Visualist duo Ivan and Jose have set up a new blog with some very inspiring experiments in live visual control:

http://tratadodeintegracion.cc/stream/

If you speak Spanish, you’ll find this to be an invaluable set of resources. If you don’t, you’ll simply enter a hacking wonderland with some mysterious images and videos and (even with no knowledge of the language) still some very handy links.

Among their accomplishments so far: a DIY multi-touch rig controlling Processing and Max/MSP (with MaxLink handling communication between the two).

And for those of you who prefer hardware, here’s the Numark Total Control working in concert with Apple’s free visual patching environment Quartz Composer. Live generative 3D visuals, ho! If you’re a Total Control owner, the blog post has complete details with screen shots and JavaScript scripts that do all the important translation work.

See also the i2offplusr3nder Flickr stream for lots more 3D/Processing goodies. We’ll be staying tuned to this one.

Nokia / Friends / Heathrow Terminal 5 from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

The insanely wonderful crew at Sheffield, UK’s Universal Everything send along a lovely new project – just in time to help ease any unpleasant thoughts about air travel. As part of an installation for Nokia, Universal Everything created a series of projected animations. My favorite is this generative visual of people of different shapes and sizes being whisked along by a people mover (click through to Vimeo for the full HD versions):

Universal Everything / Nokia / Heathrow Terminal 5 / 2008 from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

A procession of diverse characters glide by on a travelator - friends, families, kids, lovers, rugby teams, fat couples, thin models - celebrating the diversity of people seen at Heathrow T5.
Every character riding the travelator is unique, using generative software to create an ever-growing population.

Perhaps I need a mobile version I can take with me through less-lovely airports or during gate hold delays.

It’s really brilliant stuff, and demonstrates that the aesthetics of generative visuals can cover quite a gamut. But by now, I’m bet you’re already wondering what’s powering the very-nice physics interactions, built in Processing. I’m a big fan of the traer.physics library for Processing, but you won’t get results like this — in fact, part of what I like about traer.physics is that it’s often unpredictable once you set up a dynamic system! Processing virtuoso toxi had the same experience, so he adapted a different approach to physics via a technique called Verlet integration, what is commonly seen in "ragdoll physics" and cloth. It’s a technique prized for its relative stability, which the alternative Euler physics techniques tend to lack. (Darnit, I wish I paid more attention in math class, but that’s another story.)

Toxi has been building his own library. Bits of it are on toxiclibs on Google Code, although there’s a little reorganization going on over there so I don’t see a download. I’m half tempted to try implementing this just to better understand what’s going on under the hood. Anyone offer hourly math tutorials? I can barter. I could teach you to make really good burgoo and mint juleps.

Here’s another example of Toxi testing the library, which contains some other visualizations that let you see better how the physics algorithms work:

We asked earlier this month if you’d be using Flickr for videos? Here’s one answer — and in this case, it seems perfectly-suited to the medium. Accent Creative used a short video spot — tweaked to Flickr’s microformat length constraints — as a way of promoting an upcoming event. That works nicely, as lots of people already use Flickr streams to store photos promoting events and the like.

And, of course, the Create Digital Music side of our heart loves the sound-making box that shows up in there.

Brokenbeat Night - MoGraph Promo

Here’s another example, in this case using a short video as a kind of micro-showreel:

Via the CDMo Flickr Pool - thanks to everyone for all the eye candy you’ve been sending! Why blog when I can just watch the lovely stuff you’re doing?

This really illustrates what could start to happen with media on the Web: rather than littering everything everywhere, and rather than seemingly-redundant sites interfering with one another (Flickr for video?, asked users), we get content tailored for the venue. In fact, vids like this really don’t necessarily belong on Vimeo — and likewise, I’ve come up with short snapshot videos I wouldn’t want as part of my video pool.

Promising stuff. And as video proliferates, the visualist and motion graphics artist become king. Get ready.

One of the things I’ve really grown to appreciate over recent months is the rich communities on Flickr and Vimeo — Flickr for stills, Vimeo for videos. Each of those, incidentally, has very active groups around free visual tools vvvv (for Windows) and Processing (for everything). Unlike "big bucket" sites like YouTube, Vimeo in particular has had some really terrific niche crowds of people.

Of course, now Flickr has gone and added video. I don’t see this becoming anyone’s primary video uploading site, given a more restricted feature set, the mixture of videos and photos, and the 90-second length cap. But as a supplement to, say, Vimeo, it’s interesting — especially given the number of times I’ve wound up in someone’s photoset staring at a still image and wondering what the thing looks like in motion.

Personally, I could easily see doing long-form or "feature" videos on Vimeo and adding photos to Flickr where it makes sense in my photostream — it’s all about context for me, rather than dumping lots of random stuff everywhere.

How do you feel about Flickr video? Are you using it? Are you staying away from it? Any first impressions? Videos you’ve got I’m you’d like to share with the CDMotion community?

Don’t forget the CDMotion Flickr Group; we’ll be watching for videos there.

At top: one the first people in my contact list to use Flickr Video is interactive artist ("slash" many other things) Jaki Levy, who is doing HD video for Ralph Lauren’s flagship store here in New York — see his blog.

The Light Surgeons are an eminent, inspiring AV UK collective whose latest work, New Adventures in Folklore, fuses documentary filmmaking, live music and visuals in an “eye-popping performance of epic proportions”. They kept a blog and posted many gorgeous photos and video excerpts (see embedded slideshow and video below). See their main site for more inspiring videos from their works Thumbnail Express and In Passing. More photos in their Flickr.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Blindsider Video:

Music produced and arranged by Scanone
CGI Animation by BlinkinLab

Featuring: Emskee, Dezmatic , Atypical, Nobs

Yeah, I know, most of you probably read Digg, but this was simply too good to pass up: Flickr user Integral Lens has posted a wonderful set of in camera glitch effects. I’ve seen quite a few variations of digital camera glitches, but these take the cake simply for being so different, and aesthetically interesting. Lovely.

Check out the gallery for inspiration

Has anyone seen anything remotely like this? Have a special piece of gear thats broken in just the right way?

Be sure to check out Malfunction Junction for more photos gone awry.

Previously:
Beautiful Camera Footage from a Dead CCD

We look forward to the day when visualists on music tours are norms, rather than exceptions. And no, playing lots of pre-rendered footage and/or hiding someone in the back of the house does not count. Fortunately, our own Jaymis has been lucky enough to hook up with a very lovely musician on tour in Australia, and has been right up onstage during gigs and playing live visuals that are tightly integrated aesthetically and in terms of timing with the music. This has had the effect of: a) creating wonderful touring for Jaymis and b) creating a large void in posts on CDMotion. The tour is nearly done, but while we wait, here are some snaps of what the action looks like! It certainly inspires me to push my live music sets that much further/harder/better.

Jaymis has promised lots of info from this tour, including some production/performance tips picked up along the way. Stay tuned! Really, please, stay tuned!

Related: Bobby Flynn and the Omega Three Gig Report or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Rock

Some sketches from the first day of Ben Fry’s Processing class here at Anderson Ranch. What was striking to me is that you really can cover the essence of setup and coding syntax in a day, even for people not familiar with programming/Java. You’re instantly translating code into visuals, so there’s immediate feedback — not a big slog through how the environment works before something actually happens.

Since I have spent some time with Processing, I took the opportunity to try to push some of the examples in a different direction. Speed is not necessarily my forte (with anything, really), but it was fun to try to throw together a sketch as quickly as possible. I didn’t even worry about checking for errors; I actually decided that if the compiler was regularly throwing errors because I accidentally left out a parenthesis, that meant I was moving fast enough. Even though we’re starting at the beginning, though, I’m rapidly filling up holes in my knowledge about Processing and picking up endless tips — it’s really extraordinary to get the chance to work directly with Ben Fry himself! And not only is it an opportunity to get close to the source, but, as I expected, he’s a fantastic teacher, as well.

I’m also trying a new way of working, which is to regularly keep a visual log of what I’m doing. Plaqs’s Skitch, a hot new Mac app currently in beta, takes care of that nicely. It allows me to quickly take screen grabs and post them either to my Skitch page or (as here) Flickr, so I have a record of various iterations — some successful, some less so. More on that and how TextMate makes life easier with Processing coding on Mac soon.

Stay tuned for more…

VJing with flickr? Clubbing with Yahoo Maps? Flash/Flex and Apollo-based apps present some interesting new ideas. We’ve been tracking the excellent Flash 9-based Onyx VJ tool, among others, and it’s nice to see the “open source Adobe-based VJ app” category growing. Mute is very early in development, perhaps not as far along as Onyx, but here’s a quick look at what it offers:

1. Multiple filters and layering options, unlimited scalability (as with Onyx)
2. Lovely, easy controls with contextual help


3. Windows-compatible now, but Mac and Linux support coming


4. flickr and Yahoo Maps support for unusual content


5. Fully open source (meaning these projects could merge / fork into other things — check out that source!)

You can grab the Windows beta now, or inquire about Mac compatibility.

Mute VJ Project Page

I like the open source idea here, because so many visualists are developing their own projects and need a way of integrating them without reinventing the wheel. In sound software, this is pretty easy — just route audio from one place to another. But in visual software, you need everything to be integrated on the same output to the display, even more so if you’re not using a mixer (and many of us computer-based folks aren’t).

Let us know if you’ve got projects of your own or want to share more about Mute or other tools.

Video overview from the product creators:

Thanks to Yansky for the great tip!

I’m here in San Francisco all week at Macworld, a hub not only for the Mac platform but the visualist/VJ scene as well. I’ll be reporting all week (and next, as I catch up) for both CDMotion and CDMusic. This is a huge chance to learn about Flash (Flashforward is hosting a special Macworld edition), as well as Jitter, Processing, Quartz Composer, and Motion, some of which you can catch at a free event/party Thursday night even if you don’t have a Macworld badge.

And, of course, over the next two weeks and beyond I’ll be exporting as much of this goodness to the CDMs so everyone can enjoy it.

I’ll be around all week, but here are the events in which I’m personally involved (Cross-posting this from CDMusic; feel free to catch me at any event):

Tuesday

11:30 AM Zoom-In Podcast Recording: I put on my pundit hat and get to pontificate about whatever it is Steve has planned for Apple’s shindig tomorrow. I’ll have a link to the finished show.

1-1:45 PM Real World Digital Audio at Peachpit Press: I’ll be doing a short, free demo and Q&A for my book Real World Digital Audio at the Peachpit booth. Check out the full event schedule at Peachpit, as it looks like a really terrific lineup. Graham Nash (yes, he of Crosby, Stills &, Crosby Stills … & Young and Crosby & fame) will even be there, though talking digital photography, not music. (Peachpit has a huge lineup of CDMotion-friendly books, so I may be cramming a few into my suitcase and offering reviews and interviews with the authors soon!)

Wednesday

11 AM-12:15 PM Playful Animation and Motion Graphics that React: I’ll be talking interactive visuals and VJing from video to animation, with examples in Jitter, Processing, and Flash. This requires a User Conference or better badge to attend. (Stay tuned for more resources here on Motion.)

6 PM - 2 AM Backlit Lounge Music Party: Create Digital Music will be co-sponsoring Backlit Lounge, a regular music event in SF that features a number of CDM readers. I’ll play a feature set at 10pm, likely to be Ableton Live-based with some keys. Free to everyone — no Macworld badge required.

Thursday

7:30 PM - 1:30 AM Video Lounge: It’s edutainment: sessions on live visuals, followed by an open jam, with cheap drinks! The Video Lounge will feature presentations from myself, top international VJ Grant Davis (VJ Culture) on using Apple Motion as a performance apps, and Quartz Composer developer Pierre-Olivier Latour on his own software. I’ll be talking about assembling visual sets using Jitter and performing them with tthe Wii controller for some wireless control.

Friday

Music Technology Market Symposium: A market symposium makes it sound like we’re going to be talking about how to make money. Don’t be fooled. An all-star lineup will spend all day playing, demoing, and chatting. I hope to follow this up with some CDM interviews, so expect this to continue right onto CDMusic.

New flickr Group!

flickr addicts, you can now post images to CDM’s new flickr group. Tag them with Macworld, and everyone can find your hands-on images of the iPhone and unflattering photos of me performing. I’ll be uploading regularly to the group, as well.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/cdmo/
(There’ a music group, as well, naturally.)

More on the flickr group soon; since Mo is by definition a visual site I hope all of us will have projects to share up there soon.