CoGe is an upstart VJ app on the Mac, built on the foundations of Quartz Composer as a standalone VJ app. It’s been winning over some converts already – as indicated in our recent survey. But here’s the big release: version 1.0, a ground-up rewrite, which in turn debuts the app as a commercial tool.

For the best overview, see the brand-new version 1.0 quick start video at top.

Highlights new in this release:
Native support for Syphon (for interconnecting with other Mac visual apps)
Arbitrary layers
Effects
Mixer chains

Speaking of Syphon, for you projection mapping fans, here’s a good tutorial:
Connecting CoGe to MadMapper via Syphon

More info:
http://cogevj.hu/

There’s a fully-functional demo with everything but save/load. US$99 to buy, with an intro price of $79 through September 10 (+VAT). And no, it’s not free and open source any more. I’m only a little sad that it isn’t both commercial and open source, as I’d be interested to see someone try that model. But, that said, the fact that it’s built atop Quartz Composer means it’s very easy to extend with QC plug-ins, which is very cool, as is support for the open source Syphon framework. And it’s clear that the commercial part of it is necessary to support better development.

Let us know if you’re using CoGe and what you think of it – and what you’re doing with it!

Generative physics animations in Illustrator most certainly fall into the “because it’s there” / “for no very good reason other than it’s possible” category. But the results are hilariously awesome. See above, Adobe fans.

The tool behind this is very cool, too. Processing lovers who don’t already know the insanely great toxiclibs library – and its ability to unlock complex math and geometry magic with very little effort – should absolutely go explore:
http://toxiclibs.org/ [links, documentation, and loads of terrific tutorials and demos]

It’s Java-ness makes it ideal for other Java-based projects, too, including Android. But that library, in turn, has come to JavaScript:
http://haptic-data.com/toxiclibsjs/

Scriptographer is a scripting plugin for Illustrator that opens it up to JavaScript – and may be a new reason to even use Illustrator.
http://scriptographer.org/about/

Add this easy-to-use JavaScript library to Scriptographer for Illustrator, and within that generative environment you get animated fun. See discussion:
http://scriptographer.org/forum/wish-list/toxiclibs/?pos=0#Post-4222

More animation in Illustrator: Ping Pong in Illustrator, also thanks to Scriptographer.

Brilliant. Anyone else come up with interesting stuff with this environment, we’d love to see it. Found via Andreas Köberle on Google+.

It’d be silly to write a long post about an (extremely) short film, so I’ll just say this.

Sometimes, I open my inbox, and I see an email that says nothing other than this:

Hello!

Just want to show some gypsy motion graphics

Thanks!
–
Best, Pavel

I won’t make any further introduction. Gypsy motion graphics. See top.

The Vimeo and Behance pages actually says a bit more – enough so that it’ll take you longer, perhaps, than the 20 seconds that it takes to watch the film:

Inspired films by Emir Kusturica and music by No Smoking Orchestra.
Thanks to monobrow monobroww.livejournal.com/​
And full project you can find here http://www.behance.net/gallery/Tribute-to-Emir-Kusturica/1930923
Tribute to Emir is non commercial project and promo video for documental film “Balkan Star”(Balkanskaya Zvezda) by Andrej Grigorev. The film and the promo inspired by films by Emir Kusturica and music by “No Smoking Orchestra”. For me it was hard working about a month or two. And it was very interesting, so I hope you like it too. Thanks for watching!

Below, another half-minute piece by Pavel. No gypsies. 30 seconds to Mars.

Pavel is another of what appears to be a cadre of inventive visualists from Russia; he’s from Ekaterinthburg. It’s not digital at all, but my favorite thing he’s done is a Gorky Box Shadow Theater that makes me wish I were doing shadow puppets again. And along the same lines, here’s a “mechanical ballet,” inspired by a 1916 work, which mixes “living and mechanical worlds.” (Ask me about the time I had an insect infestation in an external optical drive. Weren’t pretty.) Continue reading »

What began as a simple branding project for a pharmaceutical company evolved into beautiful, generative imagery, produced by a custom tool. Built with Processing (and the controlP5 library), the Actelion Imagery Wizard takes parameterized drawing to explode and reintegrate particle-driven illustrations of DNA, and faces, in what the designers call, neatly, “digital molecules.”

The project is the work of onformative, a design house uniquely dedicated to generative graphics.

Here’s what they say about the project (see also, from them, more documentation included here): Continue reading »

Ed.: Create Digital Motion is now five years old, and we hear more than ever from a community that wants to see more in-depth coverage of visuals for music, interactive visuals, and live performance visuals and VJing. I couldn’t be more excited to begin to introduce some new voices to make that happen on this site; I think it’s our responsibility to all the talented folks in our community to see that vision out. Annapurna Kumar is coming onboard as a contributor and editorial advisor, and as a young artist just coming on the scene, she’s already got a portfolio of work I really enjoy. She’s going to be talking both about the scene in general and some of her own experience as a practitioner, working with the likes of Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label. After some considerable urging, I convinced her to first introduce us to who she is, so she isn’t just a disembodied voice, and to show us a little bit of her current work. If you have things you’d like to see Annapurna (or CDM) cover, don’t be shy. -PK

Hey, I’m Annapurna, and I’m joining the CDMotion community as a regular blogger. Here’s a little about me:

I’m an animator and VJ. My current focus is working with the bands Ryat and Pretzlcoat to create and perform all of their live show projections. I also do freelance animation, videography, and grip work.

I decided to write for CDM because I do a ton of research in pursuit of inspiration, and figured that I might as well share it. Coming from a lifelong interest in drawing, I hope to add coverage to gallery artists and others who emphasize process and the presence of the maker’s hand. Continue reading »

Like audio, movies came from linear media; many a film student wound up splicing film with razor blades or editing with giant take-up reels on a Steenbeck. (I know I did.) But in the digital realm, we’re faced with the daunting possibility that video editing could look like absolutely anything. Media could be sequenced in any way imaginable. It could use arcs, curves, geometry, non-linear transitions through space.

IanniX, a tool based on composer Iannis Xenakis’ graphical music scores and tablet interfaces, is associated largely with sound. Accordingly, I look at it today on Create Digital Music:
Music in Space and Time: Wild Geometries and Sequencing in Iannix, Free

But it can just as easily manipulate video, as here with Max/MSP Jitter; see the video at top. IanniX can transmit OpenSoundControl (OSC) messages, which are of course far better supported in live visual apps than they are in music software. So, if you’ve been looking for an OSC sequencer to use in your music work, this could be it.

If you do something with this tool, we’d love to see it. Send it our way. Even a rough screencast could be fun.

http://iannix.org/en/index.php

Modul8, the popular Mac live video tool, got bumped to version 2.6.3 this week. But the most important change is a fantastic new manual for the software, buried at the bottom of the changed feature list:

- Syphon SDK Public Beta 2 – fixed an issue with OS X 10.7 Lion
- Fixed some issues with alpha channels when using shared textures in Syphon
- Fixed an issue with media when using ’8 bit’ filenames such as ones that use Japanese characters
- Rendering Logical Record using an Alpha Channel with a codec that supports Alpha Channels
- Added menu that links the to Online Module Manual (see below for details)
- New PDF user manual

What’s so great about a new manual? Basically, it’s been rewritten to focus more clearly on artist tasks, from the beginning of the visual workflow as you import media to layering and controlling onscreen compositions to recording. Also, rather than simply go through those tasks in dry fashion, there are real-world visual illustrations of how controls might be used (provided by talented live visualist Ilan Katin in most cases, as near as I can tell). The manual is also nicely interspersed with documentation of people using Modul8 in live contexts onstage. It sets a nice, new bar for online manuals. Continue reading »