If you’re in Austin for South by Southwest Interactive, you’ll want to duck out of the parade of open bars Web companies are offering and check out some of the live music and visualism happening. Saturday night, I’m judging a laptop battle as CDMotion contributor Dan Winckler is the evening’s VJ. Monday, as proem, Lila’s Medicine, and I play music, we’ll have a live visual lineup courtesy Jay Smith of Livid Instruments.

AMODA Showcase + Laptop Battle [AMODA] = $4-7, or free with SxSWi badge

CDM Music + Motion Party [Upcoming.org; also on Facebook] = Free, no badge needed

SxSW @ CDM [Create Digital Music]

I unfortunately have to fly back to New York before SxSW Music begins, meaning I’m missing a pretty great lineup. Addictive TV is on the opening party Tuesday, right before Moby. (aka the closing party for Film) Anyone know of other good VJ lineups for the Music fest? If you’re going, would love show reports.

Not in Austin? View Some Viditar!

Speaking of Jay Smith and Livid, here’s Jay showing off the Viditar video instrument on some vintage TV — the now-dead Screensavers program. After all, it’s only fair to have something for the 99.5% of you not in Austin. Think of it as a vintage virtual Viditar vignette:

Data Is Nature brings to our attention the Valsuka Archive, an incredible trove of early video art history, exhibitions, work, designs and circuit diagrams. Paul describes it better than I:

The Vasulka Archive is massive repository of documents from the pioneering days of electronic, computer and video art. Containing a staggering 27000 pages of scanned documents, replete with hand typed texts, circuit diagrams and skuzzy ink marks, I could spend the rest of the week perusing this stuff, believe me. The big names are here, Crutchfield, Conrad, Paik, Van der Beek, Youngblood etc - hand written correspondences to the Vasulka’s as well as reviews and even obituaries of each artist/scientist - but history is selective and remembers according to its own algorithm. Encouragingly, not only do we find artifacts from the so called key movers of the time but also an exhaustive list of lesser, and relatively unknown practitioners waiting to be (re)discovered.

Check out the The Vasulka Archive and see what has inspired every generation of video artist. From TV to film to Music Video and club style VJing, it all started with these pioneers.

Via Data is Nature.

Nice work if you can get it: visualist Toby / tobyz, aka *spark, had one heck of a live visual rig for the Geneva Motor Show’s Ford booth. One ongoing challenge for live VJs is making it clear what they’re doing. Solution: “VJ Crew” t-shirts, lovely women (can’t hurt), and, of course, giant touchscreens for interfacing with the Mac software. Live visuals made the client happy (interactive text!) and made guests happy by snapping photos (happier clients!). The software rig was the glue:

• VDMX5 from Vidvox (still in beta), which looks the ideal interface for the work they were doing. Custom, modular palettes and windows also lend themselves nicely to the touchscreen.
• Quartz Composer patches, built with Apple’s free visual-patching developer tool for custom visuals, integrate directly into VDMX5. Result: a modular, custom system that works live and gets the job done!

Documentation:
Photos and notes on the install/performance
Video montage of the event

Open Source Tool for Easy, Live Titling

But you don’t have to just silently drool over this setup. Toby is nice enough to give away one of the tools he built to make it happen, open sourced so the community can improve upon it.

Spark Titler, GPL-ed Quartz Composer patch for live text titles

Quick titling? No problem. Toby describes it thusly:

the titler’s interface allows you to take between two sets of title/subtitle, with the choice of four backgrounds: black / green / a quicktime movie or a folder of images. the output window will automatically go full-screen on the second monitor if it detects one is available at launch, otherwise it will remain a resizable conventional window.

it is released with the intention that it can be reused for other events without changing a single line of code: you can design the animation and incorporate quicktime movies in the design by editing the ‘GFX’ macro in the quartz composer patch, and its a matter of drag and drop replace the logo in the interface.

And if you’re up for patching some improvements (with a little light Xcode use), you can dig into the source, as well.

Why Live and Interactive Rules

But enough about the technology. Part of the whole philosophy of this site is that we believe “rendered”, wonderful as it can be, sometimes must make room for “live.” Quartz Composer is just one of a generation of tools that allow visualists to move in this direction. It’s part of our interest not just in the “Final Cut” (ahem), but the live cut. Artists are moving in this direction for creative reasons, but it’s equally encouraging to see it working well on gigs. It’s a practical, technical issue as much as it is a philosophical one. Toby explains in a caption to a recent blog entry on his Quartz Composer titling patch (pictured here):

this picture is but a snapshot of the revolution. it really feels like that. a real let-down of the geneva motor show pre-production was the inability to translate the creative agency’s after-effects rendered text animations into the live, dynamic setup. there just was no way to implement anything vaguely sophisticated without seeing the framerate drop to near zero. structure record, something driven by video sampling and seemingly tangental [sic] to text rendering, is the key to solving that problem… and so here it is solved, as if on cue for the frankfurt motor show.

