festivals internationally.
It is an audio visual spectacle fuses documentary film making, music, animation and motion graphics with cutting edge digital performance tools. A stunning collage of music and narrative film making which explores the themes of truth and myth through a multitude of American and Native American voices; with a original musical score created through the collaborations of 25 New York based musicians and vocal artists.

rbn_esc___av @ lpm: sat 31st, rome

the programme for rome’s live performers’ meeting has gone up, featuring rbn_esc____av and a vj talk session a day.

LPM08 » rbn_esc on a lot of screens

photo: todd thille; http://avit.info/gallery2/v/lpm08/
bizarre midi crash apart, this was the most stressfull gig in a quite a while. talk about in front of your peers, on a great many screens.

shambala » rbn_esc, dome edition

i came to fully test all sorts of interactive patches, but the old classic had to be tried blatted up around the dome.

rbn_esc on home turf

a nice performance i think: not that i could see the screen or a proper monitor, but everything largely worked as it should, and its not like i haven’t done this before. even on that, though, still many vj types who hadn’t seen it, even on home turf.

são paulo » rbn_esc in print

reservations about file apart, its damn nice seeing yourself in print. their catalogue is truly something to behold.

i was also interviewed by mtv before my performance, talking briefly about rbn_esc and some of the ideas of live cinema. that hasn’t found its way to the internet as far as i can see, although somebody does seem to have uploaded some filmed excerpts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71MDtdPm3bY&feature=related

london gig alert: urban vs suburban

this friday i will be doing my vj thing together with mike, matthias and sarah of d-fuse, paul of labmeta, and mo of electrovision. we have the run of the london transport museum, who are opening late with a bar. its the first time we’ll have done something there, so it will be baby steps but i think there’s real potential with the victoriana building with the spatial feel their scale of exhibits gives, the covent garden location, and the real gem of their proper screening theatre downstairs.

  • Sounds of the Suburbs, Friday 6 November 2009
    Tune in to a multi-sensory journey of light, image, colour and sound with D-Fuse, Labmeta, *spark and Electrovision and their collaborative set - Urban vs suburban with VJing, audio visual performance and screenings complete with silent disco. Check out Designated Area artist Andy Morgan’s live illustration of a classic cityscape with a suburban twist.

http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whatson/126.aspx

rbn_esc at av depot

was invited to perform ‘rbn_esc’ at vjlondon’s first big gig: ‘av depot’. to the organiser, it’s a piece that stood out from times past as something deeply audio-visual, considered and executed as one. so it was nice for the invite to be motivated like that, and it was nice – if surreal, somehow – to go through the process of resurrecting the piece, seeing what my former self had been up to, some ten years later.

photo credit: fabrizio d’amico

resolume outboarding

being asked to revive rbn_esc begged the question: will the software still run, can i even remember how to handle the complexity? it was an amazing milestone back in 2006 going from two laptops linked by midi to running the complete performance off one laptop. but there was a lot to that integration, and my license of ableton live was long expired. i wondered whether there might be a simpler way, now that resolume avenue effectively had ableton’s session view – in which rbn_esc’s basic structure and audio-visual links are laid out – and was built to be an audio-visual software from the ground up.

turns out, resolume does make this possible, and it’s great to perform from just one software. but, i needed to ‘outboard’ quite a lot of functionality. it’s great that’s possible – to the extent i was able to make my own render stack fed by the individual layers in resolume – but not all of it was me being fussy. the audio side has a long way to go: elastic audio, setting bpm from a column trigger, pre-fade / post-fade effect processing.

video: https://vimeo.com/148427383