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tagged: live cinema

choose your own documentary

got into a sneak industry showing of choose your own documentary. it’s a bona-fide branching narrative, audience-interactive film. and it’s great.

it’s also so perfect a concept, it conjures the slightly uncomfortable thought that rather than than trailblazer for the field, it might just be the one-and-only definitive article. but, no. the conceit relies on such a limited demographic, to start. and… well, is it really an interactive film? my take is that it is simply good theatre, executed with the best audience-voting slide-deck ever. the protagonist-narrator on stage is key, emotionally and in terms of audience interaction.

also –

diary | 18 jun 2018 | tagged: live cinema

doc fest » expanded and live

Artists Christopher Thomas Allen, Katharine Vega and Toby Harris have forged new forms of events, collaborated across the arts, and embraced cultures and technologies old and new. Join them for an exploration of audio-visual performance, projection design and a whole lot of provocation about what the ‘live’ in Live Cinema can be.

diary | 09 jun 2018 | tagged: live cinema · talk | downloads: livecinemasummit-expandedlivetalk.png

doc fest » live cinema summit

to sheffield doc fest for the live cinema summit.

diary | 08 jun 2018 | tagged: live cinema

the new projectionists

to birmingham, invited to give my talk about the live in live cinema at the new projectionists. formative place, brum.

diary | 24 feb 2018 | tagged: vj · live in live cinema · live cinema · talk | downloads: uk05-poster.jpg

splice » live cinema panel

was part of the live cinema panel, with chris allen, sally golding and lisa brook. chris, sally, and i have talked on this before, but new and outside-of-our-scene is lisa’s live cinema org.

here’s a moment from the talk, as i recall it:

lisa – come to the sheffield doc fest, we’re curating live performances and there’s budget

chris – what! they’ve been turning down live work for years. it’s been maddening.

i mention this as it might mark the point where live cinema pieces (a wide definition per lisa, but including what i’d say and like to see) might start to be commissioned and appear in more mainstream contexts.

diary | 27 may 2017 | tagged: vj · live in live cinema · splice festival · talk · live cinema

splice » 1024 architecture

what might the final part of a trilogy be, when the first part was so definitive? is there anywhere else to go?

the answer, of course, is something different, something bonkers. not the mise-en-scene and future-props (neon-tube-guitars, anybody?), but a journey through a warped world. a more conventional setup, but much more mind-warp. nice moment afterwards when franz goes “narrative, yes. who was talking about that the first? you.”

good to see old friends continuing to push it. what they were doing the first time i met them, a decade back, is still something i talk about.

diary | 26 may 2017 | tagged: vj · splice festival · live cinema

splice » latitude

diary | 05 jun 2016 | tagged: vj · dfuse · splice festival · live cinema

the live in live cinema at test card

invited up to manchester to give a talk at test card.

Test Card is a community exploring the developments in new software, technologies and techniques in the area of audio visual performance.

given i’d recently revived rbn_esc, seemed only fitting to do ‘about the live in cinema’ followed by a performance of the piece you see in the film.

diary | 27 apr 2016 | tagged: live in live cinema · talk · live cinema

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

diary | 05 dec 2015 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · live cinema · resolume

massive attack vs adam curtis

to manchester for the premiere of manchester international festival ‘film-gig’ commission massive attack vs adam curtis. well worth the train.

thought one: amazing talent behind one show doubled upon with horace andy, liz fraser, and the powerhouse of uva.

thought two: amazing audience numbers, 1,200 people each night for eight nights has to be a live cinema record?

thought three: if you deliver a two hour single screen edit while talking up ‘a new kind of event’ something went wrong

hope to see the piece develop, such potential between curtis threading of story and the multi-screen presentation of archive.

diary | 04 jul 2013 | tagged: vj · live cinema · massive attack

b-seite » particle experiment

b-seite charge two: a performance. it’s good to do things away from the stresses of big theatres, to be able to experiment amongst your peers. and wonderfully, there was mesh, smoke machines and the very capable tim vis. there’s a one minute video on vimeo.

diary | 23 mar 2013 | tagged: particle · dfuse · *spark · vj · b-seite · live cinema

live cinema foundation » av assembly by night

after the talk and panel discussions on live cinema itself and what role the LCF could or should play, an evening of performances. limited to a single screen, scott amoeba did a wonderfully restrained remix of the documentary kanzeon into a meditative contemplation on the ritual texts. very much my kind of thing.

that said, what made my heart race was the performance that though theoretically limited to the event’s single screen certainly wasn’t. sally golding hauled in a load of old projection gear, assembled it in the middle of the space, and coaxed an audiovisual show out of celluloid and mechanics. it was less about what was on the screen, than how the whole venue was transformed with light leak textures and sally’s shadow swooping around as she literally embraced the setup with body and arms.

diary | 17 mar 2013 | tagged: live cinema foundation · vj · live cinema

live cinema foundation » av assembly by day

the live cinema foundation finally hits the ground with ‘av assebmly’. an idea much talked about over the years between various london folk, chris found the kind of venue that could incubate work, and made a booking on spec. jump-cut a month later, and i’m presenting ‘about the live in live cinema’ to an on-topic audience as you can get.

diary | 17 mar 2013 | tagged: live in live cinema · live cinema foundation · vj · talk · live cinema

lpm'12 » live cinema scope session

to rome for live performers meeting, once an annual institution for me. a weekend in a nightclub is always a strange thing, but being in roma with friends old and new cuts through all. some of whom were old visual berlin types staking out interviews on the rooftops for their new scope sessions project. picture are valerie and david talking about node and vvvv. before that, the light surgeons and i happily bantered back and forth around live cinema past and present… the kind of conversation that just doesn’t happen in the london day-to-day.

diary | 02 jun 2012 | tagged: vj · live performers meeting · live cinema

the live in live cinema redux

from the big revision of the presentation to a write-up that took it in a quite different direction to now: a ground-up re-write. a scholarly work that builds an argument and from the theory offers provocations back to the practice. spoiler: smartphone screens. tl;dr: play your audience not your computers. put out there in a spirit of debate: all crit welcome!

Live Cinema is a contemporary performance practice built around audio-visual media. This essay questions the ‘live’ in Live Cinema, asking what Live Cinema events can tell us about liveness, and what liveness can tell us about the practice. Here’s why:

I’m at a Live Cinema event, but I’m troubled. This is an important moment: my collective has been invited to The School of Cinematic Arts, University of South California; the event is explicitly labelled a Live Cinema one. To my mind, Hollywood might just as well have said ‘hello Live Cinema’! Watching the opening performances, I see an audience rapt. Coming off stage after our performance, big cheers. But this audience… this audience appreciated the content, the staging, but what here was really live? The fact that I was behind a laptop screen pressing buttons? Moreover, I can’t help but feel the audience would have got a better show if we’d played out a recording of our rehearsal, and checked our email instead. Something is wrong here, and having taken on this label of Live Cinema, we owe ourselves and our audience an investigation.

This personal account of the author highlights that Live Cinema is gaining acceptance, is appreciated, but answering what that appreciation is for may not be straightforward. One thing is for sure: as a performance form whose ‘product’ is media and whose ‘draw’ is liveness, it should be an instructive study given an opposition of these two terms has shaped much of the literature on liveness.

diary | 29 apr 2012 | tagged: live in live cinema · research · qmat · live cinema

...to concrete bunker

warmed-up from the apple store gig, its down into a concrete bunker for two d-fuse sets at the redsonic festival. small, intimate and stuffed with 50 speakers in a surround sound dream, its quite the gig. matthias rocks out, his musique concrète scores now chasms of sound; latitude is the immersive drift that totally captured the audience, the trip of particle finally is (how else to describe it?/) dancing in abstraction to the music, and mixes to a finale of new work by paul that in drawing the audience back into a breathing-like minimal simplicity had them in the palm of his hand. gasps and whoops: nice!

diary | 27 jan 2012 | tagged: dfuse · vj · particle · live cinema

d-fuse: shopfloor...

with mike sharpening his critical muscles doing an information environments mres, there’s not been much d-fuse action since los angeles earlier in the year. but here we are, in an apple store for latitude – not quite the theatrical staging, but oh my: the slightly surreal setting disappears upon using the new generation of laptops in anger for the first time. vdmx b8 + quad core i7 + latest radeon + ssd = finally, flawless performance for us. the ghost of perfectly smooth hardware playback has been hanging over my head since moving us to a software setup is banished in a blaze of compositing and audio-reactive tweak. happy days.

diary | 26 jan 2012 | tagged: dfuse · vj · live cinema

the live in live cinema in 4,000 words

having just overhauled the ‘about the live in live cinema’ presentation for the IMAP seminar, i thought it should be quite straightforward to translate this into a 4,000 word essay – my penance for sitting in on a module from QMUL’s excellent drama department last semester. how wrong could i be, the structure to my argument turned out quite differently. all the better for it, however.

Three silhouettes, bodies poised above glowing buttons; a piercing light scanning light beams across the void of the image. ‘Rhythms + Visions: Expanded + Live’ says the text. Flipping the flyer over, the venue as School of Cinematic Arts, University of South California lends an air of authority, and finally in the body text a definition: ‘a live-cinema event’.
I was there — in fact, I am one of the silhouettes on the flyer — and the ‘live-cinema event’ shall frame the following discourse on liveness, media-based performance, and how the role of performance in a true live cinema needs to be rethought.
Walking into the School of Cinematic Arts, there was no being led into the dark of a cinema theatre, rather this would be an exploration through the outdoor spaces of the complex. Moving image works were aligned onto the architecture, and scrims echoed projections in space. Finally, a stage area. The first act starting: Scott Pagano accompanied by four musicians. For the unconventional setting thus far, this is a setup all will recognise: there is what could be termed a cinema-grade screen with performers in front, and rows of seating laid out beyond.
The musicians are playing, seemingly consumed by their instruments and keeping in check with each other. Pagano is standing, the only one twisted around to face to the screen rather than audience. In his hands, an iPad upon which — and with — he is furiously gesturing. On the screen an abstract composition unfolding, organic forms built out with photographic elements, a triumph of aesthetic. The music is instrumental and amplified, without naming a genre it’s accessible to the Los Angeles audience: guitars, keyboards, percussion. The audience seem receptive; there is a pleasing fidelity and sheen to the work.
But what here is live? But what here is cinema? These are the questions in my mind as I watch, and to which we will return.
Next a performance from the collective of which I am part, but not a piece with my direct involvement; I am still in the audience. Endless Cities by D-Fuse. It is a film in the Ruttman and Vertov tradition, a montage of urban scenes from around the world, and is accompanied by a live score: musique concrète performed from laptop with percussion accompaniment. Again it seems accessible, and in the photographic detail there is much to latch onto and be absorbed by.
It’s Live Cinema in the sense that I first heard the term: a musical accompaniment to a silent film. A montage from the kino-eye, it’s easier here to answer ‘what here is cinema’ than the Pegano piece. But I still wonder, what is really live here, and why bother?
The final performance is in many ways my creation, and so here I cannot report from the audience, but can offer my view as a performer. Which is one of immense frustration. Starting out, I am in a good position: we have an expanded staging that breaks the imagery out of the single frame, a developed aesthetic that abstracts footage in sync to the music, and the impressive shot bank of Endless Cities to pull from. It’s less the dérive and more the impressionism of a late night taxi ride. And we’ve performed it really well before. But that is precisely what is killing me by the end of this particular performance. We have performed it better before, so wouldn’t a recording of that performance have served us better? It’s a recognition that performance in this context translates entirely to the audio-visual output, for our actual performance is opaque to the audience, operating somewhere between obscure symbols on an obscured screen and twitching trackpad fingers. At which point, rather than taking the best performance so far to play back, I ask myself why not just create a master version in the studio and be done with it?
This is the terrain from which I argue. My motivation is not to categorise art or debate concepts, but to get to the heart of what a true live cinema could be.

The essay needs a revision – given the time constraints its really just a first draft – for which 'about the live in live cinema’s next outing should provide, whether that is website, journal, seminar or lecture.

diary | 03 may 2011 | tagged: live in live cinema · research · liveness · qmat · live cinema

la » live in live cinema at imap

a day in a coffee shop making a major revision to the about the live in live cinema talk, and then back to USC to give it as a IMAP seminar. the host was holly willis – former editor of the amazing res magazine amongst other things – and somebody who not only is published on digital cinema and live cinema, but whose definition of live cinema is often embraced: “real-time mixing of images and sound for an audience, where the sounds and images no longer exist in a fixed and finished form but evolve as they occur, and the artist’s role becomes performative…” Holly Willis (Afterimage July/Aug 2009, Vol 37, No 1, p. 11/). my talk is not about definitions however, its about exploiting the liveness, and what that could mean.

