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In Dreamy, Electrified Landscapes, Nalepa ‘Daytime’ Music Video Meets Rutt-Etra

Peter Kirn — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:04:15 +0000

The Rutt-Etra modular video synthesizer may be an early-1970s relic. But it’s an expressive visual instrument that seems even more contemporary and timeless today than when it first appeared. So it’s fitting that a new music video makes its intricate generated analog eye candy the star. Set to Nalepa’s track “Daytime,” the work – by noted visualists Benton-C Bainbridge and V Owen Bush – is an abstract visual poem. Clouds and planets drift out of the lacy, electronic tendrils. It’s a quick ticket to another world. (Watch it above; definitely watch it in “HD.”)

LA-based artist Steve Nalepa tells us:

We made this using a Rutt/Etra — actually [creator] Bill Etra’s personal Rutt/Etra. Benton and Owen are friends with him. There’s less than a dozen physical units left in the world, they only made 2 dozen originally.

Benton and Owen go by Glowing Pictures. Bunch of details of their history and stuff on their website. They just did One Step Beyond last week, VJing for Dirty Projectors. [One Step Beyond is the terrific New York party held on Central Park West at the American Museum of Natural History Rose Planetarium. It's one of those few places where you can always count on top-notch live visuals.]

Here’s the official description:

Daytime’s sinuous imagery was hand-crafted with the Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer, an analog video instrument built in the early 70s. Like a TV from another dimension, the Rutt/Etra gives artists total control of the screen with knobs, oscillators and sound-responsive circuitry. It is a modular analog computer, programmed with patch chords.

The artists dedicate Daytime to the memory of Steve Rutt, co-inventor of the Rutt/Etra. Steve’s pioneering work as an engineer and entrepreneur helped create the media culture we now live in.

Music by Steve Nalepa.
Video co-created by Benton-C Bainbridge, V Owen Bush and Steve Nalepa.
Video produced at dvlabs in New York.

More information:
http://www.glowingpictures.com
http://www.stevenalepa.com

In case you happen to be in the LA area this Wednesday, Nalepa is playing the legendary downtown party Low End Theory. Alongside him is a 12-year-old child prodigy, Nalepa’s student Frankie, aka Subjection. It looks like a don’t-miss installment – lineup (and listening for all of us in the rest of the world, via SoundCloud):

Nalepa
http://soundcloud.com/nalepa

Subjection (Frankie, 12 years old)
http://soundcloud.com/subjectionmusic

Wednesday 2/1: NALEPA, SUBJECTION, and special guest plus residents
Daddy Kev, Nobody, Gaslamp Killer, Nocando and D-Styles

Airliner
2419 N Broadway
Los Angeles, California

18+ / $10 cover

https://www.facebook.com/events/172544392847555/

More Rutt-Etra Action

Benton also used the same Rutt-Etra synth on the video for “Staring At The Sun” by indie darlings TV on The Radio. Here it is:

Interview: Anton Marini on Visual Expression, Exploring Glitch, Open Community

Kyle McDonald — Tue, 10 May 2011 20:11:34 +0000

Ed.: He’s worked to translate classic hardware like the landmark Rutt-Etra to digital media – in that case, working with its original co-creator. He’s been a virtuoso of Mac visual development, building his own tools and working out an innovative way of piping live textures between applications in ways never before possible. And he’s been an important member of the visual community and accomplished live performer, including on occasion being nice enough to write for us here on CDM. Anton Marini talks to another luminary of our community, Kyle McDonald, about … well, just about everything you could think of to talk about related to the above topics. Here are Kyle and Anton… -PK

Kyle: This is the third interview in a series about creators sharing work, with an emphasis on open source, media art, and digital communities. The interviews are edited and backed up on GitHub after being conducted on PiratePad, where you can walk through the interview history as it was written. Anton completed the interview offline, but the questions are still available on PiratePad. All content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

with Kyle McDonald interviewing Anton Marini (vade)

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Anton Marini. I make pretty things with pixels for work and for play.

Most people probably know you from the work you’ve been sharing online for years now, using Jitter, Quartz Composer, and other visually-oriented software. How did you get started sharing? What communities and people would you identify as influences?

Sharing has been an important part of my learning process. I am not the type of learner who can read a formula or an abstract process and immediately understand its key points and figure out ways to use it. I have to get my hands on things, play, experiment, and learn to intuit behavior and properties. I’ve found sharing results and processes to help me as much as it helps others, and I certainly would not be where I am on my own, isolated.

In middle and high school we were fortunate enough to have access to a media lab, where we could go off class hours and experiment and learn on our own. Somehow our media lab was amazingly well equipped – we had some A/V Macs, a video toaster with Lightwave, the first versions of Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, a Quick-take camera the week it came out, and even a public access TV show (really). The culture fostered in the lab was that where students helped mentor other students (there was only one “teacher” and their capacity was more to help troubleshoot technical issues, not run classes). That experience helped hugely shape my passion and excitement for visual media, and really set a tone for how I learned the trade, through exploration, experimentation and collaboration.

