DVCreators has put up a half an hour tutorial on Quartz Composer detailing how they have created their introduction graphics:

I’ve always liked the super-dramatic light rays effect, but the light rays filters in Motion and Final Cut Pro take too long to render… and frankly, they are pretty lame. So I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to help you create those super long, awesome godlike light rays, and preferably in real time! And finally, that opportunity is here.

So if you have some time to burn and have been putting off digging in to one of the nicest DIY visuals environments, head on over to DVCreators.net and get your learn on.

Emergency Broadcast Network have released their ground-breaking audiovisual album Telecommunications Breakdown online for the first time. As Jonny says on the AV blog at videomix.es:

The release was original mainly CD Audio only at the time as general release formats didn’t allow for an AV album. All the visuals were made at the same time, basically the the visuals is the music and here for the first time is all the video album in one place::::::

Skip to 3:19 for a truly brilliant mashup moment, which appears at 3:27. Then watch it from the beginning. I can only imagine how difficult this was to create using the technology available in 1995.

Musicians have thousands of years of history when it comes to interfaces and instruments, but visuals are relatively new. Little wonder, then, that visualists are eager to try new interfaces to help make visuals akin to performance instruments. Or, in less lofty terms, let’s get Wii remote wagging in the club tonight.

Over on createdigitalmusic.com, we’re celebrating Game Day — basically, I’m squeezing as many game-related posts into 24 hours, because a whole bunch of tips came in at once. A couple of Wii-related controller solutions jumped out.

Wii + Flash

Getting hardware control in Adobe Flash requires some work: basically, you need a client-server model. The good news is, there are already two Wii-specific solutions out there.

MoteDaemon, Mac OS X
WiiFlash.org, Windows Blog, Download, Google Code

Pretty soon, people are cooking up Minority Report demos with Flash (using Papervision for 2.5D-style 3D in Flash’s 2D world, and Open Dynamics Engine for physics):

I’d loved to see this coupled with something like Onyx for an all-Wii, all-Flash performance app. With Flex and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), this could be the basis for some really hard-core, full-blown apps … though you will be limited by Flash’s slower performance, at least in comparison to C/C++-based tools like Max or even Java.

Looks like Linux users are presently out of luck, unless I’m missing something (feel free to chime in if you know a cross-platform alternative).

Wii + MIDI, OpenSoundControl (OSC)

For a more app-agnostic solution, you can hook up a Wii to send MIDI or, ideally, OpenSoundControl (OSC) to apps that support it (vvvv, Max, Pd, and hopefully VJ apps soon — I’ve heard a couple of developers working on it).

On Mac, you can send both OSC and MIDI with one app, perfectly-suited to taking data from the Wii controller:
OSCulator. OSCulator is a great tool for the Wii, but it also shows promise of what a hardware input hub could generally look like, with open-ended inputs controlling visuals and sound rather than pre-defined, MIDI-style keyboards and knob and faderboxes as have traditionally been used in music.

On PC, GlovePIE is an awesomely-powerful scripting tool for use with Wii and other game devices. I’ve talked about it endlessly before, but I’ll stay quiet — just go. Get it. Enjoy. In fact, with OSCulator on Mac and GlovePIE on Windows, it’s hard not to be insanely happy on either platform.

Another interesting out-of-the-box alternative, though, is the new Wiinstrument. It’s largely geared for playing back drum samples, but it’s not hard to take that metaphor and use those control changes and other MIDI messages as visual controls — especially if you think of your “drum kit” as sets of visual clips (video or other visuals).

Wiinstrument on createdigitalmusic.com

If you’re using a Wii on Windows, VJ Kung Fu has posted a full walkthrough:
Wii to MIDI Windows Walkthrough

And here’s an example on Vimeo of using the Wii with Processing: (I’m sure there are others)
Wii + Processing

This time next week Peter and I will be in Perth, Western Australia, basking in the geekly radiance of ByteMe festival and enjoying the hospitality of the inimitable Kat and Jasper, a.k.a. CDMo favourites VJZoo.

We don’t have any official panels or workshops planned. Instead we’ll be devoting our time to documenting the goings-on and creative outputs of all the other cool people who are attending the festival.

Aside from catching up with the ArtificialEyes crew and Australian Visualist extrordinaire Jean Poole, this festival will be especially exciting for CDM as it’s the first time Peter and I get to meet In Real Life! Will we still get along after our fleshy casings have shared a continent? Will the CDM empire crumble as we discover that we’re not really interested in writing about CreatingDigitalThings? Watch this space to find out.

After the festival concludes on the 9th of December Peter will accompany me back to Brisbane for CDM Summit ‘07, where we’ll discuss the future of CDM, work on CreatingDigitalStuff, and probably play quite a lot of Strikers.

Leisure time aside, we don’t really have anything concrete organized, so if any CDM readers will be in Brisbane between 9-14th December and are interested in an informal get together, or would like to catch up at ByteMe festival, make with the comments.

Ed.: If you happen to be coming to Perth, or know folks who live there (and really, who among us doesn’t have lots of friends in Perth), be sure to sign up for events! Many require an RSVP. And if you can’t make it to Perth, we’ll make the virtual experience as rich as possible! -PK

Byte Me! Festival Events List