(emphasis mine)

Structure Record looks like some kind of custom patch. Not sure how it works — Toby, if you want to enlighten us, please do!

So have a look at that patch, and viva la revolución!

(Via the Quartz Composer dev list and vade.)

There you are: the party is amazing. Beautiful people everywhere, dancing as though it’s their last night on Earth. Bodies in sweaty, packed mo– [screeching record sound] — erm, okay, actually, you’re stuck behind a computer / VJ gear. Again. We’ve seen attempts to solve this problem before; only Tuesday night, in fact, I saw a DJ/PA set where the musician was wandering the floor with a wireless Xbox 360 controller and headset, manipulating Pd remotely. But here’s one novel solution: pack all your computer VJ tools into a wireless, battery-powered wrist brace:

Belmer Negrillo - On the Body [Project page, videos, technical details]

The basic controls: “pin buttons”, which actually use RFID tags for different commands, plus an accelerometer for controlling visuals with actual motion. Interestingly, the Wrist-Brace controller is designed to be adapted both to the discriminating VJ and the live clubber, so you can simplify the interactions for friends you make out on the dance floor. The project was produced for a class focusing on wearable interfaces called “On the Body” at Italy’s famed Ivrea Interaction Design Institute.

The interface looks great, though it makes me want to build controls into an oven mitt. (Sorry, couldn’t help but make the comparison.)

The title for the product is great: GoDance!

One technical problem not solved by this product: VJs with no rhythm / no coordination. You’ll have to sort out what to do on the dance floor on your own.

Got a preferred solution of your own / seen something similar? Or do you prefer to hide behind banks of hardware, safe from the dangers of the dance floor (maybe that’s why you went into this in the first place)? Let us know.

It’s really a pity The Video Case is a tongue-in-cheek design project from the Museum of Lost Interactions and not a real product. Yes, I know, we’re supposed to laugh at how this not-actually-from-1979 design is so primitive compared to our fancy-schmancy video iPods. But consider the design achievements here:

1. The rigid suitcase protects from shock, and conveys the sense of substantial equipment and physical attachment.
2. The large form factor means a screen that’s actually watchable, and could be shared with others.
3. Internal speakers create a fully-integrated multimedia experience, in contrast to the endless attachments portable media players require.
4. Analog video means easier scrubbing forward and backward via onboard controls.


5. Settings like brightness and contrast have dedicated controls rather than being hidden in menus.


6. Real knobs provide tangible feedback.


7. Onboard analog output ideal for visualists and live mixing.
8. Tapes create a physical connection to ephemeral media as an object.
9. No DRM.


10. He’s got Star Wars.


11. He probably taped it off of TV instead of tithing Apple.
12. It’s the original, not that crazy Special Edition where all sorts of random details are changed arbitrarily. What if film preservation centers started doing that? “Hi, we’ve restored this 1907 film to a vividness never seen since its release. Um, except 3:04 - 4:17. We thought that was stupid, so we re-shot it with Legos.”


13. Dude. It’s a video case. VHS playback in a briefcase. Anyone got a briefcase they’re not using so we can build this thing? We already know portable VHS makes you super-happy so you do jazz dance at sunset on the beach.

Project Page: Exhibits: The Video Case

The blogosphere this week is all abuzz about the supposedly desire-inducing Upravlator. The awkwardly-named hardware comes from Art Lebedev, the mysterious designer who first promised the Optimus Keyboard, a unique “design concept” with tiny color displays under each key. That indeed sounds cool, but instead, after months of delays and promises, the shipping product turned out to be the Optimus Three, with three little displays that double as buttons. Full keyboard with displays: interesting. Three display buttons with no real function: erm? Instead of spending about US$150 on an Optimus Three, why not a Nintendo DS Lite? Which do you think would be more useful?

This week, we get the Upravlator. Imagine a powerful interactive piece of hardware that connects to your computer’s video port and dynamically displays, in full color, everything from interface widgets to graphics and video to dynamic Web content, all completely customizable for your own needs. Sounds unbelievably useful, right? Good thing we already have such a device: it’s called a monitor. Want touch input? It’s called a touchscreen monitor. Now take that monitor, divide it up into a tiny 4×3 grid, eliminating a significant portion of its usable space. Replace the full resolution of the touchscreen with 12 buttons (thousands of levels of resolution reduced to a dozen). Put it in a big bulky case, wait until 2007 to ship it (presumably for some enormous price), and require developers to rewrite software to use it. Now you’re getting the picture:

Upravlator Product Announcement [artlebedev.com official site]
The Upravlator unveiled [DVguru]
Art Lebedev explains Upravlator to five year olds, no one else [Engadget]
(and, like a zillion other blogs)

Worst of all, the Upravlator takes up lots of desk real estate and a free VGA port — two things better dedicated to a real monitor, especially when touchscreen monitors are coming down in price.