I also could not help but be inspired by the community of people who run Share. I first became aware of the VJ / visualist scene when I stumbled onto Share by reading a totally mis-reported story about the weekly event in New York City. It was described as a place to go to share music files, mp3s and the like. Bring your iPod, hang out, listen to music, trade files. Always looking for new music, I went, and was greeted by a sort of modern take on free jazz. Anyone could join in, any instrument and style welcome. The venue (Open Air) had multiple video screens in the walls for visualists to plug in to. It was the first place I ever saw video being manipulated in realtime and I was instantly struck. My job at the time was working as a tech in a post production studio, so my conception and understanding of video manipulation was that it was a long, tiresome, error prone rendering process. Seeing it malleable (sure, at 320×240, 15 fps), was an amazing experience.

The people who were “performing” (I should probably say playing, it’s much more accurate in describing the mood) were amazingly open in sharing tools and techniques. Eric Redlinger was one of the people who welcomed me to Share that day, and showed me how he was performing video. He was part of a team who wrote a piece of software called KeyWorx – a networked, multi user patching environment. Eric showed me how to use it, helped me install it, and next thing I knew I had a realtime video system in my lap. I was too shy to put anything on the screen at the time, but I spent countless hours at home experimenting and performing for an audience of one with KeyWorx before I plugged in at Share.

I later met Joshua Goldberg, who introduced me to the depths of Max/MSP/Jitter. After watching Joshua play and experiment, I had to ask him how he was making it (the now cliche “what software are you using?” question). It was unlike things I had seen before, and he generously showed me, and then gave me his patch. Having learned the most basic Max/MSP/Jitter, seeing his patch Dervish was like trying to decipher the plans to the space shuttle after just seeing the Wright brothers fly for the first time. I learned an incredible amount from Dervish, both technically and artistically. What has struck me most about that experience however (and it only really struck me after painstakingly crafting my own solutions to similar problems – literally years later), is how much of Josh is encoded in that software. It is not simply a practical way of working with video in Jitter, it is a style, an aesthetic, and a methodology. It is really an artistic embodiment of himself encoded in patch coords, oscillators and feedback loops. The fact he gave it someone so fresh and naive is a feat of character. That still resonates today.

Dervish in action.

Those two moments stick out most in my head, but there are countless of others that took place at Share. There are many many people who deserve equal thanks, but Josh and Eric were the first, and I owe them both very much. Share was about not just technical knowledge, but about approach, process and how people played. That was invaluable as a new performer.

The Max/MSP/Jitter community has an ongoing set of threads named “Sharing is Fun”, where users post riffs or takes on how to accomplish particular tasks – which helped greatly technically with Jitter, finding creative and almost… abusive… uses for objects. I could go on and on, Kineme, the openFrameworks forums, the Demo Scene…

Syphon is one of the most important pieces of software in years for visualists. Why is it completely free and open source?

Because that model simply would not work. In order for Syphon to be useful, it needs to have an ecosystem of implemented applications that will spur further adoption, and make exciting combinations possible. The more working applications, the more creative potential just due to the combinatorics. Tom and I worked towards what seemed to be the easiest path to getting the most implementations and acceptance of a “standard” with least resistance.

Cost is a barrier to entry, and Syphon is a tool that in many ways ‘outsources’ application functionality, something commercial applications may not want to do. Taking a commercial approach seems like a way to hinder adoption (Think of it from the commercial developers point of view: you want me to pay you to license your code, so my app will work with competing applications!?), and scares away the most important demographic who would find the most utility and from it (people who leverage exciting realtime environments like openFrameworks, Max/MSP/Jitter, Cinder, Quartz Composer, Unity etc – usually open source, or very open communities). Adobe and kin is not our (initial) target for adoption. Allowing easy access, and thus easy experimentation was a definite goal, and that is a sweet spot for the open source and new media communities. I do want to see a Photoshop / Syphon plugin though. That would be awesome.

In a way, it could not be anything but open source. Syphon’s implementation transparency and licensing allows quick and painless adoption by communities and developers that use small, niche tools that want integration into larger environments. It was a matter of necessity if we wanted Syphon to gain traction.

Syphon’s interesting in that it had a very careful development. It wasn’t on GitHub or Google Code from the beginning. You and Tom Butterworth spent a lot of time developing it without telling anyone, then releasing it as a private beta, and finally releasing it publicly. Why was it done this way?

Prior to Syphon (actually, a few years before), I had mass emailed every contact I knew who might be interested and helpful in making what I had called “Open Video Tap”. Every commercial and open source developer, be they in the VJ field, new media, or game development, all expressed interest in the idea – but had no real time or money to devote to developing a workable solution. The idea was not a really a novel one, or a well kept secret, but it was very non-trivial at the time. However, with the introduction of Mac OS X 10.6 Apple introduced the necessary framework for something like Open Video Tap with IOSurface, and told no one about it. Now, it seemed as though it could be handled by a small development group, and Tom and I saw an opportunity make this ourselves. The barrier was a lot lower.

Keeping development somewhat closed was a very deliberate strategy to ensure that incompatible and competing implementations did not accidentally or purposefully get made or released in the wild before a finished, tested and working framework was designed. The concept is that sharing is seamless and just works. If you download it, and it fails miserably, or works inconsistently because you have two different versions or implementations of the design, it’s not going to inspire confidence in the users and developers who would help spread adoption, or write new implementations.

