It’s not just projection mapping on buildings as a cool gimmick any more. Live visuals increasingly means adapting to spaces, using multiple outputs and multiple projectors, tailoring your visuals to irregular surfaces and integrating them with environments. It’s projection, but it’s also dealing with LED walls. And flexible output isn’t just something expected of high-end shows and media servers: it’s something that increasingly is becoming something the lowly, laptop-in-a-backpack VJ does, too. It’s making your visual imagination look as good as possible when others see it.

All of this means it’s great news to see ArKaos, a long-time name in live visual and VJ software, move toward integrating mapping with their software. I got to spend some quality time with ArKaos at Pro Light + Sound, the companion event to Musikmesse, last week in Frankfurt. They showed us the new video mapping technology, available in public for the first time. (I got to discuss details of this technology in California in January with ArKaos at NAMM, but it wasn’t ready to show yet.)

We talk to ArKaos at top in our own video; below, here’s what their booth looked like with this software set up:

You’ve seen this kind of mapping convenience in software before, of course. The popular MadMapper tool, for one, offers similar features for taking live visual output and mapping it to three-dimensional surfaces. MadMapper works with any Syphon-compatible Mac application, too, whereas – for now, at least – ArKaos is only talking integration with their software.

But just as MadMapper’s approach has some advantages, ArKaos is bringing something new to the table. For one, Windows users aren’t left in the dark. ArKaos tells CDM that they’re using DirectX 9 extensions for high-performance routing between applications on non-fruit-related platforms. (Syphon is Mac-only, and uses OpenGL.)

ArKaos is also promising that by the end of the year, this functionality will be integrated directly with their software – not requiring, as MadMapper does, running a separate app. I also like ArKaos’ approach to output and masking: it’s a whole lot easier to see which surface is which and on which output, so multiple projectors (or LED walls) become convenient. Once integrated in something like GrandVJ, that could be even better.

As ArKaos describes it:

Designed for people on the run who need to setup mapping projects in very short times, the application can deform and project individual layers on the shapes of a mapped stage, allowing to easily make visuals flow around complex shapes in just a few clicks.

Right now, this is all an extension to MediaMaster, but if you can’t afford that high-end media server solution, it’s coming to GrandVJ, too.

ArKaos gives CDM the scoop on their planned timetable and release schedule. These are planned dates, not set-in-stone ship dates, but it gives you a good idea of what to expect:

May 1st

We release the mapper running with MediaMaster, the Video Mapper is V1.0 and MediaMaster is V 3.0 beta

MediaMaster 3.0 users needs the Pro license to have access to the Video Mapper

June 1st

We release the Video Mapper running with GrandVJ 2.0 beta

GrandVJ will cost 649 euros with Video Mapper (Pro), the upgrade for the mapper will cost 349 euros

July 1st

we release MediaMaster 3.0 final that can load mapping files and does not need the Video Mapper once the mapping is created.

August 1st

we release GrandVJ 2.0 final that can load mapping files and does not need the Video Mapper once the mapping is created.

Most of all, I’m glad to see the mapping field heat up. Competition can only be a good thing. I love the power of Syphon to route visual textures between apps, but having these features designer directly for a piece of software is also promising.

We’ll get our hands on this as soon as we can, natch:
http://www.arkaos.net/

Let us know if you have any questions for ArKaos.

Gallery

All images courtesy ArKaos, and since they naturally represent in-progress software, may not look exactly like the final product.

How do you expose live visual culture to larger audiences? Even as club visuals have become more commonplace, and – evidently – some US$10 million in gear sold last year, the awareness of the medium itself is both limited and, very often, contentious.

Producer and CDM reader Yaniv Fituci sends along one new entry, a show that will look at the meeting place of music and technology. (Hmm… I think I’ve been to that intersection.)

Hosted by G4 celeb Kevin Pereira, the production style definitely isn’t subtle. There appear to be leather-bound ladies around, for one. (If I produced a show in Berlin, leather and bare skin, yes. Ladies – maybe not so much.) And Kevin Pereira seems to be caught in a combination of a motion graphic for Monday Night Football and Lawnmower Man. (“Are you ready for some virtual reality?” Speaking of which, best IMDB tagline ever: “A simple man is turned into a genius through the application of computer science.” Hell, yes!) Can’t someone license the rights to Max Headroom, already?

The format, though, sounds intriguing. The show is done battle-style, judged on Twitter.

