TRACTOR from tsaworks_martin Böttger on Vimeo.

Composer/electronic musician Bruno Dias sends us his latest collaboration, with visualist Martin Bottger. It was a distance collaboration – so just the kind of thing you could be working on with musicians and visualists you know. Bruno writes:

We never had the opportunity to meet face-to-face and this work was carried along the last couples months with Martin working on the visual side in Maya and then After Effects in Berlin and me developing the sound narrative that would then drive the visuals one here in London. I worked on sound using as main tools Ableton Live and its sampler, NI Reaktor, NI Absynth and Logic/Pro Tools for post-production.

This is just the sort of thing you could do pre-rendered in this way, then adapt for real-time use, just as musicians routinely do a “studio” version and then rework it for live.(You might even export OBJ models from Maya and pull them into an environment like Processing, Jitter, or vvvv, if you have the savvy – or use a VJ app to remix, if that’s more your speed.) So, Martin and Bruno, you can take that as a subtle hint for your next step, coming from a real-time evangelist.

I love the description of the, um, fourth-dimensional tractor (maybe it’s my childhood in Louisville, Kentucky spent visiting the huge annual farm equipment show – seriously):

Yes, speaking of the visual power of flipbooks, Ivan points out that Kraak and Smaak have just made a big splash with an ingenious new music video making surrealist plays with space. It uses copious, cleverly-placed flipbooks throughout. Now you have two challenges: one, to go out and make and film flipbooks, and two, to make it somehow not this but cool in some other way. (Hmmm… perhaps live flipbook VJing?)

It’s all real and real-time and, minus some subtle animation overlaid obviously at one point, it’s all flipbooks. The work is the creation of superelectricvideo, a director, motion graphic designer, video artist, illustrator, and general maker of cool things to look at based in the Netherlands. It’s worth reading his whole, oddly poetic bio, which matches some of the dry whimsy of his films:

Ah, Motion Theory. We lover their work already. And now, in one brutal blow, they simultaneously produce:

• A kick-ass video for Weezer.
• A love letter to YouTube and Internet memes — watch through to the end. It gets denser.
• An instant on-screen “How much of a geek are you?” quiz.
• A video that should throw any band trying to capitalize on Web memes to the ground. Seriously. You won’t top this. Give up now. You’ll have to wait for the next generation of technology or something.

Thanks to our friend Robin Hunicke, who seems to be friends with / works with every visualist in greater LA. More commentary at hustler of culture, where Souris also knows tons of people and deals in tons of awesomeness. But, Souris, I’m sure someone can spot more of the memes in there and has the time to count each one. Any takers?

Motion Theory’s (ahem) motion work has already produced fantastic stuff, like their well-known example of Processing code made into art (okay, with a little C++), the Nike One campaign. (Josh Nimoy contributed — creator of JMyron / WebCamXtra.)

Prefer naked people to Web memes? Or maybe you personally enjoy streaking nude through the Icelandic woods? Sigur Ros also released a video today that should be up your alley.

Happy weekend, everyone.

Bjork lays on the spectacle in a new music video for “Wanderlust,” and the results are quite gorgeous, even in advance of a promised 3D version. If you had the misfortune of trying to watch it in Yahoo’s world-premiere, horribly-overcompressed video early this week, give it another go. (I’m glad I waited to post this rather than have to show that! Yikes!)

As of press time, Motionographer has a high-quality QuickTime file so you can watch this in all its glory.

The results are a real multimedia extravaganza. The painterly wonderland in the surrounding world is clever digital graphics and computer 3D, though made to look organic, while foreground beasties, costumes, and prosthetics are all real-for-real. Here’s the timelapse of it all coming together:

The cast of thousands includes:

• Directors Encyclopedia Pictura (Isaiah Saxon and Sean Hellfritsch), who got the music vid world buzzing earlier with their video “Knife” for Grizzly Bear; see further commentary from blog Shots Ring Out
• NYC motion graphics firm UVPHACTORY, seen before working on My Chemical Romance’s “I Don’t Love You.”
• Damijan Saccio led the CG team from UVPHACTORY. I don’t know who he is, not that that means much. Damijan, say hi if you’re out there…
• John Weissberger and Vanessa Waring did the puppetry; Circus Minimus member Jessica Scott was lead pupeteer
• Chris Elam, whom I do happen to know personally, was choreographer

… to say nothing of the stereography work which we’ll be seeing soon.

