After our previous performance at Game On, Sampology and I have been asked to return to the State Library of Queensland to wind up the Game On exhibition with a bigger, brighter, geeklier AV turntablist set, which we’ll be streaming live tomorrow night.

You’ve already seen what Sam can do with Serato Video-SL (as reviewed previously on CDM), so instead I’d like to share with you my new favorite Herovision video. Featuring Vader’s 501st Legion (and the Dark Lord himself making an appearance on stage) playing, what else, but the Dark Lord Ozzie’s Black Sabbath - Paranoid.

Herovision + The Empire: Black Sabbath - Paranoid from Herovision on Vimeo.

Sam and I will be preceeded on stage by Yahtzee (of Zero Punctuation) and Matt and Yug (of Australian Gamer), who will have a screening of their show Game Damage, and then talk about games rather a lot.

Using web production studio Mogulus, the stream will be viewable at 6PM AEST (8AM GMT, 3AM New York) on the CDMedia channel, and there’s a countdown (so you can check the time) and embedded player at Herovision.

MixEmergency is a new attempt to expand the DJ techniques into the visual realm in a single, integrated environment. And once again, Serato is the backdrop.

We saw Serato’s own Scratch-Live, which provides digital vinyl control in Serato, when dj rndm gave us a detailed hands-on earlier this year. The VIDEO-SL focused on vinyl control of video and integration with the TTM-57SL Rane mixer required for the product. MixEmergency is a bit different: here, visualizations and MIDI are the centerpiece in place of video and scratching. (They’re there, but they’re not the main draw, according to the developers.)

Features:

• QuickTime video mixing and scratching


• Quartz Composer visual compositions, taking advantage of QC’s 3D and image-processing / generative capabilities
• Visuals react to play position and velocity of media, and audio and video signals
• Custom layer and transition effects, frame bending, image and text layers
• Drag and drop preview and playback, drag and drop of folders
• Assignable MIDI control (including MIDI in QC compositions), and support for Scratch LIVE control

MixEmergency Product Page

The software is currently in public beta, Mac-only. The full version will cost US$179 (the demo is watermarked and doesn’t support fullscreen output). As with a number of recent Mac apps, you need a MacBook Pro or other Mac hardware with dedicated graphics. Happily, 10.4.10 works — 10.5 isn’t required.

So who is this for? A lot of the push has been for giving DJs visuals easily — with the danger being potentially eliminating VJs or dumbing down visuals, which isn’t really good for anyone. (See Jaymis’ rant about that direction.) But I don’t get that sense here. In fact, the ability to create custom visualizations means DJs could commission visuals from a VJ and tour with them. The developers actually tout collaborative performance controls and VJs working to design and perform with reactive visuals alongside the DJ. Integrating the two could encourage that kind of collaboration, as dj rndm and Robotkid discovered in our VIDEO-SL review. On the other hand, many VJs will remain happy in their existing environment. But it’s nice to have more choices.

If you try the demo, let us know what you think. I expect we’ll see this are continue to grow and mature.

With the Olympics opening ceremony coming up, I’m sure there are some visualists right now in Beijing preparing for one of the biggest performances of their lives. Since 2004, generative video and projection mapping has come a long way, so I’m expecting we might see something completely bonkers in the next 12 or so hours.

I’m sure it’s no surprise to CDM readers that I’m not super keen on “outside“. It takes quite a lot of effort to get me in to a sporting mood, and AddictiveTV seem to have done the trick with their hyper-kinetic sampling techniques on this material for Adidas.

As reported by Coolhunting: This piece will be part of Adidas’ “Sport in Art” exhibition, at the Today Art Museum in Beijing for the games. Addictive TV will also be remixing live feeds of the games “for an Austrian television network”.

And if that’s not enough to get you in the mood for sport, then maybe some explosions will be more your speed.

Update: The Live TV Remix is happening on Austrian network ORF over the 16-17th. More information on shots.net.

AV technology is progressing rapidly. We now have two DJ/VJ mixers to choose from (Pioneer SVM-1000, Numark AVM02), most VJ apps will now play audio on video clips, and many DJ programs are incorporating video playback in their current or upcoming feature sets. Obviously these moves are following a trend: DVJ is totally hot right now. Our interweb tubes are being filled with youtubes, video mashups and remixes are constant viral video hits… The time for AV to go mainstream is now, and we’re going to see the next generation of performance innovators rise, buoyed up by these new, accessible, and immensely capable tools.

I spent last night a guest of VJ Morph at Brisbane’s Tivoli Theatre, for the last show of the Smirnoff Secret Sessions Australian tour.

Headlining the show: DJ Yoda with a DVJ set. Yoda is obviously a talented DJ, but as a visualist I was entirely underwhelmed by his performance. The source material was uninventive - mostly popular movies and music videos - with low resolution and compression artifacts telling us that much of the content was ripped from youtube. Technical nitpicking aside, the set wasn’t assembled with much regard for editing, visual storytelling, coherence, or even visual interest. There were occasional inventive tricks, nice material selection, and some proficient scratching and sample triggering, but the bulk of the visual set was comprised of clips playing through towards their full length, generally in their original unedited form, and often completely at odds with the accompanying audio. Old black and white movies would be scratched in for their vocal samples, and then continue to play as the audio segued into some unrelated track. Aside from a sprinkling of original content, the videos were solidly uninspiring, and probably overfamiliar to most internet-age, youtube slurping punters.

Despite the hype, the Pioneer SVM-1000 didn’t help matters, its video effects looked cheesy on first appearance, and positively hackneyed by the fourth time the page-spin and tile-shuffle were dropped in. There were some crowd-pleasing pop culture moments - scratching audio and video definitely has the ability to wow an audience - but anyone with a more than rudimentary knowledge of video would have been hard pressed to find “next level” visual performance here, and by the end of the 90 minute set even the crowd was losing focus between the humorous video interludes and old-favorite tracks.

So how can we go about fostering real innovation in AV, “popular”, music performance. The short term solution is obvious: Have a visualist to take care of the video.

Ed.: DVJing sometimes seems more a dream of hardware manufacturers than something in the real world — until you get a talented DVJ going. We’re a bit late on posting this as it got lost in the shuffle of drafts, but well worth checking out, anyway. -PK

Jonny Wilson from Eclectic Method has got his hands on a brand new Pioneer SVM audio/video mixer. Some may poo-poo its SD-only output, but watch what a talented DVJ can do with it in the videos below. Click the button to the right of the fast-forward button to see the playlist.

Update: I disagree with PK — DVJing (or simultaneous audio-visual performance) is a very real thing that just hasn’t yet made it to the United States in a high-profile way.

Addendum: I’d like to point out that Jonny shot this video after experimenting with the mixer for only a day or two. Thus, this video is more of a “let’s see what this thing can do” than a “i love every single effect and wipe this thing has and will use them 4EVUR”. Seems like a pretty intuitive machine once you’ve read the manual a bit and practiced.

Watch it full size