And once you get through the title graphics, Mike Relm shows off some video turntablism while doing a pretty nice, concise explanation of the modern live visual set’s evolution. I would have liked to hear some artist names mentioned — Emergency Broadcast Network and Coldcut introduced a lot of the video cut-up and remix techniques you see, and Coldcut the ground-breaking VJAMM software (which itself does get a mention). But it could reach some new audiences, and I’m curious to see how this VJ death match happens.

It’s all definitely focused on club visuals and audiovisual turntable sets, which in a way reveals how big the gulf is between this and the growing practice in generative visuals, projection mapping, and synthesis (even including a resurgence of analog video synthesis).

All of that said, it’s great to see this team take on the topic. More coverage can only be a good thing.

So, if this is a VJ and music tech program for the G4 set, what would you want as Create Digital Motion readers? I think we probably bought ten million dollars in cables last year, at least. (We’ve probably collectively bought $10 mil in those little Apple video dongles, as a community.)

http://entertheplaylist.com/ [Ah, remember those innocent days in the 90s when we all used VJAMM and ArKaos, and there was only one Matrix movie?]

Below, videos with ScreenWerks, Eclectic Method. And Yaniv tells us the next epi will feature controllerism “and bout Ean Golden vs Moldover in a 3-round controllerist battle.”

Bonus: Since my locality is set to Germany, IMDB tells me that, in German, Lawnmower Man is, naturally, “Der Rasenmähermann.” Oh, yes. Now I know what my hardcore deathtronic artist name will be.

The Glitch Mob is one of the hot summer tickets for electronic music, and they’re fortunate enough to stage a massive live visual spectacle alongside the show. This week’s a perfect time to consider all that visual goodness, with the release of their latest original music, “We Can Make the World Stop” on EP.

So how does that scale of real-time performance come together? We find out, from the guy running the show live. He walks us through everything, from the technical setup to the performance elements to the team that brings it to life, in the kind of detail you normally only get touring the stage. -Ed.

This is Momo the Monster checking in from the road, on tour with The Glitch Mob for the summer of 2011. I’m here to spill the beans on who’s involved in making the show, and how it all works.

The Team

The man with the vision is Martin Phillips of Bionic League, who, along with John McGuire, designed the Daft Punk ‘Alive’ Tour, Deadmau5′s Cube, and tours for Wolfgang Gartner, Kanye West, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, and many more. He worked with the band to design a set that would take their stage presence to the next level, creating three separate pods for the band members, using their existing BrightStripe lights in a new configuration, and adding an LED wall behind them to bind all the elements into one cohesive stage.

With the stage design in place, Martin worked with Mike Figge and his crew at Possible in the creation of visuals for each song in The Glitch Mob’s current repertoire. Both the LED Wall and the BrightStripes on stage are controlled by the videos that Possible created – more on that in a bit.

The last piece in the puzzle is yours truly, Momo the Monster, the final cog in the great visual machine of the tour. With the stage designed and most of the visuals created, my roles are:

1. Pre-Tour: Build a playback system to control the wall (BasicTech F-11 Tiles) and tubes (Mega-Lite BrightStripes).
2. Rehearsal: Help the team make the whole system work together and practice the songs with the band.
3. Before First Show: Design visuals for songs that don’t have Possible tracks already.
4. Tour: Oversee setup/teardown of the system for each show, troubleshoot issues, run the video for the show, working with the house Lighting Director at each venue to make best use of the in-house lighting system to supplement our stage.

The Hardware

The wall is made up of seven columns, each of which have three BasicTech F-11 LED Tiles. These tiles take a signal from a proprietary BasicTech processor, and display a section of the overall video on their LED Array. Each tile has an address you set on the back which describes its place on the grid, ie (0,0) for the topmost-left tile, (0,1) for the tile just to the right of it, etc. The processor takes a 1600×1200 image and splits it up amongst all the tiles. Each tile has one video input connector and two outputs,  so a coaxial cable carries the signal into the first tile, which sends the signal up it’s column as well as over to the next column. Coaxial works well as you can run it long distances – in this case we have a 300-foot loom of two cables so we can accomodate the largest venues we play (like Red Rocks, Colorado).

The tiles all have custom plates on the back created by Flix FX, which have clamps on the back that are affixed to poles at each show, and inserted into heavy metal bases. Having each tile column on a separate pole instead of connected as one flat, contiguous wall allows us to shrink or expand the wall as necessary to fit on various size stages.

