Fans of vintage games with Macs, take note. Open Emu makes emulation of classic game systems a “first-class citizen” on the Mac. But if it were just a game emulator, well, it wouldn’t be news. What makes it news is that at its core, Open Emu is an open source platform and modular architecture into which your favorite game systems can be added as plug-ins. And thanks to that architecture, you can treat your favorite game systems as though they’re modules in a grand, 8-bit modular visual synth, crunching their textures into geometry, adding real-time effects, and controlling the whole thing with multiple controllers, audio, and MIDI.

In other words, Open Emu is like having a giant visual performance synth made from the tasty innards of classic games.

The platform has been in feverish development for some time, but today a major new release takes it further. Beta 2 of 1.0 extends the modularity of the platform, adds a finished Quartz Composer interface (allowing integration with other apps, live visuals, and graphical, modular patching using Apple’s development tool), and adds more emulation cores.

Supported game systems for emulation: Sega Master System, Game Gear, SG-1000, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, NES/Famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, and Sega 32x. (In the immortal words of Strongbad, ain’t got no Turbografx? Sounds like you just need one more plug-in.)

Game emulation is nothing new, but the programming team has build a friendly Mac front-end for a host of mature, popular emulation engines. They also fully support Mac technologies, even third-party niceties like Sparkle for automatic updates.

But, this being Create Digital Motion, we’re interested in the live visualist-friendly features:

• High-quality OpenGL scaling, multithreaded playback, and other optimizations
• Audio or MIDI actually plays the game (and can also be used to make the game line up with music)
• Play multiple ROMs at the same time
• Real-time 3D effects, image processing - and route game controllers to those effects

In other words, you can jack in your favorite MIDI controller and go nuts with your favorite games, turning them into a live performance medium - then mashing up the resulting textures with real-time, 3D/2D effects. The Nestopia engine supports ROM glitching, cheat codes, and game rewinding — essential so that in-game death doesn’t also kill your set, and so you can play with the aesthetic of glitchy cartridges without blowing on a classic game cart.

“Visual label” ANTIVJ has made an artistic expertise of projection mapping, light sculpture, outdoor projection, and generally painting projections onto architecture and objects. I got to see their latest work in Montreal at MUTEK, and will have an interview with them up this week. In the meantime, here’s a really stunning work from the Netherlands, at the cathedral in Breda. With original music by Thomas Vaquié, played on organ by Gerard Maters with light design by Giacinto Caponio, Grote Kerk is a sublime modern, digital spectacle, a light and sound show in a tradition extending back to the magic lantern shows. All of this is performed live using software from arKaos. (Thanks to arKaos’ own Marc Nostromo, who incidentally has a fantastic blog on noisepages.)

http://antivj.com/

For another work from this crew, here’s Joanie Lemercier’s Live Painting: Shackleton, performed live in Croft, Bristol, UK at the end of last year:

AntiVJ - Live Painting: Shackleton from AntiVJ on Vimeo.

Musician Christopher Willits has an ongoing series for XLR8R Magazine in which he talks his own technical workflow. In the latest episode, he adds live visuals to his Ableton Live set using Max/MSP/Jitter. What’s nice about this is you see how some clever mapping can make visuals integrate neatly with music.

I’m somewhat insane, so my own setup often involves simultaneously running visuals separately with no communication with my music software. That allows me to set up less-direct relationships between visuals and sound.

But, while the techniques could be combined to a variety of setups, this also serves as a nice introduction to how you might use patching in Jitter alongside your music software.

Curious to know what you think of the presentation and content here, as I hope we’ll do more videos like this ourselves.

What You Talkin’ Bout, Willits? Part 10 [XLR8R]

pymt demo reel from Thomas Hansen on Vimeo.

Today on Create Digital Music, I have a look at tasty, drool-worthy free multitouch frameworks, one for Max/MSP patchers and one for Python coders:

Roll Your Own Multitouch Screens, Tables: Max Multitouch Framework, PyMT

I’m curious, though: who out there is already employing multitouch interfaces in their live visual work? Particularly for working with 3D (albeit with gestures on a 2D plane), I imagine this could be powerful stuff. Obviously, we have quite a few iPhone/iPod touch users, but anyone using bigger devices? How do you integrate multitouch for your work — painting? 3D space navigation?

Resolume Avenue 3 Getting Started from Resolume on Vimeo.

It’s officially shipping: Resolume Avenue 3 is a new live audiovisual performance tool for Mac and Windows, a complete, ground-up successor to the legendary PC-only VJ app Resolume.

In fact, Resolume Avenue 3 demonstrates why the term “VJ” should become a relic of the past. Resolume is no more a “VJ” app than Ableton Live is exclusively a “DJ” app. It’s really about taking audiovisual elements and performing with them live. The cornerstone of the design is an audiovisual clip metaphor — in fact, one not unlike the one used for sound in Live, down to audio effects and time controls traditionally associated with live music. Drop in sound, visual, or audiovisual clips, composite them in layers, and add effects. You can even add standard audio effects plug-ins and manipulate almost everything in relation to tempo or sound response. As in other recent visual performance apps, while there are remnants of a deck+mixer concept, the metaphor is really multi-layered compositing.

Resolume Avenue 3 is really a huge leap forward from the “legacy” Resolume line in every way, in terms of GPU performance, MIDI and OpenSoundControl, user interface, cross-platform compatibility, and audio savvy. But you will find some familiar elements if you’re a devotee of Resolume. The manual still fits in an incredibly compact space. The simplified compositing structure people loved in Resolume 2 is retained. What was always appealing about that to me was that you feel in Resolume like you can focus on a few performance elements and develop your chops around those. And lastly, as opposed to the semi-modular, open-ended philosophy of a tool like VDMX, Resolume is, as always, more about a stripped-down structure that works in a variety of situations. Other apps try that, but often come across feeling like oversimplified VJ mixers; Resolume is a unique animal. I’m glad we have both alternative paths, and I do really think they’re different - hope to show more of that off soon.

Clip triggering is dead-simple, but the addition of audio and powerful effects possibilities mean you could really do a lot with this.

Improvements in the final build, in case you’ve used earlier betas:

• Stability.
• DVX QuickTime video codec, a fast codec intended specifically for GPU playback and high-resolution, multi-layered support.
• Audio analysis, FFT-based parameter control.
• Transport controls on layers, a la Resolume 2 (by popular demand; thanks!)
• Keyboard, MIDI shortcuts for in and out points, ideal for looping.

And, of course, lots of other subtle fixes, improvements, and the like. Both Jaymis and I are having a look at this, so expect more soon.

Resolume
Announcement on the Resolume forums