CDMo reader and 3L winner Memo has posted this rather lovely video.

Interactive Processing version here. Memo says:

This demo was done in Processing 0135 BETA (using Java) but I think I’m going to redo it in C++ with OpenFrameworks for performance reasons. While processing is brilliant for knocking up quick demos and getting off the ground quite quickly, for this project I need as much performance as possible. I.e. the app needs to run across 4 projectors (3000-4000 pixels wide) with loads more features!

So in short I’m halting the development of the Processing / Java version now and thought I’d post where I got to with it…

Ah, Motion Theory. We lover their work already. And now, in one brutal blow, they simultaneously produce:

• A kick-ass video for Weezer.
• A love letter to YouTube and Internet memes — watch through to the end. It gets denser.
• An instant on-screen “How much of a geek are you?” quiz.
• A video that should throw any band trying to capitalize on Web memes to the ground. Seriously. You won’t top this. Give up now. You’ll have to wait for the next generation of technology or something.

Thanks to our friend Robin Hunicke, who seems to be friends with / works with every visualist in greater LA. More commentary at hustler of culture, where Souris also knows tons of people and deals in tons of awesomeness. But, Souris, I’m sure someone can spot more of the memes in there and has the time to count each one. Any takers?

Motion Theory’s (ahem) motion work has already produced fantastic stuff, like their well-known example of Processing code made into art (okay, with a little C++), the Nike One campaign. (Josh Nimoy contributed — creator of JMyron / WebCamXtra.)

Prefer naked people to Web memes? Or maybe you personally enjoy streaking nude through the Icelandic woods? Sigur Ros also released a video today that should be up your alley.

Happy weekend, everyone.

The response to our 3L Giveaway was amazingly extensive, and also very exciting to see the names and websites of so many visualists from around the world.

So we’ve collated all of those email addresses, and with a little help from some atmospheric noise we chose the winners.

Grand Prize (3L Pro License)

Hiltmeyer

Runners-up (3L Student/Education License)

.lov.
sull
Toby Dixon
Korhan Erel

Comment Winners

The comments response was so overwhelming that artificialeyes offered to award an additional 5 education licenses to commenters, chosen semi-arbitrarily by artificialeyes:

Winner for BEST THRILL PUN: vj decoy - VL ONLY 3L!
honorable mention: LordBanjo - 3L = Luminous Lantern Lust!

Winner for BEING 1337: nausea - in case i win the license i will make it run on my linux box:)
honorable mention: dmos.tv - finally generative synthesized visuals at our fingertips, why not try that with a mo-cap suit

Winner for BEST SENSE OF HUMOUR: Willy - and on the 7th day God said. “Damn, tomorrow’s Monday.”
honorable mention: J.E JIM - Lets do this. I want to put this software to work at church!

Winner for DREAMING THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM: memo - another comment in the sea of comments…
honorable mention: PreyStereo - There would be only one thing I would want more than a free license to Thrill…a free license to Thrill AND a cookie. Nah, forget the cookie.

Winner for SWITCHING: vj bonk - Nice! I hope that I am picked, I have been anxiously awaiting this release for a long time, Arkaos just does not cut it anymore this seems like a step in the right direction!
honorable mention: Pao - Hi, I’m a VJ and normally using Modul8. Few days ago I managed to use this software with my ipod touch. Let’s rock!

All of the winners will receive an email with instructions directly from artificialeyes within the next 48 hours on how to register their copy of the demo version. Thanks to everyone who entered, and to those who missed out: you didn’t miss out at all, really, because the Thrill Store is now open! You can download the 3L demo and give it a spin. Congratulations to the artificialeyes team. They’ve been working their butts off, and it will be great to see what happens when 3L hits the wild.

I’m currently editing several hours of 3L footage we shot with Michael last year, so you’ll be able to have expert help when coming to terms with the software.

Enjoy, and when your 3L output starts hitting the web, please tell us about it!

Slow motion technology has been making huge leaps into affordability recently, and now that the Casio Exilim EX-F1 (check the review on luminous-landscape.com) is publicly available, youtube has suddenly been flooded with new high-FPS content, and I think we can safely say that slow-mo has hit the mainstream.

With Sony’s CMOS cameras we’ve had affordable slow-motion available for over a year, but the tape-based workflow was time-consuming and unintuitive, so required a bit too much effort for the general home user. However, the EX-F1 records to SD card, so you can post your captured files directly to youtube, and we’re seeing the results of that right now.

600FPS really seems to be the sweet spot for this camera, it’s getting into the realm of serious slow motion, but still has a reasonable amount of resolution available - 512×384 - absolutely perfect for Youtube or VJing.

I’ve posted my first two videos for the Vixid@CDM Minisite. These cover both the ridiculously basic - how to get started with the VJX - and the reasonably advanced - using cameras, midi and Ableton Live to create a seamless-scrolling effect across two projectors:

Vixid 101 - The Basics: Inputs, Outputs, Routing, Blend Modes, Compositing
Multi-projector Spanning: Cameras, Cables, Midi and Ableton Live

Aside from the exciting possibilities this opens, I’m also happy about the Vixid 101 video as it uses a rather strange aspect resolution - 500×600px - which allowed me to display both the physical view of what’s being done to the mixer and the output.