The stations are made up of risers with custom fittings and tables, created by Accurate Staging. The lights are Mega-Lite BrightStripes, which The Glitch Mob used in a different configuration on their previous tour. Each stripe is affixed to aluminum piping, which comes apart in two sections, leaving most of the cabling intact. Each stripe is controlled by DMX commands, and can be thought of as a 1×16-pixel screen.

At Front-Of-House, I’m using a MacBook Pro with an APC40, Akai LPK25, and MidiFighter as my controllers. The LED Processors live with my rig, and we run Coaxial and Cat6 cables all the way to the stage. The Cat6 carries ArtNet signals to a PRG Virtuoso Node, which converts the ArtNet signals to 6 DMX Universes to run the stripes on each station.

The Software

The main playback engine is VDMX, whose new beta8 includes Syphon integration, which is a major key to this show. It handles playback of the synced videos, and sends out a copy of the main video mixdown via Syphon.

Arkaos MediaMaster Express sees the VDMX Mixdown via a handy little trick. While it doesn’t support Syphon directly, I created a simple Quartz Composer patch which takes the Syphon image and displays it on a full-screen Billboard. MediaMaster supports Quartz Composer, so in this way it easily runs a Syphon input. MediaMaster does what is called PixelMapping (not to be confused with Projection Mapping), which translates the video image into DMX commands, which are used to drive the BrightStripes on stage. Originally, I’d rolled my own pixel mapping program, using Cinder to read the Syphon input and translate pixels to DMX values. It worked great in my studio, when I’d planned on four DMX universes due to some faulty logic. Unfortunately, it turned out that we needed at least five, and the ArtNet Server that my program depended on (OLA, which is mostly fantastic), relies on LibArtNet, which currently only supports four universes. Major props to Arkaos for a last-minute save with MediaMaster when I was beginning to tear my hair out over getting the lights up and running.

The final piece of the puzzle is a custom OpenFrameworks application with a working name of GlitchLights. Here is what a final video from Possible looks like:

Using this template as a starter, I created an application to draw boxes on each tile – I can draw them individually, or trigger a random number of them (mirrored on the Y Axis for prettiness). Once I had a little more time, I upgraded the program to draw a mini version of the wall inside each box, resulting in a space-invader-like creature instead of a solid box. The MidiFighter turned out to be a pretty perfect controller for this show – I’ve got a 7×3 grid to work with, so I use a 4×3 array of buttons from the MF to control the squares (always mirroring on Y), and I’ve still got a row free along the top for modifier buttons. I put the mini keyboard to use controlling the BrightStripes – each key lights up half a station, with another set of three keys which will light up a full station. This makes it easy to jam along with the band while still looking deliberate (I found that controlling columns of lights or even individual lights looked too messy with the limited amount of practice time I had).

A final bit that bears mentioning – I use the APC-40-22 MIDI Remote script with some custom changes to light up the buttons on my APC40, which I use for triggering videos, changing layer opacity, adding FX and jumping to cue points in the videos.

The Performance

For the many songs which have videos that are perfectly synced with them, my job is very simple. Each video has the audio of its song embedded, so I trigger the video on the first hit of the song, and slip the timeline forward/back to as necessary to match the audio in my headphones with the audio in the venue. Once it’s locked in, I mostly nod my head, pump my fist, and watch to make sure nothing goes wrong, checking in with my headphones every minute or so to make sure we’re still good. If needed, I’ve set 8 cue points at key parts of the song that I can jump to via buttons on my APC40. For the few songs which have not been designed by the good folks at Possible, I have one or two background clips that I’ve created (mostly by modifying the amazing Beeple’s videos) and I trigger visuals via my GlitchLights app in time with the band. I’ve also found Memo’s BadTV Quartz Composer plugin to fit quite well with the show, with the parameter mapped to four knobs on my APC40.

The Future

I continue to work on GlitchLights as time allows, adding new animations and objects to my live playback repertoire. I’d like to get a Midi-to-Cat5 extender so I can receive live data from the band as they play and have them control the wall directly. I’ve also been inspired by their Lemur playback style, and I’m working on an iPad app that’s both a controller and a game, influenced by The Glitch Mob. The band is amazingly receptive to new ideas, I’m sure the show will continue to grow and change as we travel.

Thanks for reading, and come see the show! It’s a great spectacle, and an amazing thing to be a part of. I’m happy to chat before or after the shows, and you’re welcome to look over my shoulder during – just don’t try to talk to me while we’re running, and for the love of FSM – don’t put your beer on my table.

