Content

tagged: vdmx

americas cup » six hours and 200GB

providing visuals from 5pm to 11pm was somewhat daunting given i’d pretty much chucked away all my random-gig vj clips a year or three back, they wanted it all america’s cup themed, and oh: 1080P.

well, nothing like a bit of fear to rise to the challenge: rocked it, aided and abetted by

  • cuts culled from 200GB of america’s cup footage downloaded from their broadcast server
  • a few choice compass rose type animations
  • some custom quartz composer patches
  • a live stills camera
  • the dvi mixer pumping out 1080P into their system, but the laptops only working at the (good chunk lower) actual resolution of the screen.

wish I had got a photo of the big americas-cup cuts glitch mash-up i had going on, but then again, it was all about how it moved with the music.

diary | 14 sep 2011 | tagged: video-out · video-in · vdmx · quartz composer · *spark · vj · americas cup

la » d-fuse workshop

as part of the rhythms and visions event, a day of workshops was organised. los angeles visual artists - lava had the morning, and covered the past and present of ‘visual music’ works. mike, matthias and i had the afternoon, which we nailed the four hours precisely with a tour through the d-fuse oeuvre and a journey through our particle production process. the latter was my main contribution, and its a tricky balance to give: lots of really cool stuff – shooting, taking crops, building abstracting effects – but with what can reduce down to a sea of noodles and buttons. pretty happy though, good feedback that the thread was there and it all tied up: people got it.

diary | 23 apr 2011 | tagged: teaching · talk · video-out · vdmx · quartz composer · dfuse · vj

thomas dolby and friends tech

the thomas dolby gig was a test for bringing in live photography as well as live video, and it was really rewarding to see it working. live video turned out to be appropriate for the songs, and then a slideshow of the recent photos for all the catching-up that was happening between songs. it was also good to run the screen and framing graphics at native res, giving strong, defined and intricate output, and see that completely mask - figuratively - the much lower quality PAL video feed.

special props to neil guy: testing the reception of the eye-fi card in his own 5DmkII, he took it apart and removed the shielding around the media slots!

diary | 28 feb 2010 | tagged: *spark · vj · vdmx · video-in

particle dualhead geek shot

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

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

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

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

d-fuse 'particle' preview

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

imageradio » scanner & olga mink

kinetxt over, onto the evening’s ‘live cinema’ performance ‘the nature of being’ by scanner and olga mink. two quality artists, some super-beautiful moments and a ‘state-of-flux-cinematic-experience’ achieved. as neatly summed up by nik tho’, the path well travelled.

diary | 30 oct 2008 | tagged: vj · vdmx · imageradio

multiplicidade » mission control, check

…and the laptop looking positively dwarfed by nasa* mission control, aka d-fuse live. setup finished the day before the gig, soundcheck and all: definitely the way forward. especially when your 45 minute render for the led panels crashes after an hour and a half right near the end.

  • actually we’re european. esa!

diary | 13 oct 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · vdmx · multiplicidade · dfuse

blackberry bold à la light surgeons

just finished a week production making the video content for the blackberry bold launch in the uk. while not the first time i’ve made stuff for led screens, its both amazing and terrifying seeing your seemingly perfect after effects composition playing out so big and so bright… any tiny mistake becomes crystal clear. also a test for live camera + laptop, combining band ‘the feeling’ with the neon backing comps. not as sucessful as i’d like, but still good to see and a good proving ground.
we rocked it tho’, with the goalposts changed at the last minute due to a sudden corporate influx from worldwide headquarters we pulled off a really nice balance of brand and bespoke imagery, to the point where said corporate types were overheard talking about ‘messing with the brand’ as a wonderful and mysterious thing: in short, london did itself proud.

diary | 24 jul 2008 | tagged: *spark · vj · vdmx · video-out · video-in · light surgeons

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

ford vj los angeles » build

hello jasmin and her superproduced content commissioned for the american shows. the (and i use the word loosely) car driving in is something to behold: a “green” monster truck, complete with rocket-launcher-esque hydrogen tanks racked up on the back.

diary | 14 nov 2007 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · vdmx · ford vj

ford vj frankfurt preview

…and this is what it was looking like when i hit the screengrab key-combo before putting the mac pro in its flight case to start its journey to frankfurt.

diary | 03 sep 2007 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · vdmx · ford vj

sheep music » register vdmx wi-fi mission

things that are kinda cool, but only once you’ve done them and never again -
#745 : approached the house with wifi in the garden, to find the road had turned into a half-foot deep river. nonetheless, cycle down it replete with laptop on back.

