Our friend Sean Healy, aka Jean Poole, has a great interview with visualist *spark (Toby Harris of London). We love *spark for many reasons — for founding AVit, for being a wildly-talented artist, for reintroducing the idea of narrative to visualism, for VJing live on a giant touchscreen (see below), and other goodness, not necessarily in that order. Toby talks to Sean about everything from his philosophy of performance to some of the technical possibilities of audiovisual performance today.

I particularly like what *spark has to say about live cinema, and why the tools are “hotting up”:

That term ‘Live Cinema’ is something close to my heart though: I reckon you can specifically and deliberately combine a lot of whats good in established cinema and clubbing to give a completely new way of expressing yourself as a VJ-esque performer while engaging with audiences’s own creative thoughts. The key to it is an improvisational use of narrative, rather than forcing a fixed story down their throats, you could be a cinematic incarnation of the oral storytellers of old, weaving tales on the fly, or providing the scenarios and juxtapositions that people find themselves compulsively mapping their own narratives onto. Stepping back from that, I’m interested in anything that uses media to make people interact or think in unexpected ways, which has taken me from playing with the conventions of one-man theatre to storytelling installations. And the tools are really hotting up at the moment, things are getting interesting.

*sparkin’ it up [Skynoise.net]

Speaking of hotting it up, check out that potent combination of Ableton Live (for music) and VDMX (for visuals) on a MacBook Pro. It’s a coupling we’re seeing more of these days. (And it doesn’t necessarily have to be Live and VDMX per se, or even one laptop — but people exploring real audiovisual soundtrack means Live Cinema can be sonic as well as visual.) Those of you working on similar setups, we’d love to see them. Whether it goes on Create Digital Music or Create Digital Motion — well, I can flip a coin.

It’s no secret: the once wildly-popular ArKaos VJ software has been looking a bit long in the tooth lately. And upgrades only get you so far: sometimes, as software matures in its life cycle, you have to redo the foundations. That’s what ArKaos has been working on, and the results, renamed GrandVJ, are due out soon (quarter 2). The new version emphasizes a re-worked, cleaner interface, multi-threaded graphics, and lots of effects and generators.

ArKaos GrandVJ Announcement

It’s up against some stiff competition. There’s the ground-up rewrite VDMX5, with some powerful semi-modular capabilities, the beefed-up Livid Union 2.5, Modul8, Resolume, and new generative app 3L. (See why 2008 will be a big year for VJ software.) That said, of these, only Union is cross-platform.

One differentiating feature in GrandVJ, as partly inherited from ArKaos VJ before it, is its “synthesis mode.” This maps sources onto a virtual music keyboard; combined with effects and generators that could retain ArKaos’ place as an easy, instrument-like visual tool.

The generative idea is nice, as well, but even with Flash support, I wonder how ArKaos will hold up to other generative competition. 3L has powerful tools for building 3D graphics in the software, Processing is gaining support among coders, Quartz Composer has native support in software like VDMX for custom patches, and Salvation has its own generative tricks, to say nothing of Jitter, Flash/Flex, and vvvv. On the other hand, ease of use can make a big difference in the market, and ArKaos’ interface is uncommonly clean. And then there are the ArKaos loyalists, who could find a compelling, friendly upgrade. (If you buy ArKaos now or bought it after March 1, the upgrade is free.)

We’ll have more details when this ships.

When Adobe acquired Macromedia, a lot of people thought that’d be the end of Director. After all, Director and Flash have had increasingly overlapping capabilities for some time, and Director seemed like something people used years ago. Think again: talk to people doing interactive design, and Director — for better or worse — lives on.

With the Director 11 update announced this week, that’s unlikely to change any time soon. New in this release:

• Vista support on Windows, Intel support on Mac
• Bitmap filters (a la the bitmap API in Flash 8/9, I’m assuming)
• Full JavaScript support and Code Snippets
• Enhanced Flash support with CS3 and Flash Video support
• Built-in physics via AGEIA PhysX
• Native DirectX 9 3D support

Now, anyone for a Voyager interactive CD-ROM (as pictured right, from the Director heyday)?

Physics and 3D? Impressive stuff. So I should be excited, right?

In case you haven’t noticed, a theme has been emerging on CDMotion: alternative interfaces geared for performance, software that expands the range of expression, and projection that gets visuals out of the 4:3-ratio box. There’s no one solution, and the expense involved in the tools covers quite the gamut. (I may have to personally start the “ghetto” guide to this stuff.)

