We already knew that Leopard would be a major new OS release for Apple in the visual sense with Core Animation, much as Tiger was with Quartz Composer, Core Video, and Core Image. We should know a lot more at Apple’s developer conference in June. There are some additional details in Apple’s latest WWDC announcement, under “Leopard Innovations”:

1. Core Animation to add elegant animations to your application interface.
2. iChat Theater to incorporate application content in iChat.
3. QuickLook to provide system wide previews.

Core Animation is old news, but could this mean you could add iChat streaming to an app? And system-wide previews are also badly-needed.

If you ever want to stimulate the visual centers of your brain as you work with your graphics tools of choice, there’s endless inspiration from the visualist blogosphere.

In case you missed it in comments, our friend vade has done some terrific work using Max/MSP/Jitter and “glitchy” texture mapping. I just now noticed he was using audio input to do it, which can be a terrific way of modulating visuals for organic results. (Without knowing he had done that, I tried some similar experiments this weekend using the audio peak input in Quartz Composer.) The effect is simple but incredibly effective: play with texture coordinates so that the textures come alive. Don’t miss the first video.

This would be equally applicable to Processing, Quartz Composer, or anything else that does even basic texture mapping and audio input.

Texture Coordinate Munging [vade blog]
… and more good texture/3D Jittery loveliness

Meanwhile, in Processing Land, generative virtuoso Flight 404 (Robert Hodgin) has done amazing things with a particle system, magnets, and circles:

Magnetism + Spheres = Fun!! [Flight 404 blog]

See also this (earlier?) magnetosphere video (thanks, Jaymis, who was impressed enough he said something PG-13 about its awesomeness.)

Utterly stunning, and better yet, he’s included Processing code and walked through the whole process of building it. Check comments for more insight. But Robert didn’t stop there. He’s gone and bought himself a multi-touch Lemur controller, with still more cool videos:

Pretty lights! [Flight 404 blog]

I’ve been critical of some aspects of the Lemur in the past (see my Keyboard Magazine review), but it has been improving, in terms of the flexibility of the interface and how it assigns MIDI and OSC messages. One key advantage for visuals that can be less of an issue with music is stutter-free control of on-screen elements (which requires a higher resolution), and generally having an interface that lends itself to controlling 2D and 3D visual elements.

And, of course, in Robert’s hands it does some wonderful things.

Why am I putting these in the same post, other than sheer laziness? What strikes me about the effectiveness of each of these examples is that the quality of motion animates them in a way that is organic and alive. In each, the core technique and visual elements themselves are relatively simple, but the rhythm of the gesture of the visuals motion makes them more engaging. That, and just focusing on these two ideas, there are countless possibilities in whatever environment you prefer (Jitter, Processing, or something else).

Computers are wonderful for making live visuals. But there’s something to be said for 2-channel video mixing on DVD, even if it’s just as a backup system for your computer rig. Via the Japanese site envol! VJ, we find this lovely gem from Kawasaki: dual 7″ displays, integrated dual DVDs with dedicated outputs, and dual audio. If this doesn’t scream portable 2-channel audiovisual mixing, nothing does:

Kawasaki Mobile Video System with 2 DVD Players and Monitors - PVS297OS [Amazon.com info in English FYI, though they have no stock]
envol! VJ audiovisual knowledge database

10 lbs. total, so it’d be easy to add to an existing laptop / SFF rig. Unknowns: reliability, how to buy one, if there are better options out there.

There’s an additional blurb on another Japanese site for those of you who read Japanese. I don’t, but I see GameCube, N64, PS2? Do they just mean that you can hook these up to the display (as with any analog input)?

Any other tips on these kinds of players? A lot of the cheap portable players I’ve seen were of, ahem, questionable quality.

I have just received and unwrapped my shiny new Numark AVM02 mixer. Unfortunately way too late for the 3 gigs I had over the weekend, so it will be a week or so until I have a hands-on, performance review. In the meantime though, I have plenty of first impressions.

It’s shiny. It’s big (19″ rack standard). Build quality is very solid - no surprises there - and all faders, knobs and buttons feel like they’re attached to a professional mixer. The crossfaders are a little slow, needing to be pushed all the way across rather than travelling there with a flick, and the lack of ”transform” buttons rules out some fun mixing tricks which can be performed with the V4, but perhaps this will encourage me to develop better crossfader technique.

It has many inputs and outputs. Ignoring the audio stuff for now (which is so passe darlings) we have 4 S-Video and 4 Composite in (not switchable, not sure how it selects between them). 2 S-Video and 2 Composite out, and 4 composite monitor outs.

Put it next to the V4 and one thing is instantly apparent: You’re getting a lot of mixer for your money.

I am currently in the midst of an awesome toys storm! This week has seen the arrival of a Macbook, Crumpler Backpack and I just picked up my M3 DS Simply from the post office. With a Numark AVM02 arriving tomorrow, I’m worried that I’ll become paralysed by the sheer weight of cool techy stuff. Hence: Pocket Review!

