Matthew Applegate sends this our way — it’s like two computers having a conversation, across epochs of computer history. The MacBook Pro is running a computer vision algorithm and "singing" notes based on colors it sees on the Spectrum’s screen.

Maybe this will get your brain thinking of something new — file this under "really odd inspirations."

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.

Via comments, Eelke (whose system is shown above) alerts us that previous video output problems running Windows in Boot Camp appear to be solved in Leopard — at least using the MacBook Pro. (Phew — get all that?)

See the ongoing thread on VJforums. Eelke says:

My configuration:
- MacBookPro 2,16, 2GB ram, with ATI X1600
- Upgraded to Leopard (OS X 10.5)
- Used the same Leopard DVD to update all drivers in bootcamp / XP
- Rebooted with DVI>s video dongle plugged-in, s-video out attached to small reference monitor

After the initial booting XP logo which we had all the time, I suddely saw my desktop cloned on the small screen. All I had to do is go to desktop>preferences to extend windows to the secondary monitor, and it worked.
After that I used ATI Catalyst control center to set the screen (now recognized as a TV!) to run in overscan, no problem at all, even during live rendering (with visualjockey).

Houray! Houray!

A sad side-note however is that regular macbooks with Intel videochips and mini-dvi adapters still don’t seem to work properly under XP. Maybe under Vista, who knows?

Okay, anyone tested MacBooks (non-Pro) on Leopard? Is there a way to make this work?

Certainly, booting the Mac side for Quartz Composer, Final Cut, Motion, VDMX, then switching to Windows for Resolume, vvvv, games, etc. has some serious appeal as a visualist dream setup. (Overkill? Sure. But a lot better than juggling machines or being forced into the OS by the hardware.)

Apple slipped in some almost silent updates last night to its portable line: MacBooks have been updated to come pre-installed with Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), and sport Intel’s Santa Rosa chipset. This provides frontside bus speeds up to 800Mhz (up from 667Mhz), and includes a new integrated graphics chipset, the Intel GMA X3100 which should offer a speed boost for end users and increased shader support for developers.

Apple also silently updated the MacBook Pro, which now has an optional 2.6Ghz CPU upgrade (up from 2.4Ghz), for a mere $250.

Leopard improves not only OpenGL performance with some advanced backend llvm compiling, optional Quartz GL rendering, but also enhanced OpenGL extension and shader model support on certain cards. According to the Mac OpenGL dev list (which just today posted some new information regarding 10.5 - ironically the OpenGL cababilities matrix does not yet list the GMA X3100), Apple supports Shader Model 4.0 on newer ATI hardware, and possibly on NVIDIA 8-series cards (yet to be confirmed).

Both of these are good news for visualists - better graphics capabilities in 10.5 and updated integrated graphics chipsets will support more advanced visual effects for those who want the slimmer MacBook, and who doesn’t want dual 2.6Ghz of power in the MacBook Pro?

Ed.: My only disappointment with Apple is that there’s not much in the mid-range price-wise, and the Intel chips still lag behind dedicated graphics chips like the NVIDIA GeForce Go (8600 in the case of the MacBook Pro). But the flipside for the bargain-hungry: each time Apple bumps its MBP, you have a shot at getting clearance or refurb versions of the previous model at the sweet spot.

Note that the MacBook doesn’t support the advanced 3D features with its integrated video chip. The X3100 video on the PM965 chipset supports only Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 1.5, which leaves out some important shader features, etc., of use to visualists. So, if you can shell out the cash for the MacBook Pro, it will give you far more advanced 3D features — and by extension, hardware-based video. (On the Windows side, it also means DirectX 10 over DirectX 9, but the important thing is the integrated shader architecture.)