MSA Remote + VDMX + Ableton Live from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Imagine what’s now possible with a mobile phone: anyone with a supported device can jam with other artists, walk up to an installation, connect to other creators and other software, all using supported protocols. Leaving behind the days of painstaking manual adjustment of MIDI commands and obscure drivers, and even the act of having to physically connect gear, software - and with it, digital art - can simply talk to each other in standard ways.

That’s why we’re excited about software like Memo Atken’s MSA Remote. It uses the standardization provided by the network-savvy, open protocol OSC, with additional plug-and-play (or, erm, don’t plug, do play) functionality from the TUIO protocol. OSC provides the communication; TUIO makes the messages standardized.

To avoid confusion: You do NOT need a Mac to use OSC. OSCulator is a cool app - and makes bridging to MIDI easier - but it’s just one tool among many. You can use this app with Windows and Linux, too, and visual apps like VDMX, Resolume Avenue, Pd/GEM, Processing… the list goes on. In fact, almost every visual app today worth using uses OSC, even as the music world is painfully slow to catch on.

C4D CamGripTools from Cinema 4D Tutorials on Vimeo.

Deride the mouse as you will. When it comes to two-dimensional control, the device is pretty amazing. It’s a reasonable way of amplifying small hand gestures into bigger gestures on a 2D plane. But what about 3D interfaces? Suddenly, the mouse becomes like playing charades, telling someone else what to do in a universe with an extra dimension.

What you need is interfaces that make sense in 3D. Some of these interfaces are out there; the missing link has been intelligent connections to software. To see how powerful this can be, look no further than Camera GripTools, a motion capture system for Maxon’s Cinema 4D modeling tool.

It works with a variety of devices:

• Behringer BCF2000 MIDI fader panel (already a popular controller among VJs/visualists)
• Nintendo’s Wiimote
• Joysticks
• Track IR 4 Pro is a head-mounted tracker for head movements. Pricing starts at just US$120, so this is absolutely a solution for mortals, and it appears to work really well – with 120 FPS tracking.
• Polhemus Patriot VR Tracker – I’d never seen this before, and it looks utterly brilliant. It’s a six degrees of freedom tracker / 3D digitizer, made up of a small sensor. And it’s only £ 1,985 … oh. Okay, never mind.

Camera GripTools [via Derrick Belcham of visuuals.com – check out his site for some gorgeous work]

For Cinema 4D users, this looks absolutely invaluable. It supports XPresso, CInema 4D’s fantastic modular, visual programming environment, with drag-and-drop support for objects. The free demo version is already pretty usable, with more powerful versions running EUR99-499 (though sadly you need the EUR499 version for full hardware support).

But I think the bigger message is how controllable this makes the 3D environment. This could be fantastic in an open source environment like Blender, or for live control in Blender, visual tools like VDMX, and custom creations in vvvv, Jitter, Processing, and the like. And while it may not be possible to make a system as accurate as the Patriot, looking at what they’re doing I suspect it should be possible to do a “ghetto” version on the cheap. (You know I’m all about that.)

Discuss.

Ohm64 Backlight Control from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.

It’s been a long time since I touched Livid’s VJ software. But when it comes to hardware, they’ve been doing unbelievable work that could have Resolume and VDMX and Processing and vvvv and Max users turning their heads.

The Ohm64 looks simply fantastic. It’s got an ideal configuration for a lot of live visual applications, with 8×8 triggers and plenty of faders and knobs to go along with them. It’s also finally a controller that’s well-made but doesn’t cost a fortune – you get a well-crafted device made by the people who designed it in Texas, but at $599, it’s still affordable.

Visualists are doing all kinds of new things to expand their performance, so I believe having a truly open controller is essential. The Ohm64 delivers, with a chip and editor software that have extensive open support. That means that, as with the brilliant monome controller, you should see a community that experiments with creative ideas for how to use it. (Nor do I think this is necessarily monome competition – the monome is still beautiful for its minimalism, whereas this should appeal to people who ignored the monome because they needed knobs and faders for additional parameter control.)

For visual software increasingly using OSC, a future firmware update should provide native OSC support (and possibly even DMX in the near future). For everything else, there’s MIDI support now. And unlike the Akai APC40, that means real MIDI support, with actual MIDI in and out ports and endlessly customizable controller assignments and LED feedback, instead of the Akai’s single USB port and permanently-fixed layout. And this is fully bus-powered, so you’re not screwed if you forget your power brick.

I did a full preview for CDMusic. But next week I should get to try one in person, which is the real test.

Livid Ohm64

http://www.lividindustry.com/culture/ blog with more videos

Microsoft Research have added live, collaborative visuals to their bag of tricks for the Microsoft Surface multitouch table. Of course, in the process, they’re really demonstrating not only what you might to with Surface but with multitouch interfaces in general. In fact, it’s particularly odd that Microsoft hasn’t apparently made the connection with more generally-available multitouch hardware coming out, particularly with multitouch APIs built directly into Windows 7. HP is already shipping a mainstream laptop with a convertible, tablet-like form factor. And I don’t need to point out that this could lead to cross-platform, open source applications, not just those that run at Microsoft tech demos or on a unit installed in Vegas.

Via Ars Electronica:

VPlay: live video mixing meets Microsoft Surface (Subhead: “It’s like VJing on a Microsoft Surface!” Uh… actually, more than just like that, I’d say it is that.)

Thanks to Pedro Marques (VJ Danger) for the tip!

The ideas here, if in basic prototype form, are already interesting. The design is heavily influenced by (if not a direct copy of) the Reactable, down to the connectors between nodes.

http://mtg.upf.es/reactable/

Visuals arguably work even better, though, because they can be shown directly in a way sound cannot.

In this prototype, you can’t do much that you can’t already do with conventional visual software. But already, there are two significant, fundamental advantages. One is, having a nodal visual interface gives you really open-ended possibilities for setting up a set. Conventional software also relies on you to configure the modules you need in advance of performing. With this interface, you do it all live as you go – just as you can do with sound on the Reactable. Secondly, as the video points out, you can collaborate more easily, without fighting over knobs on your MIDI controller.

I couldn’t help but laugh at this particular frame from the video (which also, amusingly, heavily features Resolume v2):

Yeah? Speak for yourself. Us VJs are fighting the boys and girls off. We’re like fresh meat in a shark tank.

This solution is much better. Now people can get beer all over the inside of my multitouch controller. Give me the solitary existence any day.

D-func, one third of German DVJ trio Weissgold.TV, picked up a Lemur [on CDMo, on CDMu] a couple of weeks ago, and has put together a fantastic custom interface which controls VDMX [on CDMo] over two machines.

VIDVOX Forums - I finally found my perfect set-up!

VDMX’s UI customization is one of its biggest strengths, allowing you to create the setup which is just right for the job you’re doing. Combining this with the Lemur - a controller whose interface you create to fit the job you want it to do - gives a very sleek, unique setup. Weissgold are projecting on a pyramid, and have a tab of the interface devoted to setting this up: