Bit Shifter & Flight404 • “Feedback” / “Flight Risk” from Bit Shifter on Vimeo.

It’s not just sound going chip, lo-fi, retro. Live visuals are, too. With Jaymis at Brisbane’s Game On fest and New York’s chip blowout the Blip Festival coming up next week, it seems a perfect time to look at some inspired 8-bit visuals – call them, instead of chiptune, chipviz? Both are set to the wonderful sounds of Bit Shifter, a star of the 8-bit scene if ever there were one.

flight404 aka Robert Hodgin is known for lush, digital videos, the very opposite of lo-fi. I know I’ve heard more than one live visualist getting into Processing who was disappointed to discover the effects are often rendered, not live, because even high-end computers can’t do all of the eye candy in real-time. Now, it is very possible to scale back just a bit and get some sophisticated-looking 3D eye candy out of Processing, his open-source, coding-for-artists tool of choice. But on this week’s occasion of the 1.0 release of Processing, it’s just as nice to note that Processing will take you the other way – toward minimalist, elemental graphics. Coding in this way is the perfect tool for that sort of thing, and it works wonders for live performance because of the amount of control you can have with the music.

Robert muses on the significance of this work. I guess it’s not at all fair to call it 8-bit, but let’s say 8-bit-inspired:

From the vault [flight404 blog]

If it’s genuine lo-fi visuals you want, look no further than the wonders of noteNdo, aka Jeff Donaldson. Working with modded consoles, digital sources, and the ravages of tape (VHS, MiniDV) as an effect, he comes up with fantastically-organic, glitchy results. If you ever spent parts of the 80s staring into the worst of your VHS collection because you liked what it did when it got destroyed, you’re one of us. Props to Jeff for making it into real art.

See y’all at the Blip Festival. But my (deserving) adoration for your work aside, don’t be surprised if CDM holds an underground 32-bit party, just to be spiteful and defend our fetish for more Fi (Hi-Fi, that is).

Bit Shifter & noteNdo • “Tea With Galactus” from Bit Shifter on Vimeo.

The stroboscope, dating back to 1832, is likely the earliest animation device. This is motion graphics, 19th Century-style: rotating a series of images and sync the speed of the rotation so the observer sees motion. Modern hacker, bender, chiptune musician, and artist Gijs Gieskes has his own spin on the idea: he’s built an electronic stroboscope that can record sequences of motion and sync the animations to the clock of Game Boy musical app LSDJ. It’s a mind-bending combination of vintage animation techniques, 8-bit music, and VJing.

strobovj from Gijs on Vimeo.

Gijs’ description:

• The left knob sets the speed for the rotating plate.
• The strobe frequency, and the bike lamps light are set in sequence, recorded with the knob with the two push buttons below it.
• The cameras pan tilt servos, can be recorded in sequence, with the two knobs and the toggle switch below them.
• The next toggle switch sets the sequencer to 3/4 or 4/4.
• And the next toggle switch sets the sequencer to 32 or 64 or 128 steps if 4/4 is selected. Or 24 or 48 or 96 if 3/4 is selected.

For a little added Game Boy goodness, many of the animations are created in the low-fi Game Boy camera accessory Nintendo made for the device.

He tells CDM:

yes i have used it live, 3 times so far.. but the last time there were some technical problems ): the other concerts went fine (:
there is a small camera on the machine itself, its on the pan tilt servo, so that’s the camera i use. but because of the technical problem at the last concert, i will probably be replacing the camera with a none wireless camera.
i also experimented with putting just materials on it, and that looks quite nice also, just the wooden plate rotating already looks quite good.

An incredible amount of stuff coming up here in NYC:

VJ Book: Paul Spinrad’s new The VJ Book is packed with interviews and how-to information and ships with a DVD full of VJ samples, mixable content, and demo software. (Paul and I got to work together on an upcoming issue of Make Magazine, which you’ll be hearing more about soon.)

VJ party Wednesday: It’s a book launch party edition of Eyewash, the live video series. I’ll be VJing with Korg hardware and Quartz Composer-generated visuals, along with the book’s DVD creator Melissa “Miixxy” Ulto (previously on CDM). Jay Smith from Livid Instruments will be demoing the new Tactic M2 wood-paneled VJ control surface (see previous story). I’ll be trying to steal it from him. Watch your drinks, Jay.

VJ: The Movie Video Out documents the history of VJing and live video art from the 1960s to today. It’s premiering in the East Village November 11, but if you clamour hard enough, it may come to your town, too.

Music Player Live: Les Paul is keynote speaker for this weekend full of of music stars, gear, and instruction. The crew from Keyboard, EQ, GuitarPlayer, BassPlayer, and Frets will all be there. Catch my live video and VJing for musicians seminar Sunday, if you can, but there’s plenty of other good stuff happening.

Game Boy Music Saturday: There’s a major lineup Saturday night of Game Boy and chiptune musicians at Manhattan’s The Tank (which is still looking for a permanent home). Performers: DAVID SUGAR (UK), RECEPTORS (US), HEY KID NICE ROBOT (US), M-.-n (BE), GLOMAG (US), BUBBLYFISH (US), OMAC (US), NULLSLEEP (US) and BIT SHIFTER (US).

Now, attention rest of the world: aside from Paul’s VJ book and the movie, we want to make sure you get to enjoy some of this, too. So, New Yorkers, aside from my own feeble attempts to photograph and document these events, if you’re going and want to help, please drop me a line. And certainly say hello; I’ll buy you a drink or steal you some video hardware.

How many people’s resumes include both a gig with the Phillip Glass Ensemble and posing nude for Marie Claire? An evening with new music virtuoso Kathleen Supové is not what most people expect from a solo piano recital. Her show this week finds her flanked by laptops, plus three projectors running childhood slides, live digital video, and the manic pianist from the Lawrence Welk Show, as she crawls in wearing a pink leopard-skin bodysuit narrating on a wireless.

If anyone can turn the grand piano into a digital instrument, it’s Supové. She was so enthralled by the capabilities of Yamaha’s MIDI-enabled player piano, the DC7, that she’s commissioning a body of work for the instrument. Collaborations with electronic composers, often involving microphones in the piano, blend the acoustic sound into an unpredictable, thunderous wonderland of colliding sounds. “Multimedia experience,” though, isn’t just about technology — rather than the usual parade of pieces, her concerts tend to absorb performance art rants into the mic and other “theatricals.” Her obsessive-compulsive commisioning of composers has brought pieces for her by everyone from Xenakis to Zorn to Bubblyfish (best known as a Game Boy player) and, well, me.

I’ve got one more evening with Kathleen at The Flea; I’ll certainly miss it. She certainly suggest a broad range of possibilities of what playing can be about — I hope emerging, younger players take note.

Sorry for the light news day, but I’ll be back next week with lots more coverage, shifting from game systems to how to use game hardware in your own music, more on interactive musical clothing, and other goodies! In the meantime, here’s my next project: -PK

How does a musician go from classical pianist to Game Boy musician? Ask composer / sound designer / sound engineer Haeyoung Kim, who makes 8-bit music under the name bubblyfish. Check out Haeyoung’s site for lots of articles on her and Game Boy music-making in general, as reported by everyone from MTV to MSNBC.

Here in New York, Haeyoung and I, among other composers, will be reimagining pianistic possibilities at a concert by downtown pianist Kathleen Supove, Tuesday through Thursday at 7pm at The Flea in TriBeCa. Piano duet with Game Boy? Check. Electronics generated live from the piano? Check. Video projections on the surface of the piano and live VJing? Check. Even Schroeder would be proud.

For those of you in NY, drop me a line if you’re going to stop by; for everyone else, I’ll be back with some tips learned from the tech in this show.