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tagged: on_off

são paulo » hd'copter justification #2

…but all that fades away against the rift of paraisópolis and morumbi. o m g. to see this was why we’d hired the helicopter. just unreal.

urban conditions…? i would just stick this on a cinema screen for an hour and let people deal with thinking it through.

diary | 28 jul 2009 | tagged: vj · photo · dfuse · on_off

são paulo » hd'copter justification #1

lots of urban visual goodness from the air in são paulo… great concrete vistas, modernism old and new…

diary | 28 jul 2009 | tagged: vj · dfuse · on_off

são paulo » no door and a hd camera

and then there we were. above the city, doors removed, pointing cameras wherever we could.

for the record, this is one of the more stress-full things i’ve done: knowing the cost per minute, not having a tripod fitting let alone the gyro stabilised camera of the newscopters, being blown around by the tremendous headwind, barely being able to see the screen in the glare, everything going too quick, and only having a car seatbelt type affair holding me in as i leant out. but it was amazing. just need to raise the money to hire a full HD filming equipped 'copter: having experienced the diy version and then looked at the real deal in its hanger, i’d say worth every penny. you just need something to justify it…

diary | 28 jul 2009 | tagged: vj · dfuse · on_off

são paulo » heliport

são paulo is an interesting city for a number of reasons. statistically, its a big hitter in the d-fuse world of urban conditions: the first or second most populous metropolitan area in the americas with a cool 21 million, and with the rich escaping the traffic via the largest helicopter fleet in the world. and so, mulling on that, we found ourselves at the heliport…

diary | 28 jul 2009 | tagged: vj · dfuse · on_off

são paulo » shadow poseurs

we’re such poseurs. the problem with loosing all the dvd-decks, v4 mixers and whatnot in favour of two laptops and a mini crossfader box, is that your stage setup looks somewhat less impressive. so seeing the shadows of the monitors on the mesh screen, it didn’t take long before somebody was recreating the old look with a bunch of cables…

diary | 25 jul 2009 | tagged: vj · on_off

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

são paulo » caipirinha!

all i’m saying, is that the next day i was in hospital.

although that would be a disservice to one drink for a cheap joke: as far as i can tell it was the hotel breakfast that sent me retching. its one-way to get out of a four hour presentation you’re helping give, but not one i’d recommend. many thanks go to the staff at our hosts itaú cultural, and to the hospital staff for not quarantining me with swine flu - the fever passed, i was stocked back up with liquid (needles!), and the next day was ready to perform.

diary | 23 jul 2009 | tagged: vj · on_off

são paulo » architecture vs life

first day in são paulo was for filming. mike and matthias took the car mission, i took the bus+metro and delved into the centre of sp. so much to see, and i revel in sp’s love (experiment?) of modernist concrete, but it is sights like this that linger most.

diary | 22 jul 2009 | tagged: vj · on_off

são paulo » productive sun-rise

arrive in são paulo. first morning, i’m awake at 5am with the time-zone shift. its dark, but the sun soon rises to a beautiful day, with the arts centre we’ll be performing in standing there reflecting the orange glow. and life is good: i’m being productive, the hotel has a cunning arrangement with free internet up to 64kb, and most refreshingly there’s no mirror in front of the desk.

diary | 22 jul 2009 | tagged: vj · on_off