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Diaryand those wind turbines were placed there for a reason: keeping the tripods still wasn’t trivial.
and those wind turbines were placed there for a reason: keeping the tripods still wasn’t trivial.
to los angeles in d-fuse mode: what wasn’t prep for three shows, a workshop and a seminar was filming for the ongoing endless cities shot bank.
here we are outside LA nearing palm springs, wind turbines and freeway, and rail track just out of this shot seeming to also be transporting mile-long trains of new cars. the turbines, somewhat ironically, power las vegas. might be a cut too far for endless cities, but couldn’t help linking seeing pensioners acting out their retirement program, trundling around on golf carts in courses terraformed out of the desert with thoughts of america’s by-gone obsession with space… infinite expansion and resources on the new, intergalactic frontier.
diary | 20 apr 2011 | tagged: dfuse · vj · adventures
live audio-visual projects are hard to take a measure of. its something that only exists in the moment, but in that moment you, as the performer, are as far removed from a position to judge the work as possible: you’re not in the audience experiencing the whole effect, but on-stage in the middle of those screens locked in a specific mindset… if you’re lucky you get to look up from the laptop screen to the monitors, which themselves are no real representation of the final projected whole.
so its all very subjective. the first gig of particle was a triumph - or felt that way - and i think that was a combination of the release of something that you’ve worked on turning out good as it came into being for the first time properly, along with some more-than-we-realised luck with the staging, and a lot of simply mentally editing out the bad bits. at least here i can qualify it somewhat with comments on the [quick edit i made] from our recording of the gig, pretty much all of which are great.
since then, lots of ups and downs; starting to concentrate on the weaker sections, lots of juggling the content around, spending too much time trying to get the midi-sync working (particle is jinxed there, i know not why), and finding out that the particular geometry of stage, auditorium, projector and screen is much more critical and subtle than at first it seemed.
so it was really good to finally have a performance where it felt like we’d really smashed it, a true high. the above image are frames from a ten second excerpt from our recording that in itself forms such a satisfying loop. we don’t have a full recording, but we certainly have the footage to make a proper promo edit with that as the base. huzzah.
comedy bonus: there’s a video podcast from the festival with us in it. the footage is a rum selection, but yes, it really happened.
diary | 16 nov 2010 | tagged: dfuse · vj · particle · live cinema
straight on the heels of the ‘holotronica’ onedotzero d-fuse performance, to dresden for ‘cynetart: international festival of computer based arts’. after the experiment of holotronica - more diversion and distraction in the end - this was the return to the real thing, and the chance to up its game with a refined set of footage.
the festspielhaus turns out to be an immense room, but moreso their technical production turns out to be impeccable. setting the staging for performances like particle is always tricky as the immersive effect we are after for the audience is so dependent of the geometry of the space, and at cynetart it all came together. the projection onto the front screens was able to fill the front screen fully while bathing the whole seating area in the spill-through projection, yet without the audience being blinded by that projection’s source, looking down the lens. rigged for a ‘trip’, rather than as cinema.
check the attachment too, the whole space was quite special, not to mention cycloid-e behind us.
diary | 16 nov 2010 | tagged: particle · dfuse · vj · cynetart · video-out | downloads: dfuse-cynetart-setup.jpg
having been well received at the ‘holotronica’ screenings at kinetica art fair, d-fuse were invited back to perform live as part of onedotzero’s london festival on the musion setup there.
as the musion setup is a transparent (pepper’s ghost screen in front of a ruffled curtain to set a depth cue for the audience, and the d-fuse piece ‘particle’ we were to perform is an explicitly multi-layered projection, we needed to replace the rear curtain with a screen. at kinetica, the effect wasn’t what we hoped for, so we went to musion’s vair old-money hq in the week beforehand to experiment. after testing some combinations of screens and projector placement, the real breakthrough was just how transformative a performer’s presence was between the screens. having a body on stage, even if stuck behind a laptop, transformed the imagery from something easily flattened into a composite to something that had depth and mystery as the straight lines typically projecting across the stage to screens behind would wrap around the organic form, dipping in and out of the void. that was partly to be expected, but i think there was something also more subtle where it grounded the scale of the piece, adding back something that was subtly set by the texture of the curtain in a straight musion setup.
of course, we arrived at the bfi and were shown to our performance space… front of house. it was a compromised gig in many ways, testing out a dual 1024x768 setup and content redux instead of our well developed triple 640x480 setup and media bank, but that really killed it for me. c’est la vie.
there was some consolation in that we had a top-spec mac pro waiting to be returned off the back of a commercial project, and so i got to test how particle runs on a machine that isn’t my four year old laptop. you can guess the answer, mmm! first, however, to get the solid-state drive in there… courtesy of a lollipop stick, some tape, which wasn’t much short of a wing and a prayer. and with the lack of a musion hq test shot or crowd-sourced photo of the gig, thats what sets this entry.
diary | 13 nov 2010 | tagged: vj · dfuse · onedotzero
there is now a mac pro in china running DFD, something that has been consuming my time for a while now. the roadshow d-fuse have been developing is our first big foray into automated dynamic content, lighting and audience interaction, and so without us being there for every gig holding it down with a hacked-up vj setup we needed something that you could just power on and the show would start. and so d-fuse/dynamic was hatched, a quicktime and quartz composer sequencer which reads in presets and its input/output functionality from a folder we can remotely update, and essentially just presents a “next” button to the on-site crew.