Now, the odds of any of us ascending to Bjork-like budgets tend on the slim side, but I do like the convergence of the pro digital motion scene with the artsy puppetry - making physical stuff crowd. I know at least a couple of the people on the dance/puppetry side of this project, and I also know making that convergence work is a tremendous challenge, artistically and technically. The challenge remains making it come together in lower-budget projects and with the often more-challenging realm of live performance.

How to get free 3D specs for the 3D version [bjork.com]

Making of video timelapse on Facebook

The Digital Worlds blog, an Open University blog, has an excellent look back at the artistry of early video tubes entitled “Oscilloscopy.”

There’s John Whitney’s “showreel” from 1961, which shows off the ground-breaking (1961, folks!) possibilities of his “mechanical analog computer,” as appropriated from an antiaircraft gun director. Wait … say that again? Yep, Whitney actually used a mechanical contrivance to rotate layers of graphics. When that technique met up with the power of  It’s an idea that’s just waiting for today’s DIYers to tackle, perhaps mixing modern digital techniques with mechanical ones.

Next, also from the above blog post, witness the gorgeous oscilloscope graphics and mechanical control pads of Tennis for Two, an early (thought to be the second-ever, though you never know with these things) video game made by William Higinbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Again, DIY project? Mechanical controllers, but this time coupled with 3D graphics? It is the 50th anniversary year of the title. (People under 35, remember that the next time your parents start talking about “back in their day” before video games. Tell them it’s not your fault they never dropped by the Brookhaven National Laboratory.)

Heck, I wish even oscilloscopes looked that pretty now.

There’s something really inspiring and elemental about these works — amplified by mechanical elements used in their creation and control. It’s something I think is possible in code; maybe it’s just challenging in a different way. (And maybe when you have that feeling of magic, you know you’re in the right place.)

This certainly gives me a different source of inspiration as I work with generative techniques in Java/Processing and the like. If this inspires any of your work, send us photos / video links — we’d love to see it! And motion graphics history buffs, happy to know more about these — and other — pioneers.

Whether in three-dimensional videos or paper sculptures, artist Martin Böttger manipulates organic, fluid geometry like a child with blocks. An artist working with Maya, vvvv, and Processing, his work demonstrates that even simple elements can yield a variety of creative products.

“Transformer” is an intentional nod to the robots and movie — with good reason; Martin seems like the type who could design you a robot that changes into a truck:

There’s something beautiful about making art with mundane tools, making something creative with something because, not simply in spite of, its limitations. And there’s likewise something surreal about Microsoft’s latest ad campaign for Office for the Mac: get artists to make subversive art with its old version of Office for Mac, which still (cough, cough) isn’t Intel-native. But that’s exactly how the Office:mac team is promoting their software, and to be perfectly honest, I fully expect the new Mac version of Office to yet again trump the version for Windows.

Just what will you find on the Art of Office site?

• Phillip Torrone, my friend from Make/makezine.com, demonstrating an “illegal prime”, a prime number associated with copy protection that’s illegal under US law. (That’s right. Microsoft is now actively promoting a DMCA violation as art!)
• Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo fame, making artsy postcards in Word.
• My personal favorite: El Salvadorian artist Pixelfreak makes pixellated art out of Excel cells.

I’m not sure this is inspiring me to get excited about Office 2008, but it is getting me excited about making office art. (Hmmm, OpenOffice fans want to strike back?) And it coincides roughly with the release of Helvetica: the Movie.

I love boring things.

Of course, this gets me thinking along visualist lines: PowerPoint, for one, can export to QuickTime files, and has for a long time. This means it’s a perfect time to create some surreal business-y motion graphics for your next set. Heck, you could even do some video of the screen in Word or Excel to get really adventurous. If you do make something like that, whether or not you upload them to the MS promo site, let us know.

Related — art in Microsoft Office is nothing new. David Byrne infamously made art with PowerPoint, of a very abstract nature (and I’d still love to see more of this as motion graphics, not just stills):

Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information (David does have a way with words, with tongue in cheek)

But the greatest PowerPoint art of all time has to be PowerPoint as social criticism, as in the case of Edward Tufte’s essays, presentations (ahem) and book:

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

(Hint: he doesn’t think PowerPoint is entirely good for society.)