Keeping the development of Syphon out of sight also allowed us to identify and correct issues with the API, so that once we let Syphon out of the box, developers would have a clean and tested API for rolling out support. Something that made sense and worked. We wanted to do it “right” from the start. We also wanted to announce it with a set of “out of the box” working implementations to demonstrate Syphon, so it’s appeal would be apparent and immediately useful. Writing those implementations was also a real world test suite to see if the idea was even remotely sound and useful and importantly stable. Releasing something as a sharing toolkit, with no useful options from the start is a bit of a lackluster, self defeating announcement. We wanted to avoid that. I guess In a way we approached its like a real commercial product. Weird.

How do you balance development of free tools like Syphon with your “day job” with Noise Industries? Do you ever think “I wish I could open source this cool thing I’m building”?

Its kind of a mixed bag. Noise Industries has already created an amazingly useful set of plugins for Quartz Composer that you can use and leverage if you’ve installed FXFactoryPro. The main product are the plugins for After Effects, Final Cut and Motion. We build those based on some additional “lower level” tools we add to Quartz Composer. Those lower level tools are actually usable outside of FXFactoryPro (and the hosts), so while they are not free and open-source, they are accessible and usable to “power users” who want to build their own effects for Final Cut, Motion and After Effects (or play with inside of Quartz Composer and friends). There are tons of useful utility objects that make working with Quartz Composer easier, most of which I wish were standard in the environment.

Some personal projects of mine, for example specific effects and “looks” that I have a personal attachment to, I don’t release – even though they are not even work related. Those are not re-usable, general utilities or commonly useful effects – they have specific looks and feels, and therefore have more of a personal “signature” within them. My private policy is: when I get bored and tired of a specific effect (that I’ve found has a sort of “signature”) it’s a candidate for release. I have a lot of things I am no where near finished exploring with aesthetically, but also have a myriad of unfinished, generally useful tools for end users.

That said, If I had my way, I would like everything to eventually be made open source, only because it pushes the field and the art along further and faster, and in more unexpected and unintended ways. Sadly however, donations for open source projects are so rare that a living wage is pretty much impossible to earn (strictly on the programming side). So I think there is some balance to be struck, but I definitely err on the side of wanting to share, and discuss pretty much everything.

I remember a funny comment someone left on your Vimeo recently: “Vade: you solve all the right problems !” Besides Syphon, you’ve spent a lot of time working on other essential tools: like solid playback and recording, or, more recently, 3d model loading in Quartz Composer. How do you decide what “problems to solve”, and how do you go about solving them?

Ha! If only!

I try to solve the problems I encounter when working on a project, or trying to develop or explore an aesthetic, I don’t really go “looking” for problems. If I encounter something that seems like a huge task, I ask myself if I really need to be thorough, or am I going for just an aesthetic look.

If its a pure aesthetic issue and the “correct” solution is non-trivial my first impulse is usually to cheat. I.e., “how can I emulate this look without doing all of the hard work”. Take the glitch plugins. Some of them are real, genuine glitch “artifacts” (in the sense of you are getting incomplete frames, data that is interpreted incorrectly – and you don’t always know what you will get back), and others are total fakes – coined “glitch alike” – that simply emulate looks. Most of the time I can settle for emulation, because its usually faster (both in a development and a performance sense). If I can make genuine glitch easily enough, I’ll go for it.

On the other hand, some solutions by their nature need to be “correct” in a technical sense (movie playback, 3D model loading – cheating those tends to work to your disadvantage, it just won’t work at all, or inconsistently). So if that is the task at hand, and it can be done, I’ll try and go that route.

My thought process tends to be: “is this fast enough for a realtime performance environment?”. If not, fake it! If I cant fake it, or can’t solve it, research it some more, and put it on the back burner until someone else does, and move along in the mean time. I think I’m fairly pragmatic in my approaches, and try not to beat a dead horse too often. I can’t even begin to tell you how many half implemented, “unsolved” projects I have sitting around.

A big part of your work is very purely about visual aesthetics and performing live visuals. When you’re releasing tools that are essential to your “look”, do you ever worry about other people “looking the same”?

At some level, different people use the same tools in different capacities and styles. Two people might play the same piano, but the style, mastery, artistry and creativity between them is unique. It’s apparent pretty quickly, I think. So in the sense of “looking the same”, generally I am not too worried about that. Some effects however, really do have a very very specific aesthetic, and can, for lack of a better word, be far too personal to release.

Let me elaborate.

I recall going to a performance and seeing a wonderful visual set, and in speaking to the artist I discovered some components of his show used some effects I had released. I had no idea. It was fabulous. They really made it their own, integrated it and used it in ways I would not have. That was really fun and unexpected, and gave me ideas I would not have had otherwise.

Devan Simunovich took some v001 code and made an amazingly awesome performance environment he shared called loryder, taking approaches I never would have with the interface, and getting fantastic results.

When I was in Rome for Live Performers Meeting I guest lectured at a Quartz Composer workshop and showed multiple plugins, shared ideas and techniques. This was the first time I shared the glitch plugins publicly. The next day I saw a classroom full of people getting different looks out of the same basic tools. Those are the sorts of users that make sharing very worthwhile.

There was also enough flexibility in all of the above tools that people could find their own voices.