The dynamic keyboard remains a cool product. It may come in at an astronomical price, but the concept is good: take the physical feedback and ease of a great hardware input device (keyboard) and add dynamic visuals to make it more flexible. By contrast, the Upravlator and the Optimum Mini Three are useful neither as displays nor as input devices and actually reduce efficiency. We’ll wait for the Optimus-113 keyboard, if it can actually ship.

Don’t be too sad, though. You want gadget lust? Chumby’s got your gadget lust. You’ll be hearing a lot more about this homebrewed, open source, hackable gadget soon, because Team CDMo desperately wants one right now. Let’s compare:

I don’t think they’ve done it just to spite Peter and CDMu readers, but not 3 days after the “is it vapourware” conversation, Thinkgeek have unboxed the first step towards Optimus.

It’s still not yet shipping, nor OSX or Linux compatible, and not really in the realm of truly useful gear ($169? How about a whole second or third 17″ monitor?), but it’s exciting news nevertheless. This device isn’t anywhere near the interaction leap of the multitouch demos we’ve been seeing, or even that daft “desktop metaphor enriching” thing, but it’s still extremely exciting that one of these thought experiments is actually becoming a reality.

There’s the obvious advantage for VJs: Triggering clips by hitting the key which displays the corresponding thumbnail, ditto for filters and transition modes, all with a stage-friendly backlit interface? Sign me up! Of course, if you want more than 3 buttons it would probably be cheaper and more functional to just get an LCD touchscreen for now, but for me this product is just as important for what it symbolises. This is the first step to those vapourware devices becoming real, and when every surface is covered with tiny displays, everyone is going to need some compelling visual content to cover those surfaces.

My fellow visualists, our time approaches. Don’t let someone else make the big money selling Matrix screensavers for all those Optimuses– Optimou– Optimii– things.

The 3D cards that power games are increasingly enabling new interfaces for music, merging the visual and aural realms. One of the most stunning experiments yet is the Fijuu, which just premiered in its second-generation form as a commission for Cybersonica sound art show in London. (Earlier versions have been seen around since 2004.) Fijuu lets visitors sculpt sound, then record the results on tracks, leaving sonic “footprints” as the sound creator describes them. The interface is entirely controlled by a standard PlayStation 2 controller, as shown in this screen grab.

Cybersonica turns a gallery space into an interactive playground, filled with sound art installations that mine the power of fun in art. Curator Chris O’Shea sends this professionally-produced documentation video from the hip Phonica record store in London:

Cybersonica & Encompass Sonic Art Exhibition [YouTube]

Among the delights inside: suspended disco satellites controlled by Korg Kaoss Pads, motion tracking that translates a performer into a shadow puppet monster (complete with roaring sounds), a liquid, fully-3D interface for making music which shall be known at CDM simply as the hotness, a 3D Etch-a-Sketch for sound, an installation with an interface controlled by torn paper, and even a mechanical contraption that samples visitors onto analog tape (it’s not all digital).

Chris is gradually documenting the works on his blog, Pixelsumo. If you’re in London, don’t miss the programs Friday and Saturday, and do file a report so all the rest of us know how it goes!

As great as the potential of advanced touchscreens may be, for music and other media applications, touchscreens aren’t much fun to touch. Close your eyes and remove visual feedback, and you’re basically running your finger along a piece of plastic. (You’d think we could figure out a way to at least texture it without losing tracking.) Compare that to piano or drums: musical instruments can be played satisfyingly with your eyes closed. Yeah, you can do that to look “deep,” but the point is, you’re relying on tactile, not visual feedback.

Here’s a promising solution: the Hyperfabric project (via the fascinating ramblings at SteamSHIFT). This stuff is strong (it can support body weight), and lets you actually touch, squeeze, grab, and otherwise manipulate a large-scale fabric surface to control computer-generated imagery. It’s certainly workable as a musical instrument, if you want to be able to, in their words, “press your face into the hyperfabric to release fairies.”

I have no idea how this thing works, though I’m guessing some kind of correlation of pressure with video sensing. It’s commercially available, or you can just ponder what giant spiderweb-like surfaces might someday do for music.