also found the adage that everything can change in two blocks is indeed true, routing from the recommended coffee shop that turned out to be closed to one that was open put me through some streets i’d prefer not to walk down, let alone with a bag packed with my digital life. the no-healthcare-mashed-up-bodies of the homeless seemingly kettled / corralled to then be routed around: it isn’t a phenomenon unique to america, but its the one that alienates me the most.

diary | 25 apr 2011 | tagged: live in live cinema · research · talk · teaching · live cinema

la » latitude

straight from the rhythms and visions workshop to “levi’s film workshop” for a performance of latitude. the place is a bit like santa’s grotto for visualists, all sorts of equipment there to be borrowed and used. its also in the same building as moca’s street art exhibition, an embarassment of riches with some standout shephard fairey pieces (yes, its his constructivism cliché, but the textural qualities of the physical pieces was amazing/).

diary | 23 apr 2011 | tagged: dfuse · vj · live cinema

la » particle

endless cities over, the scrim is dropped and its time for particle. the last performance of particle – cynetart – had the sense of finally getting to a definitive, rounded piece. this, then, with the new season upon us should have been the start of particle phase two, starting with much upped audio-visual linkage and a higher-res two-up 16:9 format. the world has a way of conspiring sometimes, and instead for me it was one step forward and three back as the challenges of the format re-working and no time outside this trip ate any creative or rehearsal time just to get a functioning show. which isn’t to say that it still wasn’t quite an experience for the audience. as the photo shows, it was not the average film school evening!

diary | 22 apr 2011 | tagged: dfuse · vj · particle · live cinema

vjing research panel » live in live cinema

and onto me

In the 1970’s cinema was expanded; in the 1990’s it met ‘new media’ as soft cinema. In 2010 the technological landscape is ripe to combine these, siting cinema in a live performance context. As such a body of work is built, called ‘live cinema’ by its practitioners and curators, it is worth taking a step back and asking just what the value of the live in live cinema could be?
To examine this closely, we first need to address what live cinema could be, and what current practice is.
To address what live cinema could be, we will extrapolate from the aforemen- tioned expanded cinema as characterised by Gene Youngblood, and soft cinema as characterised by Lev Manovich. We will consider a ‘cinema of the imagination’ as practised by oral storytellers, and hear of directors such as Peter Greenaway and Mike Figgis who have experimented with live perfor- mance as well as enjoying Hollywood success.
The current practice of live cinema will be presented through an experimental documentary offering a novel approach to representing this overtly ‘broken out of a pre-determined, linear, framed practice’ in pre-determined, linear and framed video.
In summarising the characteristics that could make cinema live, we will con- clude that an analysis purely of production and medium does not provide suf- ficient differentiation from previous forms of cinema to justify any claim of live cinema to offering what could not be offered before. We shall instead turn to studies of other kinds of live performance and focus on the human interaction and ideas of audience. By identifying some unique qualities of storytelling, we shall arrive at a conclusion of what could truly make live cinema an art form with unique, compelling qualities: where core to the experience is that as well as a story is told, the story world is explored as a group experience.

full presentation: http://vimeo.com/17485334

photo by blanca: http://www.flickr.com/photos/whiteemotion/5189942616

diary | 18 nov 2010 | tagged: research · vj · live in live cinema · talk · live cinema

cynetart » particle

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

laika » live cinema talk

to berlin for laika, an event investigating audio-visual culture. helene, its creator, wrote to me saying

my goal for laika is to make people aware in berlin that live cinema is something avantgarde and will be big in the future. i have the impression even with transmediale people in berlin underestimate the importance of the topic. i would like that u make it valuable to them.

quite the tall order, but a cause I’m happy to prod and push at. it also gave me the opportunity to start framing my recent obsession with what the ‘live’ in live cinema can/could mean. having laid out a pitch for why live cinema is something interesting in the (uninterestingly titled - tssk, toby) live cinema documentary, i really feel it is time to investigate what is unexpected or unobvious in the siting of cinema in a live context.

diary | 03 sep 2010 | tagged: vj · live in live cinema · research · live cinema

vbfest » fALk & live cinema

many memories of preparing live cinema talks and performances for berlin vj events with fALk, so always good to be surprised with new things including a bold stab at a live cinema interface that might just have the engineering oomph behind it to make it real.

diary | 11 jun 2010 | tagged: vj · visual berlin · live cinema

mapping'10 » particle: the magic ork shot

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

l.e.v. » this is how every gig should be

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

particle in barcelona

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.

diary | 18 feb 2010 | tagged: particle · vj · vdmx · video-out · live cinema

vimeo staff pick!

CDM, the blog about VJing and beyond that seems to have the best signal to noise ratio, has just picked up the live cinema documentary i’ve been deep in the production of since returning, and has said some very nice things:

Utter brilliance: finally, our friend toby*spark has documented live cinema and visualism with a medium that reflects the concept. Music and video are presented as frames within frames, manipulated and placed interactively. It’s part fiction and illusion, of course, but that won’t stop you from dreaming as you watch of interactive audiovisual software that did behave fluidly.
I could say more, but just watch it. The video says it all. I hope toby and others pick up on this ideal and develop it more – both this narrative presentation, and the imaginary software it conceives.

ego massaged, what then happens: [vimeo staff pick](http://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks#9065736)! a fairly niche documentary gets picked up and -- writing this retrospectively -- daily viewing figures go from the tens to the thousands, likes start pouring in and really positive comments appear. 

[on the writing this retrospectively theme, the next day [intellectual hero](http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail717.html) of mine bruce sterling [even posts about it](http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/03/a-documentary-on-live-cinema/). like being touched by the hand of god!]

the world likes it!

diary | 05 feb 2010 | tagged: *spark · vj · live cinema documentary · qmat · live cinema

live cinema interviews

my phd has this first year not doing phd stuff. which isn’t all bad: i have to make an “experimental documentary about a contemporary arts practice” to hone my media production skills. i think the brief was “make sure they know how to use a camera”, props to the film department at queen mary for challenging us with something a bit more interesting.

so here i am, mike’s EX3 in hand, spending a day or so running round london on a slightly gonzo mission to talk about live cinema with my practitioner peers. big thanks to chris, mike and paul for the interviews and sarah for the assistance and interested-outsider perspective. and this photo.

diary | 16 dec 2009 | tagged: live cinema documentary · vj · liveness · qmat · live cinema

reinventing the city » live

the title should really be ‘live at sea’ by the looks of this clip. not to mention the setup looked a bit like the bow of a ship.

the performance had some really beautiful moments, and clips made to pan across the full triplehead work so well in that triangular setup, making lighthouse beams in the space. in my opinion we let ourselves down by not having time for a full run through beforehand, the to and fro between ‘particle-as-is plus a newcastle bit’, or ‘newcastle-in-the-style-of-particle’, resolving itself live and as a factor of SSD drive capacities.

diary | 02 oct 2009 | tagged: vj · dfuse · live cinema

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

diary | 29 jul 2009 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · file · live cinema

são paulo » particle

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

diary | 25 jul 2009 | tagged: quartz composer · particle · dfuse · vj · on_off · vdmx · live cinema

são paulo » latitude

latitude is d-fuse’s established live cinema piece, and the one that took me to rio last year. apple like it too: quicktime hd gallery

produced for twin dvds and a bit of optional laptop noodle, here at on_off is its first outing as an entirely laptop based performance. the change is to bring it in-line with the new HD-savvy live setup i’ve been developing, where adding ever more SD dvd streams won’t cut it. the benefit is we should get better quality content with twin 800x600 progressive outputs rather than twin PAL/NTSC, and we have far greater creative control now the performance sits in our vdmx setup. the try-it-for-the-first-time surprise was that we weren’t getting 100.00% smooth playback for the straight sequences, which on a cinema screen for a theatrical audience becomes an issue. so with some juggling with quicktime player, we had the best of both worlds and rocked it.

of course, now that we’re dvi/vga+progressive, and have spent the past year dealing with HD, we need to go back to the original sources and remaster it all!

thanks to itaú cultural for the photo

diary | 24 jul 2009 | tagged: vj · dfuse · on_off · live cinema

abertura3 » *spark/d-fuse noodle

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

diary | 19 jul 2009 | tagged: quartz composer · particle · dfuse · *spark · vj · abertura · vdmx · live cinema

mapping'09 » kinetxt › the performance, part two

that was the positive, here’s the negative. well, it was an outdoor performance, and it rained. which sucks, and its a shame that because of rain cover the audience couldn’t crowd around us performing it, seeing the creative hub and being able to join in with our text clients and general heckling to do this idea or that. but that is life.

