Packing up VJ Gear to fit on an airplane can be tricky business. I flew from Portland to San Diego in order to join the Xochi Media crew for Coachella this year - luckily, they’re supplying most of the heavy equipment, so I needed only the essentials, as photographed above. Here’s what I brought and why:

• Edirol V-4 Video Mixer: The ever-present 4-input, 2-channel mixer which broke the price barrier for amateur VJs and became the staple mixer for many live video perfomers.
• Canon HF100: This is mostly for documentation. I sold my trusty GL-1 last year for this super-compact High-ish Def Camcorder.
• Monome 128: This minimalist, handmade interface is my main controller for VDMX. My Four-Layer setup maps beautifully onto the 16-button-wide box, and the bidirectional communication allows me to see what clips are playing at a glance. Additionally, the second-to-last row of buttons emulates a MIDI keyboard, allowing me to use all my keyboard-reactive animations without the need for the keys. The case was handmade here in Oregon by mapmap
• Cavalry 500GB eSata Drive: This is my dedicated content drive, running at 7200RPM and sending its zeroes and ones over eSata through my ExpressCard slot for faster-than-firewire performance. It may, however, soon give way to an SSD…
• 7″ LCD: This is a little touchscreen marketed for use in cars, purchased from a Chinese importer for around $130. The color on it is better than my old 5″ Gamecube monitor, but it’s forever stuck in a 16:9 ratio, stretching all my 4:3 content to fit. It acts as the preview monitor for my V-4.
• Korg NanoKontrol: Just the right amount of faders and knobs to control my VDMX setup. This replaces my UC-33 which was a bit overkill most of the time.
• Mesh bag full of cables and adaptors: while the Xochi Media crew will be providing the bulk of the cables, I bring enough USB, Firewire and Power Cables to patch my own stuff. Also important are DVI-to-VGA and DVI-to-Composite adaptors to get video signals out of my first-gen MacBook Pro, a 4-Port Powered USB Hub, my Logitech Gamepad, and a small bus-powered Firewire drive in case something happens to my eSata.
• Stanton Uberstand (not pictured): This foldable laptop stand is a tremendous help in conserving precious table space, and it folds flat into its own carrying case. Minus points for needing a velcro cable-tie to keep it from collapsing
• MacBook Pro (not pictured): The heart of my VJ setup, my now-slightly-aging First-Gen MacBook Pro kicks out the pixels with the help of Vidvox’s VDMX5, which I use as a 4-Layer Video Mixer, and a healthy dose of Quartz Composer for interactive visuals.

Everything goes inside of a case for protection, and then I put towels and sweatshirts in the case to keep things from moving around. I actually was slightly over the 50lb weight limit this time around, had to take out my camera at the baggage check counter and stuff it in my carry-on. But the equipment arrived safe and sound, and that’s enough to make me happy after the joys of my inaugural flight with this case:

I’ll be writing updates about Coachella throughout the next week and a half as we prep and rehearse - check it out: Momo the Monster’s Coachella VJ Diary.

VJ Kung Fu: Structure in VJ Performance from Momo the Monster on Vimeo.

Sometimes, paradoxically, doing more prep and adding more structure is what allows you to really let loose when you improvise. That’s true of music, and it’s just as true of visuals.

You’ve no doubt seen “button-mashing”, chaotic VJ sets - and maybe, in weaker moments, done that a bit yourself. And I’m sure there’s a place for that. But our friend Momo the Monster wonders in a new video how he might make the most of live improv by structuring his clips a bit in advance. Using vdmx - ideally suited to the purpose with its customizable, semi-modular nature - he sets up four layers. As he describes it:

• 1. Background - Scene-setting clips.
• 2. Playground - Video Instruments (Quartz Composer)
• 3. Foreground - Elements on black, textures.
• 4. Overlay - Logos, text.

The Monome, a minimalist, elegant open source hardware controller conceived as an array of light-up buttons, has already made a big splash in the music world. But because it’s fundamentally a controller / LED display, it could be used for anything. And the Monome is now starting to realize that potential in increasingly-cool visual device.

First, here’s the Monome becoming virtually visual, overlaid with generative drawings. (If nothing else, this shows you the kind of love people feel for this open source, community-supported gadget.)

Monome Step : Generative Drawing from formalplay on Vimeo.

This is my first test of having the Monome control some generative drawing along with the audio through this step sequencer I made in Flash similar to the original 64Steps.
I especially like where the step sequencing begins to break down because of how deep the drawing gets.
Its the same drawing engine I used to generate this seasons Thank You cards (although for the Monome version I removed the Type Flakes)
This season’s cards in collab with [M]:
ilikegravity.com/real/archives/2007/01/generative_gratitude_collaboration.php

This lovely work is the product of Detroit area-based formalplay.

The Monome can also be a powerful tool for controlling visuals. Here it is manipulating a set of photos on a computer, also by formalplay. You can imagine the potential for live VJing – and, Microsoft Surface, eat your heart out!

Monome_NL_PhotoGallery.swf from formalplay on Vimeo.

But, wait, there’s more…

video mlr clone demo from themoves on Vimeo.

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of using the Monome, the popular open-source, button-bestrewn controller device, for visuals and not just sound. But I haven’t seen any examples in person. Via comments on Monday’s Live + Isadora story, here’s one example by Joshua Nugent. The software is inspired by MLR, the sound sample-rocking patch that comes with Monome. In fact, that’s one area in which I think the Monome hasn’t gotten enough credit — a lot of its popularity actually comes from its software design, not just its elegantly-minimal hardware design.

I tend to do visuals differently, so I’ll have to finish my kit, finally, and post some software examples. And yes, while this is done in Isadora, there’s nothing saying you couldn’t use other software tools.

Bonus points for including Bush dancing in Africa. Now someone send poor Josh a screen and some windowblinds.

More on this project on the Monome forums, including instructions:

how about a video version of MLR/64step?

I’d love to see more Monome examples, so if you’ve got them, send them in!

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!