In case you haven’t seen the stunt spreading, meme-like, around the blogosphere, graffiti artist Skullphone hacked ten Los Angeles-area billboards owned by ClearChannel. It’s the coolest thing to happen to LA’s billboards since L.A. Story. And that was a movie, not real.

See it on Skullphone and Curbed L.A. via Textually and Supertouch, and F.A.T. and Anti-Advertising Agency, via Gizmodo and MAKE.

Now, this deserves special mention here because I imagine almost everyone here has dreamed of hijacking giant digital billboards — the way musicians dream of playing the Hollywood Bowl or being on the cover of Rolling Stone or something.

Not that we condone such behavior, of course. No, that’d be illegal.

Too bad you can only get away with stuff like this in LA and not, say, Times Square or Tokyo.

Okay, maybe not “hacked.” If by “hacked” you mean “rented from ClearChannel, the owner of the sign,” then this is a hack. Oops. Speaking of which, I’d better make sure to check my bank balance and make sure I can hack this month’s apartment. So much for sticking it to ClearChannel, evil corporate overlord. (Now, does someone know if you could hack these signs?)

I like Wired’s term, too — “checkbook culture jamming.” And now you know what to get your favorite visualist for his/her birthday, eh? (Thanks for the correction, mememamo!)

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.

AV Arcade Table @ Boredbrands Digital Funfair

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.

Vague Terrain, a journal on digital technology, has put together an issue surveying the global state of VJing, edited by VJ, sound artist, and designer Carrie Gates of Saskatoon. (Saskatoon, the place, though that’d also be a great name for, like, an edgy Web animation firm or something…)

Vague Terrain 09: Rise of the VJ

Blogged by Vague Terrain’s Greg Smith @ serial consign

The issue is fully of great stuff, with VJs Ana Carvalho, Kelly Bolen & Jake Hardy, Defasten, Francis Theberge, Jackson 2bears, Lara Houston, Leeane Berger, Michael Betancourt, Mo Selle, Neubau & Kero, Ryan Stec, Tim Jaeger, VJ Pillow & VJ Mademoiselle, VJzoo and Chrism & Fenris, Xárene Eskandar and Ziv Lazar, and an interview of Jaygo Bloom by Michelle Kasprzak. I contributed our interview with Solu.

Why? Because…

…live video mixing performances certainly address a hunger for immersive and synaesthetic sensory experiences where aural and visual elements work together to create a whole that is something beyond the sum of the parts.

From video turntables to political messages (Singapore riots), deconstructed vehicles to guerilla visual actions, vintage gear and VJ history to modern digital techniques, they run the gamut. And it’s clear that the range of expression and subject matter in VJing is far deeper and broader than what many people recognize.

Let us know what you think, and if you have any favorite bits.

Hong Kong, seen through the eyes of vj pillow & vj mademoiselle (Thien Vu Dang and Yasuko Tadokoro).

I had the pleasure of participating in this year’s Motion Graphics Festival, and just being there provided enough inspiration for a year’s worth of projects.

I’ve tried to track down and compile some of the highlights that really struck me as being innovative and interesting. The actual environments were so saturated with visual media that it was tough to take it all in, so I’ve also enlisted the help of a few participants/attendees to sort it all out.

Chris O’Shea (also of the blog Pixelsumo) has a brilliant installation that allows people to see through walls. It’s an idea I’ve seen done before, but Chris actually makes the effect convincing, by giving visitors an infrared torch (what we’d call a flashlight here in the States, though torch in this case is an even better word). Software tracks the position of the IR emitter via an overhead security camera, and the whole thing is coded to make the impact realistic.

Software is coded in OpenCV (an open-source computer vision library from Intel, in C++) and OpenFrameworks (a lightweight multimedia C++ framework for artists, on some level trying to do for C++ what Processing has done for Java).

There is a childlike quality about wanting the ability to see through walls with x-ray vision like a superhero character. This memory is something Chris O’Shea wants to capture in the interactive installation Out of Bounds. The work encourages visitors to bore through the walls of the museum and engage in a ‘behind the scenes’ experience with an x-ray torch. This playful interaction encourages childlike curiosity in young and old alike, and opens up a portal into the Museum’s forbidden spaces.

Shine the torch at the wall to reveal the secrets hidden beneath. Pay an anonymous visit to the staff office, collection’s store, workshop, roof hatch or plant room.

Out of Bounds on Pixelsumo
Designers in Residence Program, Design Museum, London
Now showing at DesignTide, Tokyo
Out of Bounds Project Description, Documentation

Seeing the IR Rainbow

The results are so realistic, Chris says he’s gotten emails from people thinking it was real. But the whole effect is purely illusion; IR emitters of this type (near-infrared) aren’t capable of penetrating surfaces. That’s something I had to explain to people when I was using IR-sensitive cameras myself (nothing fancier than a DV cam in night vision mode). Higher up the IR spectrum, it is possible to sense heat through walls, though the effect is nothing like the Superman “X-ray vision” seen here.

But among those fooled by near-IR’s “magical” properties? The US government, evidently. It seems our government, in the latest expression of its infinite wisdom, has placed import/export bans on simple IR flashlights for security reasons. (This sounds really odd, even for us; if anyone knows more about this, I’m curious to know.) I’m not sure what the precise security threat would be; maybe commandeering someone’s TiVO by shining at its remote control receiver? Don’t tell the US government, but there’s all kinds of mobile lighting technology that allows you to see in the dark, too. Like Mag-Lites.

