London-based, French-born VJ and artist Pikilipita doesn’t touch laptops. He shows up at live visual gigs toting game systems. Having built mobile projects for the Game Boy Advanced and Linux-based GamePark GP2X, he’s now got a new machine: a Barbie-pink PlayStation 2.

Novelty this may be, but don’t think that PS24VJ can’t hack it as a real VJ app, allowing you to leave the laptop at home:

• Plays footages compressed with the Kouky video codec v16
• Supports two video layers
• Supports alpha channel
• Special effects and filters
• PAL video out signal

And because it supports up to two PlayStation controller inputs, two people can play at once. (One of the big problems with computers, I think, is that they’re entirely restricted to single-user metaphors.) Each VJ controls one video layer at a time.

Pikilipita is happy to share his creation with you, too, for a donation of whatever you think is appropriate. PS2 games don’t even require hacked systems, either, unlike DS or PSP homebrew software (which has proven a major pain for the homebrew music scene).

Pikilipita points CDM to the PSD2DEV network for more on how to develop for the system. I’m surprised at how well-documented this is:
PS2DEV PS2 Page (loaders, development toolchain, tutorials, sample code, demos)

What do you need to run them? He writes:

My systems works on any regular playstation 2, you don’t need a modified one. All you need is a special DVD called “swap magic 3.6″ (http://www.swapmagic3.com) to force booting on the USB port and that’s it!

On the USB port of the console, you insert a memory stick containing the software and the footages you want to use.

PS24VJ Project Page

Movies of the PS24VJ in action are available on his site:
http://pikilipita.com/vj/flv-player.php?mov=18
http://pikilipita.com/vj/flv-player.php?mov=17

Overview sheet:
http://www.pikilipita.com/vj/ps24vj/PS24VJ-sheet-1.01.pdf

User’s manual:
http://www.pikilipita.com/vj/ps24vj/PS24VJ-manual-1.00.pdf

If you’re near London, you can catch PS4VJ live at the AV Social. I’m super jealous:
British Film Institute AV Social

Worlds Will Shatter - The Unfold trailer from Nine Orders on Vimeo.

A Swarm of Angels just announced they’ve released an “open source trailer” — that is, with a Creative Commons license for remixing — for their upcoming collaborative sci fi thriller film. The trailer already demonstrates some of the fruits of this collaborative effort from around the planet.

Worlds Will Shatter: open source trailer [A Swarm of Angels]

Click through the video link for HD on Vimeo.

Apologies for the copy and paste, but I’ve got a train to catch and they say it quite eloquently, so here you go:

I’m proud to release the first open source film trailer created for A Swarm of Angels. World’s Will Shatter sets the scene for The Unfold, a contemporary sci-fi thriller being made in a revolutionary fashion; by a global community of members participating in its creation, and contributing their unique talents and skills.

Driven by a core collaboration between the animation skills of Mayec Rancel, and the soundtrack smarts of Santiago Abadia, the trailer is at the forefront of new creative processes empowered through the Internet of crowdsourcing, and peer production. Finished with title design by the internationally recognised graphic talents of Matt Pyke of Universal Everything collaborating with Maxim Zhestkov, it is a stunning glimpse into a world being created by a global membership fueling a pioneering people-powered film studio.

Rancel has evoked a powerful unfolding world created in 3D from 2D images created by Japanese photographer Palla. Through community feedback and discussion at the forums of aswarmofangels.com the initial ideas developed into a spiralling, shearing cityscape synchronised with an otherworldly soundtrack developed by Abadia. The online collaboration encompassed a team of participants from Spain, Belgium, the North and South of England, Japan, as well as Russia (not including members who participated in votes and posts via the forums).

The trailer and all accompanying source files are released under a Creative Commons CC-NC-SA-3.0 license, allowing full non-commercial remixing and sharing (embed codes for Youtube, blip.tv & hi-def Vimeo). Join the Swarm to help make the film and get further details for the open source package (register here, full member details here).