what i think is particularly novel about DFD is it was designed to output a consistent framerate, rendering slightly ahead of time so the fluctuations in QC and QT frame rendering are buffered out. i’m not sure is the effort/reward of this was worth it, but it will be an interesting code base to come back to and re-evaluate.
for the roadshow, it is playing out any number of four sources at 1280x576, including the generative, controlled by iPads in the audience and LED balls on stage, audio-reactive core of the show, sending the central 1024x576 to the main screen, driving 10 LED 72x1px strips from the remaining 576x128px on either side, and sending DMX back out to the stage lighting and LED balls.
big thanks to vade, luma beamerz, and memo for helping me one way or the other grok anti-aliased framebuffer rendering.
having spent much time i didn’t have trying to get 64bit QTX giving me openGL frames at QuickTime 7 efficiencies, life saving thanks also to vade and tom for v002 movie player 2.0, for which there is patch back with them giving it the ability to play the QT audio to a specific output.
lastly, a perennial thanks to kineme, couldn’t have gone this direction without knowing their DMX, Axis Camera, and audio patches were out there.
i’m not sure what to do with the code at the moment. it was made as a generic platform, but its current state is still very much tied to that specific project. or rather, the inevitable last minute hacking as it hit china needs to be straightened out. it has been made and funded as a tool for d-fuse to build on, so that needs to be taken into account too. in short, if anybody has a concrete need for such a thing, get in touch and we’ll see what could be done.
diary | 27 oct 2010 | tagged: quartz composer · vj · video-out · code · mac os · dfuse
happiness is twelve hex bytes, generated by a pocketable custom LED fixture on detecting a bounce, transmitting that via xBee, receiving into the computer via RS232, being parsed correctly, outputting into a QC comp, doing a dance, and commanding back to the fixtures via Artnet via DMX via xBee.
diary | 16 oct 2010 | tagged: quartz composer · vj · code · mac os · i/o · dfuse · embedded
- What is AV:in — Introduction To Audiovisual Arts
Audiovisual Culture is rapidly gaining momentum with new technology and information resources quickly aiding the drive. In 2010 more and more people are seeking and acquiring the skills required for audiovisual production and interactive creation. This global movement is spreading into screens, phones and other commercial applications as well as providing a rich source of culture for digital communities inspiring new trends in design and art.
AV:in is a new media course for this market. We have designed AV:in as a comprehensive online educational program for audiovisual studies. It follows a trend of regular workshops and lectures and professional training, which have continued to grow in popularity all around the world on the subject of audiovisual production and performance.
…and it has me in it, as d-fuse we filmed a pro-tip section and my live cinema documentary is part of the curriculum.
diary | 15 oct 2010 | tagged: *spark · vj · dfuse · live cinema documentary
the iPad-screens interaction isn’t even half of it, though. the project is to be a roadshow travelling through china, a modular setup of stage and staging reaching out into the club. two ‘hero’ videos with dance choreography and interactive props (hello LED balls/), a video feedback piece, a live drawing piece, the backbone of the evening as the iPad interaction and audio-reactive graphics, all feeding out onto the mains screen, duplicated onto any in-house video system each venue might have, with LED sticks extending the video canvas out from the stage and video controlled stage lighting effects.
…it makes for a nice diagram.
there is a big d-fuse production in the works, where the brief rather wonderfully was emphasising interaction with and within the audience. as briefs often do, things have changed a lot since the heady time of working on and winning the pitch, but the core of it is still generative graphics and punter control from the club floor. and so here, courtesy of dr.mo’s crack team of coders is an in-development iPad app talking over WiFi to a QC plugin, where my two fingers-as-proxies-for-collaborating-audience-members are sketching locally and that is being incorporated on the club’s screens.
diary | 06 oct 2010 | tagged: quartz composer · liveness · dfuse · vj · code · ios · mac os · engaging audiences
particle’s air conditioning units finally get an airing, midi sync or no. it turned out a really good gig to try new things, i was really happy with the ‘noodle’ i got going.
with the musion to play with once more, to the shunt vaults with for an experimental performance of particle.
may wouldn’t be the same without the annual pilgrimage to the excellent mapping festival. fourth time running now, having played as part of narrative lab performances and workshops, then journalism, and last year doing a workshopped kinetxt performance. this time, its as part of d-fuse, performing particle.
as i write this, i still haven’t got the shots of mapping from d-fuse hq, but just found this one on the internet. its by mapping’s genius photographer ork, check out his portfolio of mappings past and present.
diary | 06 may 2010 | tagged: dfuse · vj · mapping · particle · live cinema
aaah, a proper theatre. well resourced, good tech crew, and a lovely auditorium for the audience.
diary | 30 apr 2010 | tagged: particle · dfuse · vj · lev · video-out · live cinema
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.
diary | 18 feb 2010 | tagged: quartz composer · particle · dfuse · *spark · vj · vdmx
d-fuse were asked to do something with the musion screen at kinetica art fair. particle was designed for a transparent screen layered in front of the cinema screen behind, so mike got to work on a 15 minute redux. playback was just hitting play on two laptops simultaneously, and even for this oh how i was reminded that i should write that basic show playback app…
diary | 06 feb 2010 | tagged: vj · dfuse
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.
a sunset to end, aaah. lucky with the weather for our filming day!
diary | 02 oct 2009 | tagged: vj · dfuse
and here we go, leading into the bridges
diary | 02 oct 2009 | tagged: vj · dfuse
coming into newcastle, but can’t shake the oil rigs yet, just too good.
diary | 02 oct 2009 | tagged: vj · dfuse
