Korg has just publicly shown this trio of tiny USB controllers in London, and they look very tasty indeed for live visualism – small and thin enough to fit along the lip of a non-pro MacBook or 13” PC laptop, but with advanced assignment features, scene editing, and other features. That keyboard would go nicely with the new GrandVJ’s MIDI assignment features… and that could leave another laptop routed into a mixer with a bigger controller. No word on pricing or availability, but we’ll be watching. Full details on Create Digital Music:

Korg nanoKEY, nanoKONTROL, nanoPAD: Super Tiny MIDI Keyboard, Controller, Pads

You may have seen the Video Critter video synth hardware kit generating visuals using cellular automata algorithms. (Think cell-based models a la the Game of Life.) But you haven’t seen it quite like this.

Univac has combined the Critter kit with a VTECH LessonOne educational toy (boring toy, beautiful case), quite a lot of circuit bending, light snakes with optical sensors, a bending patch bay, plus a 7″ LCD screen for viewing it all. Result: self-contained, patchable, performable cellular automata video synth!

CellularRecombomat: patch-bay circuit bent cellular automata video synth [Techdweeb.com, Univac's site]

It’s really quite lovely — and another reminder why we need hardware video mixers, so we can easily manage the output of goodies like this.

Univac has many other wonders of bent sound and visual devices on his site. For more cellular automata, check out the free Nintendo DS music sequencer glitchDS, which just happened to land in my inbox at about the same time.

The nicely-growing Digital Tools blog has an excellent interview with visualist Paris Treantafeles, who works with lo-fi 8-bit-style visuals using tools he’s built for GBA and the Linux-powered Gamepark.

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.

Hally // Blip Festival 2007: The Videos from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

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).

Mike Una has written up a fantastic mini-tutorial on how to make your own mic flag — that is, the little oldskool decorations broadcasters put on their mics. (Well, anyway, the oldskool ones looked coolest.) This one seemed a bit better-suited to createdigitalmusic.com, so it’s over there, but imagine it may interest some of you doing your own video production — or get someone to interview you as the VJ superstar you are.

How to Build a Mic Flag and Look Like a Real Broadcaster

Image: Bob Gowa at the wonderful vintagemicflags.com.

The world’s smallest projector is dead — long live the world’s smallest projector! PC Magazine reports from CES 2008 that Microvision’s PicoP projectors are smaller than an iPod, battery-powered, and make teh visualz with fricking laser beams. Max resolution 848 by 480, zoom 1:1, brightness and frame rate unknown. From Microvision’s marketing materials, it seems that we’ll be seeing cellphones with built-in PicoP projectors in the near future.

Via Slashdot.

Microvision Pico Projector Line Product Page

Ed.: Yep. I want one hundred of these, and my own club. -PK

Pinnacle’s new Video Transfer box is a portable analog video (S-video/Y-c and composite) and stereo audio (RCA) h.264 encoder. The Video Transfer box has no built in storage - you supply it. Touting iPod video compatibility and USB Mass storage support, you can in theory hook up any USB 2.0 device to record video to.

With selectable quality (Good, Better, Best - sound familiar?), the Video Transfer supports iPod Video, Nano (third gen) and iPod Classic, as well as the PSP and PSP Slim, USB 2.0 flash drives and USB 2.0 hard drives. I’m guessing no Touch/iPhone support due to the lack of USB Disk Mode. ‘Tis a shame. Ed.: That likely knocks out Zune and a few other devices, as well — if you’re listening, oh device manufacturers, we really, really, really prefer to buy devices with this feature!

Grab a nice big, cheap, old USB 2.0 and route S-Video off of the back of your Edirol V4 mixer and have instant hour-long, high-quality web and PMP ready gig recordings. Sounds perfect.

The best news? It’s coming January 15th for only US$129.99. Awesome.

Via Engadget, and Macworld.com.

Now, what to do about the other end? How about a 500GB - 1TB LaCie external hard drive with composite / S-Video / component video output? You’ll never need a DVD player hooked up to your mixer again.

LaCie’s LaCinema Premier external HDD surfaces [Engadget]

iPhone development continues despite a lack of SDK. Masayuki Akamatsu has updated his native iPhone OSC client aka.iphone to 2.1, and includes plethora of screen/input configurations to suit your mobile performance needs. The update should suit typical VJ and Dj applications with its range of GUI sliders, knobs, button grids, etc.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, be sure and check out aka.iphone. Very cool stuff. Yes, sorry, another Apple oriented update. Shoot me.

[Ed.: Note you will want Max/MSP/Jitter to work with this app, though I think it should work with Windows, too; I just lack a machine that can test it. Be sure to see also Masayuki's complete Max collection, which now covers everything from Wii remotes to 3D SpaceNavigator controllers, Apple Remotes, and even the motion sensor in the MacBook Pro. Completely brilliant. And needless to say, even if you don't want to hop on AT&T's mobile network, this gives you options with iPod Touch, too, even if you can't play Phase on that. -PK]

Mobile, touch control of visual apps? We’ve seen one way to do it; here’s an even more compatible MIDI approach. I think I’d stick to the iPod Touch, personally, just to conserve battery on a phone. But it’s interesting. -PK

Hot on the heels of Mrmr, ArtificialEyes (the Istanbul-based VJ collective) have released i3L MIDI Bridge for the iPhone, which builds on Masayuki Akamatsu’s aka.remote.app, giving those without Max/MSP skills a simple way to bridge their iPhone and audio/video performance software of choice.

i3L (pronounced “i thrill”) is Freeware, and was developed using Max/MSP from Cycling74 and is a support application for aka.remote by Masayuki Akamatsu i3L receives pre-defined UDP messages from aka.remote.app running on the iPhone, scales the values to MIDI, and allows you to configure the sending MIDI channel and control change message number. While this software was developed to work seamlessly with our Real-time 3D VJ software Thrill, you can use this program with any audio or video software which receives midi messages.

If you give i3L a try, let us know how it works out for you in the comments.

artificialeyes.tv
aka.objects by Masayuki Akamatsu — must-have stuff for Max/MSP/Jitter!

Ed.: Does anyone know if multi-touch gestures would be possible in DIY apps? Maybe in February when Apple shares the official SDK? -PK

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.

Little GP Tracker (LGPT)

Still want a stylus? Mario compatibility?

Hacked MIDI Support for Nintendo DS: DSerial [Create Digital Music]

And as Marc points out, the upcoming F200 from GamePark will have stylus input. It’s a beautiful thing.

Going mobile with video is looking sexier all the time. So far, we’ve been watching:

Apple’s lovely new iPods, all with component video out
An HP gaming device from the future (which may never show up, but could also be implemented on the proliferating embedded Linux mobile boxes around)

Now, Microsoft has given the Zune a badly-needed upgrade. The best part: real video support. I’m waiting on my contacts at Apple for more details, but Paul Thurrott beat me to the video specs, so here they are from him:

About Zune 2.0 video compatibility

Here’s the story: Like the iPod classic, the new Zune 4, 8, and 80 support H.264, MPEG-4, and WMV formats up to 640 x 480 natively. This means you can load a 640 x 480 (or whatever) H.264 movie on to the Zune and it won’t have to transcode it to a 320 x [whatever] format, as was (and is) the case with the Zune 30. This is great news. On the device’s screen, video will be scaled down to QVGA (320 x 240) as you’d expect, and if you use TV Out, you get full fidelity. Excellent.