Anyone from CDMotion involved in this project? Impressions on the first results? Considering getting involved? Say so in comments.

Something’s happening in software. Generative techniques have been around about as long as computers, but from Spore’s game design, soundtrack and creature editors to new music software like Nodal and Noatikl, in 2008 we’re seeing those techniques more accessible than ever. Good news for fans of the demoscene (an underground movement melding coding and art): it’s back with a vengeance, now interconnected with the larger Web and friendlier software-making tools.

It’s only a public alpha, but Toolbox, bargain-priced at 20 Euros (EUR50 when released), suggests what graphics apps might look like with an entirely different metaphor, built on generative lines. The creator describes the tool as a “node-based editor for making digital art,” or a “visual programming language” — the latter something we usually associate exclusively with patching tools like Max/MSP/Jitter and Quartz Composer. The difference here is, whereas those are open-ended software sketchpads, Toolbox is a single-window editor and integrated environment for making visuals, more along the lines of a Photoshop or Illustrator. I’m not suggesting you’ll toss your Creative Suite 3 license out the window, but what this does mean is you could generate an asset from start to finish in this tool — and, perhaps, take it out to another program.

Toolbox App Product Page, Download
Video Album on Vimeo
Flickr Set

The whole project is the work of one developer, Simon Strandgaard. (Remember, too, Quartz Composer began as the project of one Pierre Oliver-Latour.)

What does all this mean? It means you can make UI elements quickly, or destroy existing graphics, and play with vectors in a fluid, magically generative way. The alpha state can make it slow and unpredictable to work with, but it’s already capable of some fun stuff. Here’s a look at vector filtering:

Random vector filter experiments from Simon Strandgaard on Vimeo.

Yes, sometimes the greatest DIY projects are built not from scratch but from the cannibalized bits of other, less-brilliant controllers. Together, these pieces become greater as a whole, from bland and boring to bizarre and fantastic.

Case in point: Devin aka “mzo” writes us with his Cyrillic-emblazoned custom controller creation for VJ control. The project was built by the talented Craig Komega (more on his work coming soon — he’s the maker of the awesome Komegatone).

The controller is built from modifying 3 off the shelf controllers (M-Audio Trigger Finger, Belkin Nostromo n52 gamepad and the old Mixman Dm2) into a custom made, laser etched box with a cold-war soviet space station theme (hence the name Def-con, also Definable-controller because of its flexibility in programming). The computer still sees the thing as 3 seperate and unmodified devices and I program them for my vj’ing using the respective software for each (although the dm2 to midi software isn’t from the manufacturer). This also makes the controller suitable for a wide variety of applications including dj’ing.

I currently use this controller with Vjamm, Resolume, Live and Traktor with custom control setups for each.

I was curious about more details of how the controller mappings were used in action, so Devin sent more.

Full-size image download of above

No videos, but he did write up some other impressions:

Today on CDMusic, I’m looking at the new OpenStomp, an open source guitar stompbox. That’s the project’s main focus, but dig into the specs, and you find something interesting: an NTSC output. There’s even an example patch with Pong. Using visual programming tools, it should be possible to whip up more.

More on the video is found in the FAQ:

Video is essentially generated in software by the Propeller with a little bit of hardware support. Parallax’s website has drivers supporting both PAL and NTSC. The initial focus will be on NTSC, and the video based pieces of software (like Pong) shipping with the pedal are NTSC based, but conversion to PAL is possible and is supported by the Propeller chip and the Coyote-1 hardware.

It’s just a start, and there’s no video output. But how much fun would it be to have a custom, US$350 video stompbox you could code for? Because the project is open source, and it’s based on the cheap but powerful Parallax Propeller, it should be very possible. Anyone interested in working on such a project, do let us know.

[CDMu Story | Project Page, Details, Online Ordering]

Ooh, and I see below our related posts feature is working nicely … so, yeah, see also those stories.