Arkaos Grand VJ Ohm64 Template from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

What’s your favorite controller of choice for live visuals?

Jay Smith from Livid points us to this lovely use of their Ohm64 controller, right out of the box with ArKaos’ GrandVJ audiovisual software for Mac and Windows. It’d be great to see some of this eventually working with OSC, given that GrandVJ (and other tools) now have an excellent OSC mapping many people are exploiting with devices like the iPhone. But MIDI works well enough here, and the integration is thoughtfully set up.

The Ohm64 is actually bundled with Cell DNA, but I think it’s even better to have choice. In this case, the folks at ArKaos have set up the Ohm64 so it can automatically, intelligently map to controls.

Ohm 64

Grand VJ

Speaking of live visual control, Johnny de Kam has, as usual, put together a killer rig. Think think Vidvox’s VDMX meets the Ohm meets heads-up preview displays, as seen on Flickr. Johnny, hopefully you can get us some other details.

My own last set I decided to do with just an iPod touch and TouchOSC, for some minimalist control, but I do miss having tangible input – there’s something about that tactile feeling of actual, physical control. So, next time I’ll push the airplane luggage weight limit a little harder. (Hey, it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere.)

What’s your controller of choice?

Motion graphics / Web designer by day, VJ by night? Flash artist, looking for some way to put those coding skills into something that you can actually use in a live set? Or just trying to find a way to escape all those endlessly-looping videos to do something more connected with the music? The possibilities of adding interactive Flash to your set are really limitless. (It’s a cliche, but in this case, it’s absolutely true.) GrandVJ, the new-generation visual app for Windows and Mac from VJ software vets arKaos, has added full-blown ActionScript support that really works, meaning you can make some serious interactive animations. Clarification: GrandVJ supports Flash up to ActionScript 3.0, but ActionScript 2.0 timeline animation is recommended. Well worth reading is VJ Ecin’s discussion of the advantages of Flash VJing.

Ben Guerette aka VJ Ecin (Triggermotion.com) kicks of a series of tutorials on the topic with an excellent getting started video. It’ll work with GrandVJ as well as NuVJ and the higher-end media server MediaMaster, though GrandVJ would definitely be my first choice. Ben writes on the arKaos blog:

In this tutorial I’ll explain how to tap into the EQ data to create some simple audio-reactive animations. We’ll be using some basic ActionScript 2.0 for the inexperienced Flash programmer. I won’t go into much detail on the how the code works but it should be enough of an introduction to allow some experimentation in creating new content for your VJ arsenal.

It’s delicious stuff, but it can’t help but amplify my longing for a tool that can do this with Processing sketches. That’s not to compare Processing to Flash: they’re actually quite different tools, despite some overlapping capabilities and syntax. But because of that difference, there are things I’m doing in Processing I’d love to be able to drop into a set. Developers, I’m curious if you have any smart ideas (realizing that getting render pipelines to coexist is a non-trivial problem).

GrandVJ is the live visual world’s best secret at the moment. Maybe it’s the software’s streamlined feature set or simple-looking UI, or maybe hard-core visualists had come to associate the name “ArKaos” with the company’s previous product, which recently had indeed started to look long-in-the-tooth before GrandVJ finally replaced it. But here’s the reason GrandVJ is worth your consideration: it plays back video and it’s rock-solid and fast while doing it. And I’m happy to sacrifice some whiz-bang features to accomplish that.

Here’s a CDM exclusive: GrandVJ’s playback envelope is about to get pushed still further. ArKaos’ MediaMaster DMX-compatible media server will get a significant 1.1 update with reliable support for video playback up to 60 fps soon. (That’s 60 fps playback of two movies.) This much is revealed today by our friend nostromo, ArKaos’ Software Architect, on the company blog. But MediaMaster is a whopping EUR1949.

The good news is, following the MediaMaster update, GrandVJ is also due to get the enhanced playback capabilities, for mixing video at true 50 fps – 60 fps, without dropping frames.

The sample uses two videos, but in tests the engine has mixed up to three 1080p videos and a Flash video on top of that, all at 60 fps, when running on a powerful media server machine. (Videos that large start to hit the real current bottleneck, which is drive throughput.) The test labs at ArKaos have also been displaying across three monitors with a TripleHead2Go multi-display box from Matrox, which, incidentally, you can even run off of a laptop if it’s got enough muscle. (Marc reports lately MP2 has been a favorite format for them.)