what i feel is the real shame, is that despite the promise seen in rehearsal the performance didn’t pick up on the storytelling thread, which is perhaps one of the consequences of having to start earlier. this was to allow the other (truly open-air) act the chance to perform once the rain had passed, and it meant we started in sudden chaos rather than well briefed order, and with me dealing with an unpaired wii-mote that refused to play nice.

similarly because of the earlier start, we didn’t get a slot to properly tweak the canvas to the wall either, so the text was too small for the amount of relief texture we were projecting onto, and our texts weren’t exactly aligned with the wall edge… and so on, its easy to get hyper-critical about these things when you’ve so much time invested in it. i should say that the tech backing was fantastic - shout out to fanny - with the projectors being a dream to use, so bright, crisp and colour accurate.

however, the image quality speaks for itself, so i should stop whining and wait to see it objectively through the footage shot by the mapping documentation team.

diary | 14 may 2009 | tagged: *spark · vj · kinetxt · mapping · name · novak · live cinema · live illustration

mapping'09 » kinetxt › the performance, part one

after three days of prep, the performance. to quote the internet:

“It is a beautiful project and one that brings together three local illustrators and a poet for the festival performance. Despite some last minute technical difficulties - including rain forcing the start time forward by almost two hours, the show delivers with some moments of true beauty and the six busily active artists and live soundtrack make for an absorbing spectacle.” - lucy benson

lucy wrote that for friend sean healy’s skynoise blog and publication back in oz. so not exactly impartial, but on the flip side that should be in print!

diary | 14 may 2009 | tagged: *spark · vj · kinetxt · mapping · name · novak · live cinema · live illustration

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.

diary | 12 jan 2009 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · electrovision · live cinema

onedotzero » live cinema at the bfi imax

i started writing an essay about this gig - the light surgeons performed “true fictions” and d-fuse presented “surface”, both huge and important works shown to a sell-out audience on the biggest screen in europe - but the window of opportunity to get it coherent let alone finished has passed for now, so here is a placeholder to say at least to say it happened.

thanks to laura fiorio for the photo

diary | 15 nov 2008 | tagged: vj · dfuse · light surgeons · onedotzero · live cinema

imageradio » kinetxt creatives

the creative hub. props to all involved: you can see the energy.

diary | 30 oct 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · kinetxt · imageradio · live cinema · live illustration

imageradio » kinetxt tour

with imageradio’s opening speeches over, we see crowds come through

diary | 30 oct 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · kinetxt · imageradio · live cinema

imageradio » kinetxt starts

6pm: kinetxt is go. and the other innovation: its recording itself, so it can spend the rest of its time at the imageradio exhibition iterating through the opening night’s perfomance.

diary | 30 oct 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · kinetxt · imageradio · name · novak · live cinema

multiplicidade » live!

this is during the ‘straight’ performance of latitude, essentially an edit. as i hoped, there was call for an encore and i had vdmx ready for a much more layered, graphical remix. its so gratifying when an improvisation like that goes really well, especially when the time you’d planned to rehearse and shape it was taken with dealing with after effects consistently crashing half way through the updated led renders.
thanks to multiplicidade for the photo.

diary | 14 oct 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · video-out · multiplicidade · dfuse · live cinema

multiplicidade » hoarding, check

ok so actually this is just being put up in the hour before the gig, but that didn’t stop 900 people coming to the gig. lets just repeat that: 900 people attended a live cinema gig. on a tuesday. rio and multiplicidade rock.

diary | 14 oct 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · multiplicidade · dfuse · live cinema

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.

diary | 24 aug 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · shambala · dome · live cinema

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.

diary | 31 may 2008 | tagged: *spark · avit-vj-network · vj · rbn_esc · live performers meeting · live cinema

µ:avit2008 » fALk - live cinema

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

diary | 24 may 2008 | tagged: avit-vj-network · narrative lab · vj · vdmx · visual berlin · live cinema

kinetxt[v2] » what do you want?

kinetxt in action: no storytelling at this point, but the audience starting to feed the event into the installation. i’m looking forward to seeing what our photographer for the two evenings comes up with.