But bringing together these elements is still essential to raising the impact of visuals. I still hear the “but the visuals aren’t as important” over and over again from people outside our field, and I think it’s a phrase that is — mercifully — doomed to extinction as visualists expand their craft.

So, one artist collective we’ve been covering is Turkey-based artificialeyes.tv. We’ve seen the Video Moving System, the automated mirror system for projection, the Vixid mixer with its matrix and multiple blend mode features (among other things), and the eyeball-scorching interface of 3L (”Thrill”) now in beta.

To see it all put together, of course, we’d really like to hit the club in Istanbul. Barring that, though, Michael from artificialeyes.tv has directed us at some images and video.

It’s really clear to me from these images how little you need lights. And in motion, with architectural effects amplifying the imagery, the projector itself can be more than just lighting effect (especially with these in motion, something you don’t get from the stills).

As digital musicians have realized for some time, working with computers is all about physical control. It’s the difference between feeling like you’re operating software and playing an instrument. So it’s no accident that Jay Smith is quick to call the Ohm, a new hardware controller for visuals and music, an “instrument.” I got to hang out at the Hoboken, New Jersey office of Livid and play with the Ohm a bit. Hands-on experience is everything: as you can see, you’ve got a nicely-crafted wooden crossfader piece, for starters. Here are some first impressions.

Livid’s Union VJ software has been steadily adding features. The latest upgrade may be a “point-five” release, but it’s got some pretty significant additions, mostly along the lines of “stuff Union lovers were asking for.”

Among what’s new:

• Audio-responsive tools: audio filters, audio-aware effects, and an audio waveform generator
• Video captioning
• FreeFrame plug-in support for the popular, open standard for video plug-ins (see also: support in Resolume, vvvv, etc.)
• Video layers for easier compositing
• Performance enhancements
• “Advanced MIDI integration” which works with Livid’s lovely, optionally-wooden Ohm controller, which created quite a stir (lovers and haters alike) over on Create Digital Music

Windows + Mac, US$75 upgrade or US$299 new.

And yeah, you can add this to the 2008 visualist software fever. It’s like all the visual developers are kicking into high gear. I’ll have what they’re having. (Actually, I may need to have what they’re having for breakfast just to be able to read the user interfaces some of them are designing.)

I’ll be hanging out soon with Jay Smith from Livid to take a look at the new Ohm controller, pictured below, and he’ll be joining us for a special party at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin next month — more on that soon, as well.

2008 is looking like an extraordinary year for visualists: there’s an explosion of new software tools for live visuals. One of the most eagerly-anticipated is 3L (pronounced “Thrill”), a multi-purpose live visual application for Mac, from the massively-talented artificialeyes trio of Pascal Lesport, Michael Parenti and Todd Thille. (Todd, FYI, you may have to change that last name to 3iL.) We’ll be showing and explaining where 3L fits in, but let me jump into my unedited geeky take on it first.

3L is unique in that it takes a lot of the cool generative effects people are doing in individual patches for Max or Processing, loads them into one massively modular interface, and mixes in the prerequisite amount of pixel processing, audio, and MIDI. It’s like the monster Jitter patch you’ll never have time to finish, all on one screen — one very big screen; the software actually requires 1440×900 resolution to operate. If they had just done that, Thrill might fade into the blur of other modular environments created in recent years, but the software has also been packed with features tested by the Artificial Eyes crew in their gigs — meaning a whole lot of what you’d want to be able to do in a club is there already, including countless features you may not have even thought of yet. Pascal also apparently coded his way around limitations in Jitter.

We got an inside peek at the software in Perth. In fact, we peeked at a little too much — so much, we’re still, erm, editing all the footage we shot. And we might have gotten into that editing in Perth were we not out until the wee hours of the morning VJing with Thrill. Jack and Coke, Western Australian nightclub filled with ridiculously young-looking clubgoers, plus a completely unfamiliar interface that looks like the love child of Max/MSP, a 747, and a spaceship? Hell, yeah. With everything wired for MIDI and sound reactivity, Jaymis and I immediately found ourselves zoning into pulsing abstract patterns, even when we weren’t entirely sure what we were doing.