diary | 21 jul 2007 | tagged: vj · vdmx · sheep music

pre-sónar » *spark and vdmx++

showing eloi and sean my live cinema work and the state of play on macs, with vdmx, quartz composer and image kernels

diary | 12 jun 2007 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · vdmx · adventures · sónar

vdmx plug-in: dj style mixer

here is a prototype/demonstration of using your own image kernel in vdmx. rather than being an effect, this is an A/B mixer that means you can use vdmx in the ‘old skool’ way, by mixing together two video streams rather than rendering the whole stack of layers. it also has controls like a DJ scratch mixer, so as well as a crossfader, you’ve got a fader for each channel, and a fader curve control.

to use, make a layer or group for the A channel and another for the B channel, and a layer at the top of the stack for your output. trigger the qc patch in the output layer, and assign the A and B layers/groups to its video input drop downs.

if you open the qc patch, you’ll see the video inputs get resized to the output res, as image kernels don’t handle different sized inputs too well, and then all the inputs are fed into an image kernel, ie a little filter written specially for the graphics card. in that there is some basic maths for applying a variable crossfade curve, and a line that adds the two inputs together. take a look, its not so hard; i have far more trouble with doing things like translating the crossfader curves into a mathematical expression than with the code itself.

so take this as a starter for ten if you’re interested. attached below.

i have my own mixer now that does three channel mixing just how i want, and its really cleaned up my vdmx interface[1] let alone the directness of the processing. sweet.


  1. no more layer masks or fade to blacks getting in the way in the different layers and the preview window are now just post fx and not post masking/mixing fx as well. ↩︎

diary | 08 jun 2007 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · vdmx · release | downloads: spark-DJmixer-v3.qtz

spk.mxr... image kernels are go

today i programmed my first image kernel, another step on the journey of making custom technology to fulfil what i want to do artistically. and this one was with real, low-level code: its basically writing a shader for the graphics card, eek! actually not so hard at all, the code was pretty easy, it was the process of working out the maths required that took time to wrap my head back around.
osx is developing so well for video: you can write your image kernel in the appropriate quartz composer node, load that into a layer in the vj app vdmx, and then find all your kernel inputs natively displayed in the vj interface. so now not only do i have the exact kind of mixing i want processing at maximum efficiency, i’ve simplified my vdmx setup no-end with just one panel with all the controls, instead of a mish-mash of filters and blend modes spread around the different layers.

diary | 24 may 2007 | tagged: *spark · quartz composer · vj · vdmx

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

avit>c23 » ableton live & vdmx5

rbn_esc in audiovisual form used an iMac G5 and a titanium laptop working as video and audio machine respectively, both operating on the edge… kinda scary. now, they fit on the same screen on the same laptop, thanks to the cocoa rewrite of vdmx5 and a macbook pro… and barely stress the machine. add in motorised faders (loving my new behringer bcf2000, wondering how long it will last), and its quite the revolution.

diary | 30 dec 2006 | tagged: *spark · avit-vj-network · vj · rbn_esc · vdmx · ableton · visual berlin

vv.mod.midi.hack = a/v ok

you can have a deadline in your head, but theres nothing like it viscerally hitting you as you make your nth cup of tea, seeing it scribed coldly in the best before field of your milk carton. some kind of techo-primordial early warning system. works for me, anyway.
and so it was today that with joy and relief chasing each other round my head, finally watching the pieces of my audiovisual ideal slot into place and the proverbial engine stutter into life, that i saw that date on the milk and thought - yup, its a week from this very moment.

so i now have ableton live with the music cut up and laid out alongside midi clips corresponding to vj clips. that midi control goes to the visuals program, so i can mix the visuals with the material synced to the flow of the music i’m laying down. the sound work laid into the vj clips will then flow back into ableton to be tweaked as part of the audio mix. a rich audiovisual brew, an indistinguishable whole… cinematic motion graphics. fingers crossed.

the two visuals apps i feel are suitable for the long-form video-fused-motion-graphics i’m doing both don’t quite a the midi control i specifically require, but today i got the fruits of a little commission to retrofit my midi spec onto vdmx 4.2, and ye gads its working - i can actually do this for real now! the other contender, grid pro, will smash vdmx4.2 for me once they’ve got two features down, but as i write this they’re not quite there yet - but they’re working on it, and working on it as in right now - we’ll see which app makes it to the post! the picture is the moment of genesis, jdk’s hacked vv.mod.midi piping ableton control into each movie player. oh, and where did jdk code and send this? in a car on a 18 hour journey down america armed with powerbook and gprs phone, naturally.

so now the pieces are in place - music, vj clips with sound effects, sequencer, audio and visuals apps… its time to create the whole setup for real, and time to ensure all the remaining production tasks get finished - a chunk of the performance finished is not the whole thing!

diary | 25 feb 2006 | tagged: *spark · vj · rbn_esc · vdmx · ableton · 20/20