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
beyond visible things like keane3D, lots of work has been going on in the background with d-fuse this past year or so. some of it pitching, some of it pushing along internal projects, and at the moment a massive commercial job under NDA: all things which don’t really get to this diary. but i’m glad to announce a little preview of something i’ve been working on a while, which is transforming d-fuse live.
as part of electrovision on saturday the 18th july at roxy bar and screen, d-fuse will be performing for the first time with their high-def laptop live setup. it will be something between a test of the setup and a preview of the performance that will become ‘particle’, so all are welcome and beta-tester feedback appreciated!
there’s much more to say about what has been developed for this setup, but in the meantime here is the blurb i wrote for electrovision:
D-Fuse present a work-in-progress viewing of their new live performance, an experimental audio-visual triptych exploring urban conditions. Having mastered an HD production process for films such as Brilliant City and Surface, they have challenged themselves to bring this back into the live arena and with the graphical sensibility they are noted for.
pictured: vdmx work-in-progress setup, with amongst other things custom quartz composer 4x3 into 12x3 layer, backed by unreleased open-gl based qc plugins, and fronted by a native vidvox control layout.
diary | 09 jul 2009 | tagged: quartz composer · particle · dfuse · vj · electrovision · vdmx
anton dropped into the qc class to show how qc can be extended by installing custom plug-ins… which naturally featured a fair bit of glitch.
it felt funny there being a quartz composer workshop, me not giving it, and the copy being beyond something even i could even have pumped-up (world exclusive! creator of the most widely viewed online video tutorial series!). but definitely a sign of progress in this world, so props to graham (centre back) and lpm. the class had a good time, and the word was spread: hopefully more interesting work will happen because of it.
this was perhaps the most inspiring moment of lpm for me. to set the background, i’ve been planning a entirely new paradigm of vj interface for years now, have a subversion repository with a project to that end, and have had many discussions with people like anton about how flightdecks-of-buttons suck and where are we in our quests to make something better. the short answer is: years in, far from anything demonstrable due to the overhead of having to write such a thing from scratch.
enter david, who was kinda freaking out about a hip-hop gig he’d been asked to do, as he wasn’t sure how to get the scratch control and 'ting required. two hours later, he had a whole functioning gestural interface for vdmx using a tablet and the ultra-cool idea of tracing a line through a… er… control space along which pulsed the beat. a) genius b) rapid prototyped in two hours c) vdmx is cool because it can host qc, but the conceptual shift here is it works the other way round, a qc interface running in front of vdmx sending commands via open sound control.
awesome. watch the video: http://www.vimeo.com/5019365
david, as well as having the content worked out, also had the tools worked out. one laptop as render client, one laptop as controller, linked by ethernet. nice to see this in the wild, its the approach i’m going for with *spark cinema. but going back to the photo, check the number of buttons: truly a flight deck!
…and now having used it in anger, here we have
diary | 11 may 2009 | tagged: quartz composer · live illustration · vj · code · mac os · kinetxt · release | downloads: SPK-Calligraphy-v1.2.zip
…and here is the bugfix release.
diary | 07 may 2009 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · live illustration · vj · code · mac os · release | downloads: SPK-Calligraphy-v1.1.zip
KineTXT has spurred many custom plug-ins, generally either esoteric or usurped by kineme or the next major release of QC. the latest however probably deserves to see the wider light of day, and so here is a snap-shot of it having just passed a notional ‘v1.0’. its two patches designed to capture and render handwriting and doodles from a tablet, but they should be pretty useful to anyone who wishes for some form of digital graffiti in their QC compositions.
if you want anti-aliasing, you’ll need to leave the QC app behind unfortunately, but if you can run without the patching editor window its just three lines of code to add to the qc player sample application and voila: this plugin and all 3D geometry become anti-aliased. vade worked it all out and outlines the territory here: http://abstrakt.vade.info/?p=186.
if you want different nibs, pen-on-paper-like textures or suchlike… well i have my needs and ideas, but the source is there. share and share alike!
the plug-in is released under gplv3, and is attached below.
diary | 28 apr 2009 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · mac os · vj · code · release | downloads: SPK-Calligraphy-v1.0.zip
a little sneak peek of a quartz composer plug-in in development: spk-calligraphy, a set of patches for recording and playing back 2d strokes. the basic patch is equivalent to the kineme GL line structure patch, but draws the line as if it were a chisel nib at 45° and with a flow fade-out. the other two are what is going to enable a big part of the next kinetxt development: handwriting to go alongside the rendered text.
diary | 27 mar 2009 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · live illustration · vj · code · mac os · kinetxt
and here’s another, in a slightly less formal environment. suffice to say, the tv feature is used a lot more here!
diary | 21 mar 2009 | tagged: quartz composer · code · mac os · mpc screen
i’ve been somewhat remiss in not posting up the finished mpc screen, but thanks to a little cover work there i had the chance to go round and take some photos of it out in the wild. so here is the one i’ll always remember most as it was the first screen to be was deployed in the wild.
in its menu it has around thirty 1080P showreels and vfx breakdowns of the various film and commercial work, along with the ability to browse documentation pdfs and the mpc client and public facing web sites, and 15 channels of tv to flick between. for anything that isn’t suited to that branded, full screen environment, the last option flips the screen into a mac desktop with finder etc., complete with apple-store style desktop buttons giving quick access to all the apps that might be wanted in a meeting room. best of all, it will time out back to the full screen carousel menu, and then time out to its own screensaver, so as you walk around the building the screens always showing something visually pleasing and branded into the building.
its been quite a project, and that doesn’t even touch the system administration side.
diary | 21 mar 2009 | tagged: code · mac os · quartz composer · mpc screen
it might not be the most exciting photo, but this desk has seen three weeks coding a big project for a soho production house. “would you like to make something akin to “front row” to aggregate the content and services at this facility, to fit on all the 50” plasmas we’re about to get in the building?” “yes please.”
diary | 10 oct 2008 | tagged: code · mac os · quartz composer · mpc screen
not just playing with a live camera feed and kaos pad, but shaping the dance through the control of graphic elements: a simple cross can become a character, a circle shape the movement
diary | 20 aug 2008 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · bbc blast @ serpentine · teaching
atari-esque asteroids. planentarium. geddit.
diary | 08 aug 2008 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · dome · pervasive media studio
spiralling text… not quite as easy to solve as i thought if you look closely.
diary | 08 aug 2008 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · dome · pervasive media studio
patching away… been waiting a long time as a visualist to finally have an immersive output, and here i was at 9am having had no sleep due to the slot coming forward from the evening and a non-cooperating field-of-view, camera placement, and clip plane.
diary | 08 aug 2008 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · dome · pervasive media studio
a productive weekend: after yesterday’s dome-fu, spent today working out how to tether a camera to quartz composer and from that made my contribution to a friend’s wedding: a kind of digital signing-book, taking and displaying group photos atop a slideshow of the couple’s history.
also heard that polaroid have now stopped producing their iconic format i’ve appropriated here as a visual device… which while slightly sad though inevitable, makes me wonder just how long the iconic form of a photograph will not just be the polaroid, but any form at all.
diary | 03 aug 2008 | tagged: quartz composer · vj · photomatic
voila. animating, and distorted for projection via the you-don’t-need-a-boutique-fisheye-setup-anymore technique that uses a standard projector and a spherical mirror bought from a security store. all hail paul bourke and the pbmesh patch
diary | 02 aug 2008 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · dome
ah. always a silly gotcha in there. quirk fixed with the realisation that quartz composer uses degrees as its rotation unit, but the maths functions i used for the trig deal in radians.
diary | 02 aug 2008 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · dome
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