There are lots of variables in performance, but the key in this case is that the engine in GrandVJ will be capable of greater frame throughput, maintaining high framerates even with multiple media. Other factors are dependent on your hardware setup and the video source you’re using.

Let’s step back, though – why would you want to run 50-60 fps in the first place? Well, for starters, because you can – projectors and displays can run natively at that refresh rate, so you’ll get jitter-free, smooth displays even at these higher framerates. But beyond that, it’s worth getting these higher framerates because they really can look better. Video looks smoother and more lifelike at 50 or 60 fps, and it’s not hard to acquire lovely-looking 60 fps video these days. (Cheap portable flash cameras and the PS3 Eye, for instance, run comfortably at 60 frames.) Just as importantly, GrandVJ’s effects will run at the same rate, so you can pull off fast-paced visuals on texture-mapped 3D objects. Games and animation typically run up to 60 fps, so motion that may look more natural, even if you’re capturing source to video (more on how to do that in a moment). And lastly, suffice to say that the engine optimizations necessary to improve frame throughput at the higher rates means you’ll be really, really comfortable if you’re still running 25-30 fps.

Speaking of higher frame rates, I just want to echo the side excursion in Marc’s blog post, which is to sing the praises of the screen capture utility FRAPS.

FRAPS is a Windows-only utility used for high-performance, lightweight motion and sound capture. It supports both DirectX and OpenGL. FRAPS is well-known in the game community for its use in capturing video in games. Now, suffice to say, any utility capable of capturing live video streams from a game – typically far more intensive on the GPU than anything any of us do with live visuals – is going to work just fine for us. FRAPS is actually resource conscious-enoguh that it’s used in benchmarking, too. In his blog post, Marc notes that he can run MediaMaster’s 1024×768, 60 fps video and capture in FRAPS at the same time.

http://www.fraps.com/

Spend the US$37, and get unlimited updates, which are released frequently. It’s an absolute no-brainer.

FRAPS is so good, in fact, it’s a reason to run Windows – if even on a separate partition on your Mac. Using FRAPS and Windows in general could each make their own posts, but I’ve been impressed with Windows as a live visual operating system, at least once you get a stable version of your video driver of choice. I think you get strange looks when you mention Windows in creative contexts, but while I’m not exactly a Microsoft fanboy (ahem), the thing can work pretty darned well, as I’d hope for the PC operating system used most often for hardware-crunching games.

Anyway, seeing is believing, and Marc packs a number of good tips into his post, so even if you’re not a current or prospective GrandVJ user, definitely don’t miss the story:

Showing the extreme… [ArKaos Blog]

“Visual label” ANTIVJ has made an artistic expertise of projection mapping, light sculpture, outdoor projection, and generally painting projections onto architecture and objects. I got to see their latest work in Montreal at MUTEK, and will have an interview with them up this week. In the meantime, here’s a really stunning work from the Netherlands, at the cathedral in Breda. With original music by Thomas Vaquié, played on organ by Gerard Maters with light design by Giacinto Caponio, Grote Kerk is a sublime modern, digital spectacle, a light and sound show in a tradition extending back to the magic lantern shows. All of this is performed live using software from arKaos. (Thanks to arKaos’ own Marc Nostromo, who incidentally has a fantastic blog on noisepages.)

http://antivj.com/

For another work from this crew, here’s Joanie Lemercier’s Live Painting: Shackleton, performed live in Croft, Bristol, UK at the end of last year:

AntiVJ – Live Painting: Shackleton from AntiVJ on Vimeo.

Just as VDMX and Resolume have been treated to ground-up rewrites, so, too, has a name in VJ apps that has endured since the early days of computer VJing: ArKaos. GrandVJ is a completely new program, though it does maintain ArKaos’ signature feature – a music keyboard along the bottom of the screen.

Now, I’ve wanted to root for GrandVJ’s new release since the beginning, partly because of its MIDI keyboard-savvy design but especially because the new release is fast — blazingly fast. Thanks to a rebuilt, ffmpeg-based video backend, it can really rock its way through high-framerate playback without a second thought, which goes nicely with all the jamming you might like to do on a MIDI keyboard with clips.

That said, the initial release of GrandVJ just felt a little too minimal. Now, nothing against minimal – not every set has to be an audiovisual mash-up a la Resolume 3 or some elaborate modular setup of effects as you can build in VDMX. But just getting basic alpha support or setting up a simple crossfader for clips proved to be challenging.