I mentioned a bit of my personal policy above; I think there are some effects that strictly speaking have a very finely tuned aesthetic signature, and even thinking about giving that away is really uncomfortable for me, because its a bit too close to home – its a bit too… “me”… They are essentially “make it look like this” buttons. There is not much room to explore in them, but they may have striking results. Those ones are really hard for me to let go of. In essence, I’ve strongly encoded an aesthetic sensibility into them, and they are not very flexible in expressing more than just that one sensibility – sort of visual pop-culture one hit wonders (hah). I’ve gotten emails from people looking at images or videos I’ve posted, asking for specific effects, or where to download them. Some people even email me attempts at re-creating them, finding different solutions (some totally unlike my original, but really nice and fun to explore in their own right). This also makes me appreciate Josh Goldberg’s openness about Dervish that much more. Those “one hit wonders” tend to be approaches or looks I’ve not yet finished exploring, and am, in a way, attached to because I still find them maddening.

I’m not sure I’ve really found a right approach, but I try to keep a balance. It’s not set in stone, and I change my mind about it every week or so (really). It’s a very nuanced issue for me, and I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. Currently, I try to release flexible tools, that have enough push and pull in them that you can stumble on and find unique looks. If something I’ve made does not have that flexibility, in a way, its not quite finished, and ready for release.

v001 and v002 are licensed as cc-attribution-noncommerical. And your interpretation is that it only applies to the code — so people are free to perform with it in a commercial context, just not free to sell it or integrate it into commercial software. Syphon is Simplified BSD, which basically means you can do whatever you want with it. Can you explain why you chose these licenses?

I’ve explained the licensing of Syphon above. Its more of a utility – meaning it carries little creative inertia in and of itself. Its not a tool that guides or informs visuals – it helps you mix tools that otherwise might not play well together. Licensing was set up to spur adoption and creation of tools like MadMapper, so I think the BSD licensing was really necessary.

The v002 / v001 licenses (and code) are much more specific in their creative intent, and so in many ways more personal, and more purely artistic endeavors. They are meant to spur creative dialog and hopefully have people learn from them, to make new and better open tools and interfaces. The licensing is meant to reflect that, and strike a balance to help give back to that dialogue. I think allowing commercialization can stifle that impulse. Its really just a way to encourage more discourse and experimentation. I’m still not sure if those licenses are correct (why not GPL, for example), but I like their simplicity, even though they are not strictly intended for code.

I really wish I never had to deal with it licensing at all. It’s not fun to think about, but a sort of necessary evil.

How do you stay connected with the people using your tools?

There are some communities I follow pretty closely, almost daily – the Quartz Composer, Jitter communities – so I tend to eventually stumble on to postings and questions that I can help with, or that happen to use my tools. Other times, I will get emails from users, discussing a particular issue regarding Syphon and some other 3rd party app. If that’s the case, I try to discuss the problems on the softwares board or forum. Tom and I also have set up a v002 and Syphon forum that gets some activity.

Most of the communication I have is, unfortunately trouble shooting or feature requests. I would love to see more people showing me how they have used the tools, and what they have created. That is far more rewarding and interesting to me.

Glitch, which is a huge part of your visual work, has an interesting relationship with sharing. Some people react to discovery of a glitch by holding the glitch captive, making it their secret, and sharing the results without sharing the process. But it’s much more common for people to try and explain to others how it happened, how they might recreate it, and work on a mutual understanding of the phenomena. Last year there was some discussion around motion compression artifacts/datamoshing. There was a funny balance between a few people keeping it to themselves, and tons of others making software to recreate the effect. I’m also thinking of the more academic sharing in Rosa Menkman’s “Vernacular of File Formats” or Cory Arcangel’s “On Compression“, which explore glitch through explanation. You don’t really write tutorials, and you don’t write essays, but your software is accomplishing something similar by democratizing the means to the creation of these glitches. How would you describe your relationship with glitch?

When I first ‘understood” Glitch, I saw it purely as an aesthetic experience. I am interested mostly beauty (ha), and trying to re-create what I see in my mind on to the screen. A lot of glitch theory discusses politics of systems and how glitches expose the internals of systems to the public in unexpected and unintended ways, and how glitch is larger than just technical issues, but can be understood on a more social context, can help understand the power politics, and expose all sorts of other phenomenon.

Going to the GLI.TC/H festival in Chicago made me much more aware of these sorts of… “academic” viewpoints on the phenomenon. I am personally not as interested in that aspect for my own work. One might say I make more “Glitch Design” than “Glitch Art”, if I were to use Rosa’s terminology. I have no problems with emulations of looks, cheating, or “controlling” the Glitch to get looks that I like or want, when I like or want them, because for me it is a tool, and a means to an end. The end is expressing what is in my mind when I play along to a song, hear a sound, or want to create a mood.

In many ways, at the time I was interested in Glitch, it was a relatively new and unexplored space (at least in the circles I was running in), rife with opportunities. I clung on and perhaps rode some of that wave. It resonated with my musical tastes and with what I was interested, and, lets be frank, breaking things is always cool. It was just fun.

But from a strict community perspective, I tend to not participate in the more academic discussions. I make tools, and I share them with others because at the end of the day, it’s just as beneficial to me as it is to them. Using a term I heard in Chicago, I “domesticate” glitch into something more controllable, and easier to approach.

