About
Projects
Diarya steadycam operator on an all-terrain segway type thing… you can imagine the cool shots made possible, but it looked straight out of some robocop/terminator future. and, of course, i want i want i want.
a steadycam operator on an all-terrain segway type thing… you can imagine the cool shots made possible, but it looked straight out of some robocop/terminator future. and, of course, i want i want i want.
diary | 27 mar 2007 | tagged: errata of life · *spark · vj · ford vj
but thats an exact 1:1 pixel mapping on the LED wall, which we got to in minutes rather than days. shame its not the geneva monster-wall, but you can’t have it all. anyway, progress. and hello jilt, fellow vj along with olga for the amsterdam motor show.
i’ve just arrived back from, well, from a very big thing. quit-your-job type thing. i signed a non-disclosure-agreement in december, things were set by january, had quit apple not long thereafter, february was intense pre-production, and then it really happened: two and a bit weeks at the geneva motor show, putting out a four minute vj mix every 16 minutes, a peer to the hd brand videos on the immense led wall.
its a really amazing project as the vj is not there for sparkle, but more akin to tom cruise in minority report, taking in a flow of user generated content and magic’ing it onto the big screen. massive props to imagination for the concept and the multi-disciplinary clout to make it happen, and to ford for really going out on one with this project.
i would write more, but i’ve only 36 hours back in london before being off again: a short break after all this and then straight into the amsterdam motor show. onwards!
diary | 19 mar 2007 | tagged: *spark · vj · ford vj · imagination
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’.
diary | 14 mar 2007 | tagged: *spark · narrative lab · vj · rbn_esc · mapping
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…
diary | 24 feb 2007 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · live cinema
is that when you finish working on the materials at 7am, and have a few hours to kill until the presentation later that morning, you can go out and take photos in the new found winter wonderland. this is my local, and more a visual joke than photo, but hey.
diary | 24 jan 2007 | tagged: errata of life · *spark · vj · ford vj
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.
diary | 30 dec 2006 | tagged: *spark · avit-vj-network · vj · rbn_esc · vdmx · ableton · visual berlin
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…
diary | 30 dec 2006 | tagged: *spark · avit-vj-network · narrative lab · vj · rbn_esc · visual berlin · live cinema
simply, too cool. they’ve figured magnetic, conductive paint for integrating electronics with graffiti, and these little numbers: led throwies.
great graf by nick walker: mona lisa pulling a moonie right on a harbourside corner. its a very clean, serene town. i wonder if there’s been any accidents yet?
to norway for the best part of a week as a guest artist of the numusic festival. for the nuart strand, i’m a multimedia man-who-can, documenting the interventions and melding the daytime art activities into animated backdrops for the nighttime venues.
a rare london gig from me, and it should be a nice one: a curated programme of live cinema / vj works in a comfy bar that has shared some genes with a restaurant and cinema. i’ll be performing the audiovisual version of my ‘rbn_esc’ piece, and the night has been put together by paul, lara and myself as a showcase of some of the work we’ve been doing as the ‘narrative lab’ project.
we’ve been waiting a long time to find the right venue to do something like this, and the roxy is looking good so far - be good to see one and all down there. starts at 8pm, no cover charge, fingers crossed.
more info here -
http://roxybarandscreen.com/listings.php?event=45
diary | 15 aug 2006 | tagged: *spark · narrative lab
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
diary | 15 aug 2006 | tagged: *spark · rbn_esc
supercool: my alter-ego gets into dj mag, as well as the 20/20 event. here’s what we had before the final edit onto the page…
diary | 13 apr 2006 | tagged: *spark
i hereby resolve to make something seriously cool.
enough talking about the minority report interface, time to actually sketch things out and learn some serious stuff to make it happen. i reckon that given spk.av’s level of preproduction and the way some vj functions have been offloaded to ableton’s control, its at least possible - if not sane - to be able to create a custom interface to partner ableton and extend ableton’s audio to a full audiovisual show.
i have this particular vision of what i’d like to perform live cinema with, but in there are some basic design ideas that in themselves would be cool and could be used to make a three channel mixer controlled by a tablet… providing i can get a vj app to do the heavy lifting. the spk.mxr interface will effectively be the ultimate midi controller that is then patched onto a vj app.
its definitely time to keep the aspirations limited for the time being tho’ - six hours in quartz composer has told me i’m going to have to code this as a proper app using cocoa+quartz. its going to be a long journey…
…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.
diary | 05 mar 2006 | tagged: *spark · rbn_esc
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!
diary | 04 mar 2006 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · 20/20 · name · novak · live cinema
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.
diary | 04 mar 2006 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · 20/20 · live cinema
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.