That’s why I’m really pleased by the direction taken by GrandVJ 1.1. ArKaos are aggressively attacking a lot of the main things I wanted address:

• An optional all-black interface, in case the white was blinding your eyes (which, believe me, can be an issue in a darkened club).
• Alpha support: chroma masks, alpha in effects (very lovely), various alpha previewing tools, and support for RGBA PNG, BPM, QuickTime PNG, and QuickTime Animation codecs.



This is what proper crossfading and compositing looks like.
• A/B with crossfader support: Yeah, finally. But here’s the cool bit: you can have, say, 8 layers, and assign them arbitrarily to the A or B bus, then crossfade – just as you do with audio in Ableton Live. So, while crossfaders are nothing new, this is basically my ideal implementation. It’s possible to do this in other tools, but as you can see from the screenshot, the compositing + crossfading interface is dead simple.
• Hardware support: Hercules DJ (Console MP3, MK2, STEEL, RMX), and most awesomely, default templates for Korg NANO (PAD + KONTROL or KEY + KONTROL). Plus mouse wheel slide support



• OpenSoundControl: Don’t tell the music software industry, but here on the visual side, OSC is already a standard. You’ll need normalized data (0.0 – 1.0), but otherwise the implementation looks quite nice – OSC “learn” included. VDMX has set a really high standard for OSC support, but it’s great to see GrandVJ in on the fun, too — that’s what standards are for! (And it means a single OSC rig could control two laptops, one running GrandVJ and the other running something like VDMX or Resolume.)

1.1 is still labeled a “beta,” so your mileage may vary. But this stuff looks fantastic. As I’ve said before, different VJ apps are differentiating themselves rather than simply leapfrogging one another. With this added polish, I think GrandVJ is very much in the game and stands to make real gains as the simple, straight-up VJ app. I’ll be testing this week, and I think 1.1 is mature enough for a proper review.

Photos via ArKaos on Flickr.

GrandVJ 1.1 Features, with download links, on the ArKaos Users Forum

The successor to ArKaos VJ, a staple in early VJ application history, is nearly here. GrandVJ just hit public beta.

GrandVJ is a complete, from-scratch rewrite of the app, with some new features — but still a nod to the simple, one-screen interface that made the original popular. You can now download a working demo, beta build (with some watermarks on output and other limitations) for both Mac and Windows. I have to say, I like the music keyboard interface and drag-and-drop-everywhere philosophy. At the very least, this could become the beginner-friendly VJ app a lot of people have been looking for. (That is, if it’s successful, I may have an answer for the "where should I start with VJing for something simple — and I don’t have a lot of time" question I get a lot, particularly on the music side.) It’s also got some generative and Flash-playing tricks I’ll be looking into. At the same time, I think it will be worth some constructive criticism. This field is also getting crowded — and users more demanding.

Watch for a more detailed preview from us soon, but in the meantime, you can go ahead and give it a spin and let us know what you think:

ArKaos GrandVJ Public Beta 1 [ArKaos Users Forum]

Previously:

ArKaos Rebuilds VJ Software From Ground Up: GrandVJ

ArKaos GrandVJ Announcement

It’s up against some stiff competition. There’s the ground-up rewrite VDMX5, with some powerful semi-modular capabilities, the beefed-up Livid Union 2.5, Modul8, Resolume, and new generative app 3L. (See why 2008 will be a big year for VJ software.) That said, of these, only Union is cross-platform.

One differentiating feature in GrandVJ, as partly inherited from ArKaos VJ before it, is its “synthesis mode.” This maps sources onto a virtual music keyboard; combined with effects and generators that could retain ArKaos’ place as an easy, instrument-like visual tool.

The generative idea is nice, as well, but even with Flash support, I wonder how ArKaos will hold up to other generative competition. 3L has powerful tools for building 3D graphics in the software, Processing is gaining support among coders, Quartz Composer has native support in software like VDMX for custom patches, and Salvation has its own generative tricks, to say nothing of Jitter, Flash/Flex, and vvvv. On the other hand, ease of use can make a big difference in the market, and ArKaos’ interface is uncommonly clean. And then there are the ArKaos loyalists, who could find a compelling, friendly upgrade. (If you buy ArKaos now or bought it after March 1, the upgrade is free.)

We’ll have more details when this ships.