London-based, French-born VJ and artist Pikilipita doesn’t touch laptops. He shows up at live visual gigs toting game systems. Having built mobile projects for the Game Boy Advanced and Linux-based GamePark GP2X, he’s now got a new machine: a Barbie-pink PlayStation 2.

Novelty this may be, but don’t think that PS24VJ can’t hack it as a real VJ app, allowing you to leave the laptop at home:

• Plays footages compressed with the Kouky video codec v16
• Supports two video layers
• Supports alpha channel
• Special effects and filters
• PAL video out signal

And because it supports up to two PlayStation controller inputs, two people can play at once. (One of the big problems with computers, I think, is that they’re entirely restricted to single-user metaphors.) Each VJ controls one video layer at a time.

Pikilipita is happy to share his creation with you, too, for a donation of whatever you think is appropriate. PS2 games don’t even require hacked systems, either, unlike DS or PSP homebrew software (which has proven a major pain for the homebrew music scene).

Pikilipita points CDM to the PSD2DEV network for more on how to develop for the system. I’m surprised at how well-documented this is:
PS2DEV PS2 Page (loaders, development toolchain, tutorials, sample code, demos)

What do you need to run them? He writes:

My systems works on any regular playstation 2, you don’t need a modified one. All you need is a special DVD called “swap magic 3.6″ (http://www.swapmagic3.com) to force booting on the USB port and that’s it!

On the USB port of the console, you insert a memory stick containing the software and the footages you want to use.

PS24VJ Project Page

Movies of the PS24VJ in action are available on his site:
http://pikilipita.com/vj/flv-player.php?mov=18
http://pikilipita.com/vj/flv-player.php?mov=17

Overview sheet:
http://www.pikilipita.com/vj/ps24vj/PS24VJ-sheet-1.01.pdf

User’s manual:
http://www.pikilipita.com/vj/ps24vj/PS24VJ-manual-1.00.pdf

If you’re near London, you can catch PS4VJ live at the AV Social. I’m super jealous:
British Film Institute AV Social

Worlds Will Shatter - The Unfold trailer from Nine Orders on Vimeo.

A Swarm of Angels just announced they’ve released an “open source trailer” — that is, with a Creative Commons license for remixing — for their upcoming collaborative sci fi thriller film. The trailer already demonstrates some of the fruits of this collaborative effort from around the planet.

Worlds Will Shatter: open source trailer [A Swarm of Angels]

Click through the video link for HD on Vimeo.

Apologies for the copy and paste, but I’ve got a train to catch and they say it quite eloquently, so here you go:

I’m proud to release the first open source film trailer created for A Swarm of Angels. World’s Will Shatter sets the scene for The Unfold, a contemporary sci-fi thriller being made in a revolutionary fashion; by a global community of members participating in its creation, and contributing their unique talents and skills.

Driven by a core collaboration between the animation skills of Mayec Rancel, and the soundtrack smarts of Santiago Abadia, the trailer is at the forefront of new creative processes empowered through the Internet of crowdsourcing, and peer production. Finished with title design by the internationally recognised graphic talents of Matt Pyke of Universal Everything collaborating with Maxim Zhestkov, it is a stunning glimpse into a world being created by a global membership fueling a pioneering people-powered film studio.

Rancel has evoked a powerful unfolding world created in 3D from 2D images created by Japanese photographer Palla. Through community feedback and discussion at the forums of aswarmofangels.com the initial ideas developed into a spiralling, shearing cityscape synchronised with an otherworldly soundtrack developed by Abadia. The online collaboration encompassed a team of participants from Spain, Belgium, the North and South of England, Japan, as well as Russia (not including members who participated in votes and posts via the forums).

The trailer and all accompanying source files are released under a Creative Commons CC-NC-SA-3.0 license, allowing full non-commercial remixing and sharing (embed codes for Youtube, blip.tv & hi-def Vimeo). Join the Swarm to help make the film and get further details for the open source package (register here, full member details here).

Anyone from CDMotion involved in this project? Impressions on the first results? Considering getting involved? Say so in comments.

Cat hit up the Amoeba Dance comments with a link to Sanch TV’s work in vvvv.

Apart from some smooth motion and subtly textured shapes, Sanch is also collaborating on an AV act “Va”, with quad-screen visuals: