Hurrah, stop motion fans — it’s time for the Stop Motion Eye Candy of the Day!
This time, it’s artist PES, translating classic arcade scenes into stop motion, real world objects. It’s utterly brilliant — and a reminder that, stripped of more advanced code and graphics, early arcade games were reduced to strangely iconic designs. That’s food for thought when thinking about digital motion in general.
There’s more of this stuff, too — here’s a complete round-up from “counter-culture” mag Hi-Fructose:
Guitar Hero? We want VJ Hero. And the AV Arcade Table, now part of the Boredbrands Digital Funfair, is exactly what you’d want it to be like.
It’s got the hardware — a DIY, cocktail-style arcade table, just the like the one you spent playing Ms. Pac-Man on, slightly drunk.
It’s got the software — a Windows PC running VJAMM.
And it’s got the content — Guitar Hero and Rock Band have rock classics, so this has some classic clips from VJs.
Official description:
The AV Arcade Table is a simple hybrid, a table top arcade cabinet that has been converted to run Vjamm, the best Audio Visual VJ Software by miles! Using the joystick and buttons 2 people can trigger audio visual samples and create beautiful collaborative audio visual collage/ a chaotic mess** (delete as appropriate!).
The Table was originally created for Cybersonica 2007 and was featured as part of “Soundwaves” at Kinetica Museum
Thanks to Eclectic Method, Exceeda, Hexstatic and Vjamm All Stars for supplying content.
Incidentally, reasons to give some props to VJAMM, even in this overcrowded world of VJ apps, and even though everyone went out and bought MacBook Pros last week, it seems:
Coldcut uses VJAMM. I mean, celebrity matters little to us here, but they do use it well, and that counts.
The Novation SL line of keyboards supports Automap in VJAMM. (It’s England, so I’m guessing that idea got worked out over a pint — which is certainly the way I like to make deals.)
They have this cheery slogan on their website: “VJamm3 is the world’s leading audiovisual instrument, the ultimate tool for sound and image mixing, the true 21st century artform, the new hip-hop.”
This table
Thanks to Gav for the tip — great work, mate! And to all readers of CDM: go for the shameless plugs. There’s no shame in it. We love to see the cool stuff you’re doing.
The Digital Worlds blog, an Open University blog, has an excellent look back at the artistry of early video tubes entitled “Oscilloscopy.”
There’s John Whitney’s “showreel” from 1961, which shows off the ground-breaking (1961, folks!) possibilities of his “mechanical analog computer,” as appropriated from an antiaircraft gun director. Wait … say that again? Yep, Whitney actually used a mechanical contrivance to rotate layers of graphics. When that technique met up with the power of It’s an idea that’s just waiting for today’s DIYers to tackle, perhaps mixing modern digital techniques with mechanical ones.
Next, also from the above blog post, witness the gorgeous oscilloscope graphics and mechanical control pads of Tennis for Two, an early (thought to be the second-ever, though you never know with these things) video game made by William Higinbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Again, DIY project? Mechanical controllers, but this time coupled with 3D graphics? It is the 50th anniversary year of the title. (People under 35, remember that the next time your parents start talking about “back in their day” before video games. Tell them it’s not your fault they never dropped by the Brookhaven National Laboratory.)
Heck, I wish even oscilloscopes looked that pretty now.
There’s something really inspiring and elemental about these works — amplified by mechanical elements used in their creation and control. It’s something I think is possible in code; maybe it’s just challenging in a different way. (And maybe when you have that feeling of magic, you know you’re in the right place.)
This certainly gives me a different source of inspiration as I work with generative techniques in Java/Processing and the like. If this inspires any of your work, send us photos / video links — we’d love to see it! And motion graphics history buffs, happy to know more about these — and other — pioneers.
Interestingly, while a lot of people will dismiss the 8-bit movement as “nostalgic” — implying it’s just 20-somethings pining for their Mario-playing childhoods — Paris’ inspiration was originally vintage analog synthesizers. And synthesizing graphics is his main interest:
I concentrate on creating graphics from scratch. That’s pretty much all I do. Other people like using movie clips and manipulating them, but from my point of view it’s a good exercise to see what you can do when you have to create everything from scratch. It gives you an appreciation to form and color.
The synthesis/sampling argument I think is very much related to the way electronic music is produced. I find that focusing on either one can be a good exercise — see our friend Troels sampling Coke bottles, for instance.
It’s nice stuff, but I do hope, particularly here in the US where the VJ/visualist scene has had trouble gaining broader recognition, that we start to see other styles on genres forming more coherent “scenes” in the way 8-bit has. Of course, what has happened for people like Paris is he’s found strong advocates in the musicians, which seems to be a key element (and has helped strengthen the visual work done outside chiptune music, as well).
Musicians have thousands of years of history when it comes to interfaces and instruments, but visuals are relatively new. Little wonder, then, that visualists are eager to try new interfaces to help make visuals akin to performance instruments. Or, in less lofty terms, let’s get Wii remote wagging in the club tonight.
Over on createdigitalmusic.com, we’re celebrating Game Day — basically, I’m squeezing as many game-related posts into 24 hours, because a whole bunch of tips came in at once. A couple of Wii-related controller solutions jumped out.
Wii + Flash
MoteDaemon = Flash (and Flex, and AIR) + Wii, on Mac. On Windows, look to WiiFlash.org. (I imagine it wouldn’t be hard to modify your code to use one or the other on each respective platform if you want to develop cross-platformly.
Getting hardware control in Adobe Flash requires some work: basically, you need a client-server model. The good news is, there are already two Wii-specific solutions out there.
Pretty soon, people are cooking up Minority Report demos with Flash (using Papervision for 2.5D-style 3D in Flash’s 2D world, and Open Dynamics Engine for physics):
I’d loved to see this coupled with something like Onyx for an all-Wii, all-Flash performance app. With Flex and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), this could be the basis for some really hard-core, full-blown apps … though you will be limited by Flash’s slower performance, at least in comparison to C/C++-based tools like Max or even Java.
Looks like Linux users are presently out of luck, unless I’m missing something (feel free to chime in if you know a cross-platform alternative).
Wii + MIDI, OpenSoundControl (OSC)
For a more app-agnostic solution, you can hook up a Wii to send MIDI or, ideally, OpenSoundControl (OSC) to apps that support it (vvvv, Max, Pd, and hopefully VJ apps soon — I’ve heard a couple of developers working on it).
On Mac, you can send both OSC and MIDI with one app, perfectly-suited to taking data from the Wii controller: OSCulator. OSCulator is a great tool for the Wii, but it also shows promise of what a hardware input hub could generally look like, with open-ended inputs controlling visuals and sound rather than pre-defined, MIDI-style keyboards and knob and faderboxes as have traditionally been used in music.
On PC, GlovePIE is an awesomely-powerful scripting tool for use with Wii and other game devices. I’ve talked about it endlessly before, but I’ll stay quiet — just go. Get it. Enjoy. In fact, with OSCulator on Mac and GlovePIE on Windows, it’s hard not to be insanely happy on either platform.
Another interesting out-of-the-box alternative, though, is the new Wiinstrument. It’s largely geared for playing back drum samples, but it’s not hard to take that metaphor and use those control changes and other MIDI messages as visual controls — especially if you think of your “drum kit” as sets of visual clips (video or other visuals).
Via Create Digital Music, what’s great for chiptune fans and mobile gaming musicians is also good for VJs and visualists. (Thanks, MIDI!)
Marc, Arkaos dev and homebrew game maestro alike, has posted video results of successful MIDI output on the Linux-based GP2X handheld game system, running Little GP Tracker, a MIDI tracker app:
He points out this is equally powerful for visuals:
Of course, another application would be also to use the 2x as sequencer to
drive sequences on any midi-aware VJ program. So you could for example write
an audio track using 6 channels and use the two remaining to have perfectly
sync’ed video :)
And, heck, you could also use the tracker as an interface for visuals. Or use the GP2X as a controller. Or use the tracker to sync other lights / DMX / robotics. Or … well, lots of possibilities, really.
The trade-off is that the GP2X doesn’t have much in the way of physical controls — no stylus control, for instance. But the ability to develop more easily for the platform via Linux, and the fact that this is really an affordable mobile computer, has major appeal.
Kotaku points us to a very odd an interesting looking prototype gaming console. The gist of the system is that it captures real-time data from sensors, such as GPS, a camera system, etc., to mold reality into an immersive gaming environment.
Kotaku puts it rather well :
I don’t come from the future, where everyday people carry s*** like this around in their back pocket. Sadly the device is very much in the prototype stage, and may not even be put into production … at least not until the year 2019, when people’s minds will be ready for it.