You worked with Bill Etra on your Rutt-Etra synth. For him, it’s “the beginnings of what [he] had dreamt of” after decades of waiting. Did he ever imagine it would exist as software instead of hardware? How do you both feel about this, given the fact that it can be duplicated and given away at zero cost whereas before it was a bulky knob-covered box?

The real hardware is so capable and does so much more than what it’s commonly understood to do. Benton C. Bainbridge has shown me up close and personal some of its quirkier and more interesting aspects, things the software cannot currently emulate at all, at some level just because of its digital roots, compared to the hardwares genuine analog circuitry.

However, I’m sure Bill expected “visual instruments” to move to software, he was and is acutely aware of trends in the field. He has a vision of a “video orchestra”, where multiple users can play multiple instruments all in tune, on one screen, in visual harmony, where orchestral sections contribute differently to the overall picture. Software is the logical extension and choice for that metaphor, but I think there is a long way to go for even single user instruments and interfaces. I think Bill is happy that versions of the Rutt-Etra are available for free, more people can experience and experiment with his work, and can spend hours upon hours toying and experimenting.

For me, I think its great. I feel very strongly that anyone should be able to explore realtime creativity without the need for bulky boxes, expensive software or hardware (I say this, ironically, while typing on an $2000 laptop, har). The trend has always been towards cheaper, smaller and more flexible solutions. I think the software Rutt is simply part of that trend, and I was and am very fortunate to work with Bill on it.

How do you see performance of live visuals changing in the future, and what effect do you see the visualist community having? Do you see more people making their own tools and sharing them, or more people using others’ tools?

I think we will see much more custom tool creation, and I suspect, sharing of those new tools.

Pre-designed software, be it commercial or open source, pre-supposes how users intend to interact with it, what they want to do, and how they ought to do it, what the pipeline and the process ought to be. Those interactions and assumptions can be limiting, or totally off base if someone has a specific performance or interaction idea in mind. I think as environments like openFrameworks, Cinder, Max/MSP/Jitter and Quartz Composer (and friends) evolve, we will see even more approaches to how visual media is performed, what sorts of interface metaphors make sense, and paradigm shifts in control surfaces, interaction, etc. Traditional VJ software is going to have a lot of adapting to do, I think.

Some of those approaches will only make sense for specific performance pieces (very specific needs or very specific interaction paradigms that can’t be implemented elsewhere, simply because you won’t have say, 50 dancers, each wearing infra red LEDs and over-head cameras tracking them). Others may be more general performance software and experimental interfaces to performing visuals, or just cheaper, faster, open source takes on current paradigms. But the trend I think is already leaning towards more open source, written by artists, for artistic solutions.

The cost of entry for rolling your own solution is getting lower and lower by the day, which means more and more ideas and experiments will come into play. I think there is a lot of work to be done on the interface side alone. I hope I can be a part of that process. I have lots of ideas.

mrmr Provides Instant OSC Visual Control; Gallery Show, Workshop in NYC

Peter Kirn — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:04:15 +0000

Automatic for the people: the beauty of mrmr is that it’s an instantaneous, ubiquitous interface for any interactive visuals. Walk up to an installation, and via wifi, your mobile device receives a set of controls that can be used to manipulate what you see. You can collaborate on performances, provide interactions with software and data – really, anything you might like. The mrmr client, currently available for iPod touch and iPhone (with iPad support awaiting iTunes approval), is a protocol built atop network standards OSC and Zeroconf (Apple’s Bonjour). That means it and tools like it should soon come to other devices, including browsers and Android.

This week in New York, I’m part of a gallery show + workshop that shows off what mrmr can do – but more broadly, what networked touch devices can do, thanks to network standards. We’ll have several interactive visual pieces, like the gorgeous Superdraw/Multidraw by Joshue Ott pictured here. Then, after Friday night’s opening, on Saturday we’ll teach you how to make use of these technologies in your own work. (For those of you who can’t get to NYC – that being about 98% of you – I hope to share more online this week. And I hope to get more discussion, code, patches, and lessons online this year, especially as I work on new clients for browsers and Android and not just iPlatforms.)

The opening is Friday, April 9 at 7pm, at Devoted Gallery, Brooklyn.

By the way, for more workshop-y goodness, check out the Arduino, Max, and Pd events in LA this week and in May.

Full details below.

Multi-User Art reimagines the gallery for the age of the iPhone, with a set of installations that invite multiplayer action from showgoers’ own mobile devices. The show features artists at the forefront of establishing open standards by which mobile gadgets can interact creatively. Joshue Ott’s work translates user touch into meditational, abstract, three-dimensional drawings. Eric Redlinger places viewers as astronauts in a shimmering lunar landscape from the Apollo mission.
Peter Kirn creates a playful, interactive toy theater that challenges users with quirky, game-like interactions. Chris Jordan uses mechanically-controlled mirrors manipulated by the viewer to transform reflected light into a poetic examination of the relationship of the US with China. By harnessing the ability to use touch to tweak on-screen faders and push virtual buttons, Devotion Gallery becomes a space in which visitors can play with, and perform the art they see.

If you’re ready to learn how to make use of these emerging technologies, a beginner and advanced workshop will give you the skills you need to make your own art, music, visuals, and digital communications using your own computers and mobile devices, with free and open tools.

ARTISTS:
Eric Redlinger, Small Steps (computer,projector)

Small Steps lets the viewer assume the role of an Apollo astronaut, exploring a shimmering, 3-dimensional lunar landscape by tilting and rotating their iPod. There are even controls to ‘space jump’ to get an eagle-eye perspective, and camera filters to better discern the terrain by applying color highlights to crevices and craters. Small Steps generates its environment not through traditional 3D modeling methods, but rather by presenting actual, ultra-high-resolution NASA
lunar imagery from the Apollo 16 mission, and then applying technology that extrudes shaded areas using an analog video technology developed by Bill Etra and Steve Rutt in 1972, the same year as the Apollo.

Joshue Ott, Superdraw/Multidraw:Guided1 (computer,projector,speakers)

multiDraw:guided1 (working title) promotes collaboration and
interaction with a unique system of multi-sensory stimulation,
involving visual and audible elements. It allows the participant to create their own space within the space of the piece, crossing the boundary from being a passive audience member into the realm of creating the art itself, while remaining within the framework of the project.

superDraw was originally conceived as a visual alternative to a
musical instrument, and has developed into a live generative art system, which uses a computer to augment the simple act of drawing – transforming it into an evolving process whereby the user can watch their input shift in a careful balance of control and chance. multiDraw is the multi-user version of the instrument, and creates an immersive experience for multiple people to engage with and share, in a marriage of technology and interactive art.

Peter Kirn, The Enigmatic Box (projector, computer, speakers, custom electronics)

Using an embedded computer system, The Enigmatic Box pokes fun at interaction by responding to user input in unexpected ways. On a display and in semaphore-like patterns of LEDs, the installation is an anti-game, responding in foreign languages and sounds as if a fragmented human memory is trapped in the computer. As the remnants of tangible, conventional interfaces sit inside shadow boxes like captured endangered species of the Amazon, the installation responds
to and resists mobile input in novel sound and image. It’s a “Busy Box” for adults.

Chris Jordan, Qu Yuan Goes West (mirror, motors, computer, projector)

“Qu Yuan Goes West” is an interactive light installation allowing for up to four people to control light and pattern using the iphone/touch interface. The installation utilizes computer, projector, mirrors, and motors. “Qu Yuan Goes West” examines the US/Chinese relationship; and how individual identity and capital (yuan) are transferred between nations. The title refers to the first ‘named’ Chinese poet Qu Yuan, as well as chinese currency (yuan).

WORKSHOPS:
Saturday April 10 | 11am-12pm | Getting your Face out from Behind the Screen: Creating a Remote-Control Interface for Your Interactive Project by Eric Redlinger | Free |

The tyranny of the computer monitor is something that interactive media performers have long struggled with; while dancers, musicians and other performance artists are free to interact with the audience while performing, computer artists are generally stuck behind their screens. With the recent explosion of consumer touch-screen devices, however, many of us now have the tools we need to get out from behind the screen already in our pockets. This demonstration highlights one solution for using your iPod/iPhone to control your performance or installation by leveraging the free Mrmr platform, presented by a lead developer of the project. You’ll see an overview of all the steps in the process, including designing and creating your mobile interface, installing the interface on your mobile device, and connecting it all to your existing project. This demonstration also serves as an
introduction to the more in-depth and hands-on workshop “Smart Art: Making Digital Media Connect”.

Saturday April 10 | 1-4pm | Smart Art: Making Digital Media Connect by Joshue Ott and Peter Kirn | $75.00 |

sign up here: http://www.areyoudevoted.com/classes/smart-art-making-digital-media-connect-by-joshue-ott-and-pet.html

Working with free tools, with an emphasis on Processing and Pure Data (the free cousin of Max/MSP), see how OSC can make control messages human-readable, intelligent, interactive, and precise. Connect software in different media, devices from computers to smartphones, and users in the same room or across the globe. Learn how network standards can make connecting easy – no system administrators required. And see how open, free development makes collaboration easier. Whether you want to collaborate with another artist or simply
make music and visual software talk to one another for a performance, we’ll give you the basic tools to get started.

PREREQUISITES: For both workshops, some basic experience with a tool such as Processing, Max, OpenFrameworks, or Pd is recommended, but no previous experience with Open Sound Control (OSC) is needed.

Gallery info and directions:
http://www.areyoudevoted.com

Analog-to-Digital Love: Rutt-Etra Scan Processing, Reinterpreted

Peter Kirn — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:47:55 +0000

Scan Processor Studies (excerpts pt.1) from Brian O'Reilly on Vimeo.

The ghost in the analog machine breathes again, digitally.

Here’s a beautiful set of work posted by Brian O’Reilly, who working with original Rutt-Etra scan processing from decades ago has re-conceived the work in digital realms. The 21st-Century invention takes place in software, but with a certain analog flair, as “complex real-time feedback networks” and filters process their earlier counterparts. Thanks to David Lublin at Vidvox (makers of VDMX) for the tip. Full description:

The SCAN PROCESSOR STUDIES are a collection of works by Woody Vasulka & Brian O’Reilly.