Peter put the DS Lite and DS-Xtreme in his Digital Musician Holiday Wish List. I picked up a DS a couple of weeks ago, but thought the DS-Xtreme looked a little pricey and wanted something which would use SD or MicroSD media, as they’re the formats used by my still camera and phone.

Et volia. The Nintendo DS M3 Simply. A choice echoed by a comment made on CDM 3 days ago. AU$61 (US$48) delivered from Bamboo Gaming, it arrived in 9 days, and includes a “thumbdrive” form factor MicroSD reader, driver CD, and a cute little holder to attach to your keyring or mobile phone lanyard or nose ring or whatever it is the cool kids are doing on my lawn.

That’s all interesting, but there are loads of reviews online which could tell you what you’ll get in the box if you buy one of these things. What they don’t really get across is how simple this thing is. Following these instructions it took me less than ten minutes to go from this:

To this! Nitrotracker. DSMidiWifi baybee!

Modding my XBox to run Media Center was complicated enough that I enlisted another geek to do it for me. Getting homebrew running on the DS took less time than copying and resizing the above images.

Nintendo DS M3 Simply: Recommended! [tags]nintendo, DS, homebrew, trackers, gaming, midi, hacks, hardware, mobile, software, wireless[/tags]

Updated: I had to patch NitroTracker with DLDI for R4DS using the instructions here to get NitroTracker accessing the filesystem and saving correctly.

The 2007 way of promoting your VJing: giving away clips. So while we’re on the subject of legal, free clips to use in your next visual set (classic movies were the subject last week), this week:

68 Vintage Fairlight VJ Loops by VJzoo (2007) [Archive.org, from VJzoo.com

Get ready for some grungy, glitchy 80s electro-style analog visuals:

There are NOT for everybody's taste - they are messy, grungy and grainy loops harvested from "Vintage AV Plug n Play" sessions using equipment from the 1980's and 1990's such as Fairlight Computer Video Instruments (CVIs), the Panasonic WJ-AVE7 and feedback from an analogue Panasonic video camera on a Commodore monitor. The Fairlight CVI was developed in Australia in 1984 and was used by early live-AV artists such as Severed Heads.

That's right, Fairlight -- better known for their high-end sampler/workstation, the Fairlight CMI, credited by some as the first commercial sampler -- also made video equipment. And if there's one thing we love at CDM, it's talented Australians.

The footage raises an interesting question: whether tis nobler to use actual glitchy footage in your set, or build your own. Our friend Anton Marini (vade) has done some beautiful work making his own glitch patches in Max/MSP/Jitter. (More similar glitchy stuff elsewhere on his site, too.) This is entirely synthetic. Even if you're not into glitch, it's a fascinating learning experience to deconstruct the look of it and figure out how it's put together.

Updated: Yes, speaking of glitch, this is not actually synthetic -- see comments from vade. He has done some really beautiful -- and uniquely digital -- glitching in other projects, though. More on that soon.

Also in the free loops category: Holly Daggers' free loops on wetcircuit.com, including some beautiful footage she shot of steam coming out of smokestacks near her new Queens studio.

This gets me thinking, though: anyone else got access to a Fairlight CVI or other vintage equipment? We'd love to hear about. Heck, I'd love to come to your studio and visit it personally.

More on the Fairlight CVI:
Fairlight Computer Video Instrument [Retro Thing]
Fairlight CVI @ audiovisualizers.com

Patching, programming visually by connecting virtual patch cords between onscreen objects, has generally been the domain of the few. Max/MSP/Jitter and Pd lovers and modular soft synth fans all patch regularly. But the mainstream audience? Now, Yahoo is letting you “remix” and “mash-up” RSS feeds from the Web, and guess what interface they’re using?

Yahoo Pipes and Quartz Composer, separated at birth:

Yahoo Pipes, via Download Squad (and half the Web, I know; we’re slow)

Quartz Composer

Now, of course, this isn’t just interesting for its interface. Various tools, including Quartz Composer itself, can make visuals out of RSS feeds. So, strap in here: you build a custom RSS feed using Yahoo Pipes, then make that into custom, live RSS-generated Interweb visuals using Quartz Composer, Processing, etc. Now that you can host Quartz Composer visuals inside some VJ apps (hello, VDMX5), you can add a crazy RSS remix to your next live visual set. And you have to know very little to accomplish it all — nifty.

We’ll be Pipes remixing here at CDM over the coming weeks, so if you have any cool pipes of your own, be sure to share them. Now … will the club you’re playing at have wifi?

Elsewhere: People tend to see software based on their background and experience. So, if you’ve spent time using Microsoft Access, you see Yahoo Pipes as a relational database — even if I see it as an interactive patching environment. That said, it’s clear that Pipes is riffing on the exact design of Quartz Composer, not Access. Patching software itself has been around since the early 1980s (before even Max, Miller Puckette authored Patcher in 1986, and I assume even that may have some earlier inspiration). But relational database is a pretty decent metaphor for what Pipes does.