Reimagining Projection

What I most like about this project, separate from how lovely it is as installation art, is that it breaks up the projection itself. The spotlight mechanism is simple, but it suggests the potential for letting viewers control projection, and “virtualizing” the projected image rather than letting it simply be a rectangle. (Not that I don’t love rectangular images — I sure spent a lot of time watching TV episodes in rectangles this weekend. But you get the idea.) I’ll be interested to see how ideas like this show up in clubs and performances.

Here’s the latest from visualist superstars UnitedVisualArtists. UVA is “producers, directors and designers of performance video, environmental graphics and real-time software and for a variety of media.” They combine “art direction, production design and software engineering.” Oh, and they’re really light sculptors. And installation/media artists. And live performance visualists.

Their most recent performance collaboration is with Chemical Brothers. The visuals, as with all of their work, rely on their custom-built software Dragonfly. Dragonfly is not only able to generate visuals, but can conceive how those visuals fit into three-dimensional space, instead of being constrained to a basic video out / single, two-dimensional frame. It’s flexible enough that it works on their light installations, as well. Here, it pumps out more conventional (though lovely) generative visuals. Click here if you’re lazy, but even better is the higher-quality version on their site.

More on the Chem Bros:

We were commissioned by the ICA as part of their 60th anniversary celebrations to produce a special one-off live collaboration with The Chemical Brothers in Trafalgar Square. The project was supported by Becks, and filmed for later transmission by Channel 4. We augmented the Chemicals’ touring set (designed by Tom Lesh, with visuals by Flat Nose George;) with a constellation of powerful lights around the square, and created a set of generative, realtime graphics for the show finale — the tracks Hold Tight London and crowdpleasers Leave Home and Block Rockin’ Beats.

What’s really impressive about their work is their ability to pursue rigorous minimalism and technical sophistication at the same time, without ever feeling cold or opposed to the sensory experience of the material. It’s something you might miss if you just see one of their light sculptures, but this sense of their aesthetic vision really emerges as you look at the whole body of their designs. And in case you haven’t been following UVA, there’s more. A lot more.

Sure, you have fun with your one projector. But don’t you sometimes want to add giant water fountains, with water projection? And more video? And fire? And lasers? And some creepy wizard guy? In South Korea, spending money on such things seems strangely commonplace, as at the multimedia/fountain installation at Kangwon Land / High One Resort. Friend of CDM (and Jaymis) Rainer Knobloch had a major role in the project. This definite counts as our Massive Neo-Baroque Multimedia Spectacle of the Day.

Seen other stuff like this you liked? Let us know in comments.

It’s been a long time coming, but projection is slowly making its way out of the single, flat rectangle that so often constrains it. (Not that we don’t love single, flat rectangles, of course.) The idea itself isn’t new, but artists are becoming increasingly interested in creating sculptural, three-dimensional projections. We saw Joanie Lemercier’s gorgeous Light Sculptures. Here’s another example of three-dimensional projections:

Pablo Valbuena, Augmented Sculpture [Artist page]
More info and video: Augmented Reality Sculpture Makes You Think You Are Tron [Gizmodo]

Doesn’t look like much in still photos; in the video, it comes alive:

And for another video example, here’s antivj’s Light Sculptures in action:

Via Philipp Steinweber’s “Blog About Work”

Tired of flat surfaces? Joanie Lemercier, known by the name antivj, was seen here recently with a terrific tutorial on Wii VJing. Now antivj is back with a terrific video performance, projecting onto 3D forms.

just did a new video, and I thought you might be interested as well: it’s a visual performance I did in January (for clubtransmediale festival in Berlin). The idea is to use regular projectors to project on 3D elements and volumes instead of screens. It’s called “visual mapping” (here on some sculptures done by visomat)

Visomat, Inc. did the polygonal forms, as Joanie added a second layer of “light sculpture.” It’s far more satisfying than just watching virtual polygons projected: the 3D forms are real. Video and lots of images at the project site:

Light Sculptures @ Club Transmediale

I hope we’ll see this more regularly. Of course, that probably means some of us visualists not lucky enough to have a collaborator better learn some physical sculpting skills fast — and re-learn how to get projection onto surfaces!

Moving Brands is the kind of creative house we love, one that heralds a new era of design, in which design work is responsive, interactive, dynamic, real-time — in short, live, digital motion for visualists. Processing gurus Toxi and Chris O’Shea worked on one of their most recent events, featuring sonically-generated visuals for the slick, silvery Muon speakers. (Slicker and silverier, I’d wager, than the new Silver Surfer villain in the new Fantastic Four movie.

Coding for artists remains a scary proposition for many, but Processing is making some real inroads — more, arguably, than even Flash did, since it forces people to type out generative visuals without the aid of some mouse widgets. And part of that success has come from slick demos of the tech.

To launch the “Built in Processing” book, the Moving Brands folks talk about what this Java-powered tool means to them:

Featured in the interview: Matt Wade and Karsten Schmidt (Toxi), creative directors, the latter of whom has had a big impact on Processing itself. (And thanks for all those great examples and blog entries, Toxi!)

Now, I have only one question. Maybe I’m dense, but I can’t find the actual book they’re talking about. Maybe you had to go to the launch in Japan. (Googling it just links back to Create Digital Motion, durnit.)