However, it did get me thinking of interesting uses for it and similar systems that integrate lots of sensor data with desktop processing power. It seems it would suit itself far more to immersive interactive improvisation, which lines up quite well for what many VJs try to do. Either way, I’d rather use something like this in a club or a concert hall than playing a first person shooter running around the streets of New York. Those 2019 cabs still hurt. I’ll admit this is rather far off, and that I am stretching, but I can imagine doing some really fun and creative things with a device like this.
Ed.: Far off? I don’t think so. Strap an Arduino or other sensor-to-digital interface to a Nokia N800, and you’re there! (GPS + camera + sensors.) For visualists, too, we have an added edge: you can take a simpler mobile machine as the interface device, wirelessly connected to a computer as a base station for the heavy lifting. Result: a very affordable device ought to work. -PK
GBA eye candy? You betcha. Pikilipita Advanced running on the GBA in screen caps … hook up a Game Cube with Game Boy Player and you’re ready to go.
Pikilipita is a wonder: the developer has created a VJ app that runs on Windows XP and GP2X (Pikix), and even Game Boy Advance cartridges (Pikilipita Advanced). The apps have been getting feature enhancements and other good news lately. Let’s start out with the GBA stuff — which you can now get pre-loaded on a real GBA cart for use on your Game Boy or GameCube with player:
I’ll do my best to release Pikilipita Advance on real cartridges before summer 2007 if at least 100 people are interested in this product.
Its price shouldn’t be higher than £25, 35€ or US$ 50. If you think you’ll buy one, please get in touch with me using the contact form below.
Update: cartridges should be ready at the end of June!
(If you want to order the carts … presuming there’s still time/availability … check out contact info on the site.)
Mobile, game-ready Linux as visualist tool: Pikix running on the open game portable from Game Park.
Pikix, the software for XP (yawn) and GP2X Linux-based game console (yay!), has also been getting new features, each dubbed with zany names that put Ubuntu to shame: Fat Dolphin, Delicious Marmot, and most recently, Cheesy Caribou, which adds features like this:
New version of the Kouky2x codec: better compression rate: files are 20% to 50% smaller than with previous codec version
USB keyboard compatibility (via cradle)
Special effects: extreme contras, negative colors, zoom, hue colorization
Video in and out points
Nothing earthshaking for your fancy-schmancy computer-based VJ app, it’s true … but can you fit your VJ rig into a space this small?
Hi, first of all I wanted to say I love the site and have been checking it daily for about a year now, as well as createdigitalmusic. I just came across a clip on youtube that really puts what I’ve seen of people abusing Wii remotes so far to shame. This seems to me to be the first case where it’s passed from the experimental to the creative-use phase. It’s freaking awesome and I’d love to know what software he’s using, perhaps a Max patch?
And the creator is none other than Daito Manabe, the awesome Japanese DJ who created the Turntable-Controlled Vibrating Chaise Longue using Ms. Pinky vinyl. (And, as I recall, he uses Pinky as a vinyl control scheme for VJing as well as music.)
It takes a turntablist to figure out clever ways of using the Wii remote that don’t reinvent the wheel. What I especially like about this is that the whole system becomes self-contained. It definitely pushes me to build a performance system around the Wii controller rather than the other way around. And he gets some nice, expressive controls in there, as well. Thanks to Lightbourne for this!
If you’re using the Wii remote for your live visuals, let us know how it’s going.
Game Mod was a workshop by Steph Thirion in Barcelona last month. The idea: take code for a simple game of Breakout, rendered in Processing, and mess it up so it looks like art. The surprise: participants weren’t programmers, and they got results in minutes rather than long hours.
Game Mod [Project page, descriptions, code, video]
The task of each participant was to create a mod of the game: dig into the code, change its looks and behaviours, search for unexpected results.
…
Graphic design students, with almost no previous experience in coding, were pushed head first into object oriented programming. They discovered that in the complex system of a game program, change can lead to unexpected and beautiful results, and their lack of knowledge of the tool was more a creativity boost than it was a limitation.
Of course, the advantage here: there was source code to start with. And as I have to keep telling my students, starting with code examples is a good idea. (That’s why experienced coders do it.) This Breakout is a little different, in that balls bounce off all the walls in sort of an “everybody wins” version of the game — perfect for visualists.
Okay, non-coders — and coders — are you up to the challenge? You can download the code from the project page above and try it yourself. I like the idea of giving a time limit and not thinking about it too much. Maybe some instant sketching in Processing every day isn’t a bad idea.
2