The full work is of total approximate duration of 45 minutes, with sections of various lengths, textures, and dynamic qualities.

The project first started while Woody and I were working on different commissioned projects at the ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe Germany). He and Steina on the exhibition MINDFRAMES and Garth Knox and myself on the DVD and performance SPECTRAL STRANDS: FOR VIOLA AND VISUALS. Woody, Steina, Garth and I spent many nights screening works for moving images, playing music, and cooking, enveloped in the huge ghost town mood the ZKM’s kitchen took on at night. During this time there were passionate discussions about video synthesizers (mainly my love for the Sandin Image Processor), and how Steina’s VIOLIN POWER had a huge influence on Garth’s and my new series of works.

The source materials were generated by Woody using a Rutt-Etra Scan Processor in the 1970′s and sat on a shelf for years, having been recently digitized. Woody came into my studio one day and asked me if I would be interested in using them to work on a collaboration, and the project began from there…

The works use sources excavated directly from the output of the Scan Processor, as well as further manipulations using Tom Demeyer’s ImX software, developed with input from Steina. Extensive editing and layering and additional augmentations were done using Phil Mortons IP. The Sound was generated (mostly) by custom software developed by Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan and myself called NETHER GENERATOR, which sets up a number of complex real time feedback networks filtered and processed by various means.

SCAN PROCESSOR STUDIES was first exhibited as an installation in the ZKM’s MINDFRAMES exhibition.

The source materials from Woody’s original experiments with the Scan Processor have also been used in conjunction with further processing on my part to create the base materials for other works, including a three screen version of Woody’s piece GRAZING and the work LEVEL & DEGREE OF DARK.

Rutt/Etra Visual Synth as Software; Etra's Legacy Needs Your Support

dan-winckler — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:43:49 +0000

Ed. It’s one of the most important live visual inventions of all time — a visual creation on the level of something like the Minimoog for audio synthesis. And it’s now in software form. But just as importantly, there’s a chance to help its inventor complete his vision. -PK

Anton Marini, a.k.a. vade, has released the first public beta of the v002 Rutt/Etra software synthesizer, which is a leap forward in the simulation of the original, badass analog video synthesizer. Anton worked closely with Bill Etra himself, who gave invaluable feedback in the development of the software version. The Mac-only plugin is available now as open source donationware at 002.vade.info with sample compositions for Quartz Composer and VDMX. Ed.: This Mac stuff is all well and good, but I may work with Anton on looking at porting a cross-platform version, as well. And this ought to inspire other ideas in live visual synthesis – an area that has almost limitless frontiers to explore. -PK

Last weekend at a Starbucks in Chinatown, Bill dictated the following statement to me to accompany the release:

I’m Bill Etra and this is the Mac version of the Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer.

In 1970, I spent a year with my partner Steve Rutt building a video synthesizer that let me have complete plasticity with the raster, which, incidentally, will disappear in February when analogue television broadcasts cease. After two years of very hard work, we had built the Rutt/Etra video synthesizer. I was sure that after some work with Bill Hearn to colorize the Rutt/Etra’s black and white signal using the Videolab, I would be finished and have the tool I wanted. It’s now forty years later and, thanks to Anton Marini and others who are kind enough to assist and do all the hard work, we have the beginnings of what I had dreamt of.

The dream was to create a compositional tool that would allow you to prepare visuals like a composer composes music. I called it then and I call it now “the visual piano”, because with the piano the composer can compose an entire symphony and be sure of what it will sound like. It was my belief then and it is my belief now after 40 years of working towards this, that this will bring about a great change and great upwelling of creative work once it is accomplished. This software is one step closer to that since, once we’re on the computer, things can be developed and repeated reliably.

I now live on disability and we no longer have corporate budgets to support this development. I would like to spend the rest of my existence working on the project that I thought I would finish in 1972. If you find this software useful, please make a donation in whatever amount you feel is appropriate.

– Bill Etra, October 26th, 2008

Bill is sharp as a tack, funny and engaging, and continues to perform as a visualist despite chronic, severe pain from the rare, hereditary disease spinal stenosis, which also keeps him mostly wheelchair-bound. Your donations will go entirely towards supporting Bill’s ability to continue developing and performing visual art.

Download the new v002 Rutt/Etra synth from 002.vade.info

Here are some links to Bill’s work:

a live performance on the SIGNALHEAD show
Bill’s Blip.tv channel, especially
- Bill demonstrates the Rutt/Etra in 1970
- Abstractions on a Bedsheet, the first computer-controlled animation with the R/E
- And here is an excerpt from Benton-C Bainbridge’s work-in-progress documentary about Bill.
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Radiohead Makes House of Cards Video with 3D Plotting, Processing; Gives You the Data

Peter Kirn — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:17:34 +0000

Who would have imagined seeing a music video on Google Code? Welcome to the new age of data visualization.

Radiohead’s new video uses 3D images capture from two scanners – one a close-proximity 3D scanner from Geometric Informatics, another a multiple-laser array for the “exterior scenes” rotating in a 360-degree pattern. That yields just data, not anything you can look at, so the artists created the video itself using the open-source tool we love so much, Processing (site | CDM tag).

Cool so far. But the interesting part is that the tools and data are open-sourced and/or freely available:

View the data visualization in 3D and navigate with the mouse

Download the data in CSV form and do stuff with it using Processing source code and instructions

There’s a remix-friendly license in there, and a YouTube group to follow the results.

All the relevant links, plus the video itself:

RA DIOHEA_D / HOU SE OF_C ARDS [ Google Code ]

It’s also striking to notice that, despite the new-fangled technologies, the face stuff is remarkably similar in actual visual effect to the Rutt-Etra video synth (see also stories on Rutt-Etra restoration, Bill Etra restrospective). The process is entirely different: the Rutt-Etra processed the image directly via raster manipulations, whereas the Radiohead video is really a visualization of 3D data. But in some ways, I find the 1972 effect more appealing, and the visual relationship I believe is intentional.

Then again, part of the power of data visualization is that you can make it look like whatever you want. So it’ll be interesting to see how these techniques evolve.

Director: James Frost (Zoo Films)

Director of Photography: Von Thomas (Zoo Films)

Director of Technology: Aaron Koblin (whose work we’ve admired at the MOMA Design and the Elastic Mind show, via the now-defunct Yahoo Design Innovation Team, and elsewhere)

Pictures: Classic Rutt/Etra Visual Synthesizers Restored to Full Functionality

dan-winckler — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:54:45 +0000

The great Rutt/Etra synthesizer repair party is almost over (hear all about it in a past episode of VJ-U). Daniel Summer threw the party, Matthew Schlanger hosted it, Messrs. Steve Rutt and Bill Etra came to repair and perform with the machines, respectively, many others, including Benton-C and Kyle Lapidus, came to help repair them (you know who you are), and David Last and I stopped by to play with them yesterday. David shot some great pictures (see slideshow below or on Flickr) of the machines and a new composition by Bill. Note: the screenshots were photographed off of a monitor while Benton was capturing the HD footage of Bill’s work, and David played with the hue of the images in Photoshop to give them a little variety. I will upload some HD footage of my own play on the Rutt/Etra sometime soon. If you’re in New York City, you can see some of it when I play my set with DJ Olive at {R}ake next Wednesday the 30th.

Slideshow created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

UnitedVisualArtists’ Musical Art: Light and Vision

Peter Kirn — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:44:38 +0000

Here’s the latest from visualist superstars UnitedVisualArtists. UVA is “producers, directors and designers of performance video, environmental graphics and real-time software and for a variety of media.” They combine “art direction, production design and software engineering.” Oh, and they’re really light sculptors. And installation/media artists. And live performance visualists.

Their most recent performance collaboration is with Chemical Brothers. The visuals, as with all of their work, rely on their custom-built software Dragonfly. Dragonfly is not only able to generate visuals, but can conceive how those visuals fit into three-dimensional space, instead of being constrained to a basic video out / single, two-dimensional frame. It’s flexible enough that it works on their light installations, as well. Here, it pumps out more conventional (though lovely) generative visuals. Click here if you’re lazy, but even better is the higher-quality version on their site.

Where to Find Out More About UVA

To really understand how their magic works, artistically and technically, it’s well worth watching this full video. When they say they use custom software, they aren’t kidding: Dragonfly is a full-blown visualist tool, produced from scratch.

Seduced by Light [Short documentary, at dazeddigital.com]

For still more:
Interview with UnitedVisualArtists [we make money not art, 2006]

Features and Interview, UnitedVisualArtists [Playpen, "Education, Interactivity, Play and Emerging Cultural Forms from Andy Polaine."]

A big thanks to Chris O’Shea, who would probably have written this up himself on his wonderful blog Pixelsumo if he weren’t too busy making great digital art himself.

UnitedVisualArtists' Musical Art: Light and Vision

Peter Kirn — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:44:38 +0000

Where to Find Out More About UVA

Seduced by Light [Short documentary, at dazeddigital.com]

For still more:
Interview with UnitedVisualArtists [we make money not art, 2006]

Features and Interview, UnitedVisualArtists [Playpen, "Education, Interactivity, Play and Emerging Cultural Forms from Andy Polaine."]

A big thanks to Chris O’Shea, who would probably have written this up himself on his wonderful blog Pixelsumo if he weren’t too busy making great digital art himself.

Bill Etra's Pioneering Video Processing Work: Retrospective @ Blip.tv

vade — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 04:02:05 +0000

Click To Play

Bill Etra, the analog video processing pioneer, has been posting some of his original works from the late 1960s through 2005 on video sharing site Blip.tv. It’s a sort of ongoing retrospective of his work. His techniques are varied, including Rutt-Etra processing (using the hardware he co-designed), hand-controlled oscillator-to-RGB inputs, and laptop-based software rigs.

While not a complete archive, it’s an interesting look back at important works and techniques. I’m glad this is online; it’s hard to find useful archives of older analog pieces simply because most techniques involved were incredibly hard to capture to tape. Usually only re-scanning would work (re-scanning is a fancy term for pointing a camera at a CRT). More work will be added, so check back occasionally. I think archives like this are invaluable for inspiration.

Bill Etra’s blip.tv Page

Ed.: We’ll definitely be watching for updates, and hopefully cdmotion can help encourage more documentation of this stuff online. -PK