This is all quite new for me, I don’t have much practice actually talking to cameras, so I’d love to hear your feedback. Is the format working for you? Does my trim-every-extraneous-second editing style scare you? Would you like to see more videos like this on CDMo?

You may have seen the Video Critter video synth hardware kit generating visuals using cellular automata algorithms. (Think cell-based models a la the Game of Life.) But you haven’t seen it quite like this.

Univac has combined the Critter kit with a VTECH LessonOne educational toy (boring toy, beautiful case), quite a lot of circuit bending, light snakes with optical sensors, a bending patch bay, plus a 7″ LCD screen for viewing it all. Result: self-contained, patchable, performable cellular automata video synth!

CellularRecombomat: patch-bay circuit bent cellular automata video synth [Techdweeb.com, Univac's site]

It’s really quite lovely — and another reminder why we need hardware video mixers, so we can easily manage the output of goodies like this.

Univac has many other wonders of bent sound and visual devices on his site. For more cellular automata, check out the free Nintendo DS music sequencer glitchDS, which just happened to land in my inbox at about the same time.

Want more evidence that tradition in user interfaces has blinded us to the possibilities for making graphics fluid and intuitive? Just look at the first known GUI, Dr. Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad. His 1962 PhD thesis at MIT, Sketchpad represents a whole bundle of firsts: the first object-oriented programming project, the first use of a toolbar, the first real-time graphics system, the first drawing program, the first GUI, the first use of instances, the first use of draggable vector graphics … and yet, that’s not what’s impressive about this. What’s really impressive is that the work of this one man still holds up in 2008, and not all of what he does here has been fully answered by modern UIs. (Sometimes the past turns out to be more futuristic than the present, perhaps because people doing modern development work don’t know enough of their history.)

The video here is introduced by Xerox PARC’s Dr. Alan Kay, who was later an Apple Fellow (among other things), and made his own contributions to UI history.

This is doubly interesting to me, because the simplicity of this kind of project makes it ideal for people writing their own interfaces into tools like Processing. And notice how nice it is having a persistent physical interface — something that might not be practical for Adobe, but could be perfectly practical for a DIY electronics builder and live visual performer. You can read his full thesis, and for more UI history with Alan Kay, there’s a full 1987 documentary that traces this and many other developments (including the mouse) on the Internet Archive.

Ivan Sutherland celebrated his 70th birthday last week, as described by Java creator James Gosling:
Happy Birthday, Ivan! [James Gosling: on the Java Road]

Gosling points out that even more interesting than this interface is what Ivan has to say about technology and courage. It’s well worth reading if you’re embarking on a research project of your own.

The VJ and live visualist of the future isn’t just about DJ metaphors and what happens in clubs. It’s about a convergence of new interface technologies for dealing with visual material in a more fluid, flexible way. It’ll change not only visual performance, but how we express ourselves in digital visuals, as well — something we’ve already seen happen with non-linear video editing and vector and bitmap graphics software, but taken further.

Vade points us to a couple of glimpses of technologies being researched now that will help enable these changes.

We’ve been avidly following the development of Thrill for quite a while now, and are very excited to hear from Michael that the commercial release is this week. But first, a little housekeeping: As a grand opening for the 3L store, CreateDigitalMotion has 5 copies of the software to give away! Much like the Beta giveaway, the rules are simple.

Your machine will need to meet the 3L minimum specs:

2GHz or faster Intel Core processor
MacOS X 10.4.9 or later QuickTime 7.0.4 or later
2GB or more of RAM
CoreImage capable AGP, PCI Express or Intel graphics processor with at least 256MB of VRAM w/ OpenGL hardware acceleration.
Minimum Screen Resolution 1440 x 960 (which therefore excludes the macbook)

… and you’ll need to leave a comment on this post in the next 48 hours.

In return, 4 winners will receive a 3L Student - single-machine - license (worth €150) , and one will receive 3L Pro , which is a 3-machine license (worth €200) and includes native uDMX support, for controlling VMS or other DMX hardware.

After the competition closes, I have it on good authority that The Wait Is Over, and 3L will be available for all and sundry to try out and purchase with Much Abandon. I also have several hours of footage of Michael taking us on a detailed tour of Thrill at ByteMeFest in Perth last year, so I’ll be going on a mad editing binge in the hope of having this available to help out those who download the demo later this week.

In the meantime: Hit the comments, check out some samples from the 3L Loops series on archive.org, and visit the 3L site for more information.

Update: Entries are now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered. The volume and quality of comments has been overwhelming! It’s really fantastic to see all of these readers come out of the woodwork. I think we’ll have to give more things away so we can hear from you all (Software and hardware developers, you know where to contact us…).

In the meantime, winners will be announced this time tomorrow, to coincide with the 3L store launch. So if you don’t win you’ll be able to try out the demo and even buy a copy!