#1 - performing the audiovisual rbn_esc to an attentive room, the idea of live cinema becoming visceral, having an out-of body experience while performing, feeling the work, feeling the audience, feeling the energy
#2 - meeting an inspiring person, and then them producing their avituk2005 pass from their wallet. its getting on for two years after that epic, not to mention the years of organisation and build-up from avit the worldwide vj network’s inception in 2002… knocked me for six.
diary | 21 jan 2007 | tagged: avit-vj-network · vj · rbn_esc · vision'r
…there are eight DVI-outs. mmm.
diary | 21 jan 2007 | tagged: avit-vj-network · vj · video-out · vision'r
2 hours sleep, eurostar, a croissant and coffee, a talk, a performance, a night into the small hours… its my 36 hours flip into vision’r, avit in paris.
somebody put it to me, that as vjs we are all sailing in our own directions, but need to harbour every now and then, and avits are these ports. i liked that.
thanks to todd thille for the photo
diary | 20 jan 2007 | tagged: avit-vj-network · vj · vision'r
…love to see people moving things on (and a cool bar too: M12)
photo credit: todd thille (flickr -> artificial eyes)
diary | 30 dec 2006 | tagged: avit-vj-network · vj · visual berlin
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
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
a real highlight, and a great way to start a new year, was lawrence lessig talking CC at the CCC. obviously the creative commons idea was the thrust of the speech, but it was framed by comparing the free / open source software movement with that of media culture. in those terms, media and culture is an upstart by comparison, and the window of opportunity is probably shorter than we realise. makes the work of vjs and others in the coming decade even more important.
diary | 29 dec 2006 | tagged: avit-vj-network · vj · visual berlin
to berlin straight after christmas for avit vj gathering hosted within the chaos communication congress, the winter get-together of the hacking classes.
diary | 28 dec 2006 | tagged: avit-vj-network · vj · visual berlin
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
simply, too cool. they’ve figured magnetic, conductive paint for integrating electronics with graffiti, and these little numbers: led throwies.
great graf by nick walker: mona lisa pulling a moonie right on a harbourside corner. its a very clean, serene town. i wonder if there’s been any accidents yet?
to norway for the best part of a week as a guest artist of the numusic festival. for the nuart strand, i’m a multimedia man-who-can, documenting the interventions and melding the daytime art activities into animated backdrops for the nighttime venues.
event, deadlines, stress, allsuch over - time to escape the urban condition, honour the title of my piece. the 2020 crew catch the metro to “the coast”… and the sign even says that. its an escape one-two, in fact… airport or coast. i like.
diary | 05 mar 2006 | tagged: errata of life · vj · 20/20 · name · novak
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
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
breakfast on the day of 2020 at the council cafe set in the manor house cunningly just down the road from the two-up-two-down terraces i’m staying in. no escape from the cctv iconography though, from dreams of cctvs cameras outlined in vj clips to these in the landscaped gardens. somebody thinks painting them green makes them invisible, acceptable?
diary | 04 mar 2006 | tagged: errata of life · vj · rbn_esc · 20/20
with the final vj clips rendered and no sleep for 36 hours, hit the train to newcastle. passing durham is one of my favourite scenes, i somehow caught it perfectly at sunset despite being comotose the rest of the time… but that is one confined to memory alone, so heres a final render grab instead.
been worrying about playing a set at lumen, a kind of monthly partner to 2020 that showcases established vjs alongside encouraging first-timers… a social, i guess. turns out, its good to be challenged, as i rediscovered some of vdmx’s flexibility and audio-reactive complexity, not to mention a few clips in the back-catalogue as i went for minimal and refined motion graphics suitable for a bar.
by the time i got to bed, it had been quite a day - powering through content creation on paul’s twin-view G5 tower, hitting the final render, dying on a train but waking up to castles, cathedrals and the dramatic entrance to newcastle, having fine, fine tapas with equally fine fellows of name, a set that surprised me, and all rounded off with the discovery of sailor jerry rum.
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!
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
saw mode selektor at the rex with jess and co, and had a funny conversation about performance… where we’ve gone from orchestras to the single dj, and from instrumentalism to, er, dancing: mode selektor flip faders as they bounce around, its not quite the same thing.
and no matter how many laptop live sets i see now, in my head its still a battle as to just what a live, solo, audiovisual performance could or should be… but there’s only one way to find out, and its going to be march 4th.
diary | 21 jan 2006 | tagged: errata of life · vj
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