DJs are spoiled for choice when it comes to melding vinyl turntablism skills with digital mixing. But visualists have had no real mature option. Serato’s VIDEO-SL plug-in promises to change that, when coupled with their Scratch LIVE software and the Rane TTM-57SL mixer. To give the results a real shakedown, we turned to dj rndm and Robotkid, an audio-visual duo out of Boston who had already been frustrated with existing alternatives. Is the VIDEO-SL the breakthrough product visualists have waited for? -PK

Scratch LIVE v1.8 and Video-SL 1.0 boast the ability to not only mix video alongside your digital audio tracks but to give it groundbreaking control via Rane’s TTM-57SL mixer (required). After several anxious months of anticipation, we recently got our hands on the fader of Rane’s newest DJ gear to see how well it lived up to the demo shown at last year’s NAMM event. This progression of audio/ video integration seemed too good to be true, especially for those of us wrangling with the likes of Virtual DJ and Ms. Pinky. 

When the Video-SL plugin ran for the first time, we knew there was no going back.

Video demos

dj rndm takes the full VIDEO-SL setup for a spin, mixing:

… and scratching:

Effects, transitions

The Video-SL interface blends seamlessly into the Scratch LIVE window and functions with the same ease and readability known from previous iterations. The plugin includes over two dozen video effects and sixteen different transitions to layer and transform your video content in real-time. Most of the effects and transitions are fairly standard. While Serato has no immediate plans to allow for user-custom transitions and effects, they did tell us that adding new ones is relatively easy, and they say they hope to add new content based on feedback from the Scratch LIVE forums.

More reasons you love OSC? You can get input from a SpaceNavigator 3D mouse, and translate the data into Max/MSP/Jitter, Quartz Composer, VDMX5 (as mentioned earlier today), Processing, and other tools — plus everything else, via MIDI. The solution: the inexpensive Mac utility OSCulator, covered this evening over on CDMusic:

OSCulator for Mac: Alternative Control, Now with 3D Mice, AppleScript, Combos

3D mice, eh? Suddenly navigating those 3D generative graphics built in Processing for a live performance starts to sound more appealing, huh?

Earlier today:

VDMX5, Now with OpenSoundControl - Everyone Else, You Listening?

So, yeah, we will have to do that “dummie’s guide” to OSC as promised earlier!

VDMX, the “realtime video studio” from the makers of Grid, semi-modular live visualist tool for Mac, and very possibly the “world’s most mature beta software”, continues to pack goodness into each new beta release. But the most recent addition, just now available as part of the primary public beta release, warms my heart. The latest beta adds support for OpenSoundControl or OSC, a protocol for communicating between computers, hardware, and software. With high-resolution data, an open-ended naming scheme, and network savvy, OSC is just plain better than MIDI at at least some tasks. But it’s suffered from a lack of documentation, a vague specification that’s a bit too open-ended and daunting to developers, and most of all, a lack of critical mass as far as tools. One small step at a time, that’s changing.

So far, the VDMX developers have tested their implementation with the multi-touch Lemur controller and inter-app data with Apple’s free Quartz Composer. But OSC is also supported in Processing, Max/MSP/Jitter, Pure Data, and free controller implementations for the Wii remote and Wacom tablet, among many other things. It’s also supported natively by the Monome controller, which is quite a lot cheaper than a Lemur. Want to pipe data from a Wacom into Quartz Composer? Sync data between a Mac running VDMX and a PC running vvvv? Something … uh … else that I haven’t thought of? Quite a lot is possible.

And an iPhone implementation could come next. (Or you can send OSC from iPhone right now, with MrMr.)

You can try this out in the beta that’s available now, though David Lublin from Vidvox warns us:

…there’s still more to do with OSC, currently no way to trigger files, it’s just control data, but the core functionality for sending and receiving is there, so we really just need to start building on top of that for whatever protocols there are to support

…the OSC support is still very much in it’s early stages.. it is there and stable, but we are barely scratching the surface of what we can do with it

Of course, that description could apply to OSC in general, which is why the two CDM’s (createdigitalmusic and createdigitalmotion) will be working over the course of 2008 to work with users and developers to share knowledge and get better implementations in everyone’s hands sooner. It’s something I hope to check in on while I’m at NAMM next week. Stay tuned.

Vidvox + VDMX5

VDMX5 public beta direct download link (Mac only)

Introduction to OpenSoundControl [opensoundcontrol.org]

Speaking of multi-touch OSC implementations, we hope to catch up with CyberPatrolUnit, who’s working on a VJ interface on Lemur, as pictured below. He’ll be bringing it to the CDM NAMM party, so if you’re in LA, come see us next Friday!