diary | 22 may 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · kinetxt · live cinema

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.

diary | 04 apr 2008 | tagged: *spark · narrative lab · vj · rbn_esc · live cinema

kinetxt photos

been dragged into facebook to get a peek at the photos, digital politics aside, it’s certainly good when you see the festival director write “this was such an amazing event!”. huzzah!

diary | 11 mar 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · kinetxt · name · novak · live cinema · live illustration

av:ision with kinetxt

up in newcastle to start work proper on the kinetxt project, a collaboration with novak commissioned for the ‘av festival’ as part of the after dark programme. they had a town full of script writers with nothing to do in the evening, novak wanted to combine the interactive possibilities of tools such as quartz composer with vj production and performance techniques. we put those together and proposed an installation space where those in the space can leave their mark and become part of an ongoing conversation: with an audience of authors, we are really hopeful about embracing text entry and display to create a kind of storytelling space.

whats nice about this, is that this is a geniune case of business development money actually making things happen: name approached me for mentoring based on my live cinema and dynamic content programming work, and following three days of quartz composer and other allied things, we were talking in the pub about project ideas enabled by this kind of work, and here is one of those ideas actually commissioned and fitting an audience profile perfectly.

kinetxt: tuesday 4th march, middlesborough, ‘the basement’, 8pm - 12am, free.

diary | 11 feb 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · kinetxt · name · novak · live cinema | downloads: final proof poster.pdf

nlab » solu performing kaamos

haunting a/v set from solu, even the waitresses were commenting. twenty minutes into the finnish night, it quietly captivates you and really communicates a feeling you couldn’t literally describe. a must-see.

diary | 19 may 2007 | tagged: narrative lab · vj · live cinema

nlab » generative titles

for the nlab remix of people on sunday i made a generative titler, though it didn’t quite work out how i expected as the final patch didn’t want to load in the vj app despite some earlier testing. so vjing for me was largely reduced to changing the section number directly in the qc patch with its output running fullscreen, seen on the preview above. was cool though, seeing the titles drawing together from the bag of words i made from watching the clips: just like you don’t exactly know which way the vjing of the clips is going to go, you don’t know exactly what the titles are going to imply in it…

diary | 19 may 2007 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · narrative lab · vj · live cinema

mapping festival » story collector

five screens, two narrative lab navigators, and the night starts early at the contemporary arts centre. story collector is a beautiful set, david last and mr projectile crisp over the pa, the mix working well, tag team keeping the story and aesthetic tracked.

diary | 27 apr 2007 | tagged: *spark · narrative lab · vj · vdmx · mapping · live cinema

mapping festival » autometa

back to geneva for the mapping festival. a narrative lab performance a night for the first four days, opening with the premiere of autometa by paul mumford aka visualnaut. suffice to say, been avidly waiting to see this emerge from its year+ of production, and it didn’t disappoint. totally captivated for its hour run, like watching a film… but not a film. awesome.

diary | 27 apr 2007 | tagged: narrative lab · vj · mapping · live cinema

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…

diary | 24 feb 2007 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · live cinema

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…

diary | 30 dec 2006 | tagged: *spark · avit-vj-network · narrative lab · vj · rbn_esc · visual berlin · live cinema

second nlab night

the narrative lab nights at roxy bar and screen are going well, in the time since the first one we’ve had some excellent feedback and with this one we knew we were in safe hands with name - they’ve been hosting lumen vj/bar nights in newcastle for years now. shame their beautiful narrative piece (meditation?) ‘privy’ is kinda too subtle for a packed bar, but worth it to see it again. watch this space for the next, hopefully coming early in the new year.

diary | 14 oct 2006 | tagged: narrative lab · vj · name · novak · live cinema

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!

diary | 04 mar 2006 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · 20/20 · name · novak · live cinema

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.

diary | 04 mar 2006 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · 20/20 · live cinema

narrative lab live

probably performed one of my best sets ever at avit paris, representing narrative lab. sometimes things are just right, and you find yourself in a beautiful bubble. not only did the ‘story collector’ set really capture the audience - props to paul for the vision and david last for the audio mix i used - but it seems a lot of vjs watching it stayed for the presentation and have been inspired by the ideas we’re developing.

diary | 22 jan 2006 | tagged: avit-vj-network · narrative lab · vj · vision'r · live cinema