Well worth mentioning Tufte here, as well, as his work was a big influence on Ben Fry and the creation of Processing, one of our favorite tools. And, in turn, Processing expresses the desire to help users get beyond the rigidity of pre-baked tools like, well, Microsoft Office. (No offense, Microsoft.) On the other hand, if you can’t eliminate the presence of Office for your life, you can abuse and subvert it.

If you’ve been staring at After Effects too long, you’ll really love this one: common motion effects, painstakingly recreated by real people — jumping on trampolines. There’s even a status bar and, my personal favorite touch, an I/O error and — okay, I won’t give it away.

Directed by Roel Wouters a.k.a. Xelor. Here’s the full blurb (see also cast & crew on the YouTube page):

zZz is playing: Grip is a video for the band zZz. Its a one take, top shot videoclip with trampoline gymnasts simulating typical video effects. The video has been recorded live as part of the opening ‘Nederclips’ at the Stedelijk museum ‘S-Hertogenbosch SM’S (curated by Bart Rutten).

The project was commissioned by the TAX-videoclipfonds and an important criteria was that the audience of the opening was be able to witness the whole shoot, another criteria was that it should be added to the exhibition imediately after the shoot was done. So we had no option to reshoot or edit if something went wrong. This made us so focussed [sic] that we did better that any of us have could imagined.

Thanks to star blogger Christine Huang at PSFK, from whom I stole this, before she lost the draft of her blog post. Also seen on the excellent Motionographer.

Your challenge: recreate overused VJ effects using real people. Hmmm… kaleidoscope effects? (Oh, and by the way, those of you using sample clips from apps like Resolume and Onyx-VJ? We’re watching. We’re at the club. We know your secret. Stop it. Or go recreate it on trampolines.)

With all the attention on the other parts of Final Cut Studio 2’s fixes, released in an update yesterday, it’s worth noting some major tweaks to Motion. If you’ve been playing with Motion and found some — erm, kinks, as you tend to get in point-oh releases — this is great news. Motion 3 was a huge release, with lots of motion analysis tools and new 3D generators, cameras, and vector paint, so accordingly some of the biggest fixes in the Final Cut Studio update impact Motion.

Normalized flipping - new feature: When working with text on a path, the new Flip Normal shortcut menu option makes it easier to flip based on segments of a curve — i.e., one control point at a time. (Don’t worry, if you have to ask, it’s probably not an issue.)

Tracker size - new feature: I was already pleased with Motion’s tracking options, but the new Tracker Size lets you customize the size of the region you’re manipulating for better results. This is a bit like changing the range of what you’re tracking: you can configure it to track small details or bigger moving features.

Performance workaround for trackers: Motion does work in real-time, but complexity can slow it down — that’s just fundamental to some of what it’s doing, and the fact that it’s an open-ended tool. But this update does address some of the bottlenecks. “Soloing” a tracked object, for instance, can keep cameras in a scene from bogging down the system. That’s a step, but I’d love to see controls over entire compositions as far as what renders and how, so you can manage system performance, which is still an issue even on fast machines.

Optical flow disk management: Optical flow analysis (for smoothing between frames, retiming, and so on) requires rendering hard disk files; now you can manage those files.

Better thin shape performance: I’m still testing this to see how much of a difference this made, but this is promising, as I found shapes a bit slow.

Lots and lots of performance/stability fixes: Thin shapes are improved. Stability of shape and paint strokes and motion tracking behaviors are improved. Situations that could cause the software to stop responding have been fixed: certain tasks related to retimed audio scrubbing, third-party filters, reordering “Point At” behaviors, the Zoom Layer behavior, Directional Blur filter, cloned Clouds, Timing pane tabs, Lens Flare behavior, Curves Steel Menu template, Brush Source well, Mac Pro export, multiple filter dragging, and Frame Blending’s Optical Flow parameter. I’ll add, incidentally, that I used many of these features without incident, so some of the specific conditions are — well, very, very specific.

If anyone has experience testing the update they want to share, please do. Motion gets a lot less attention than its big brother Final Cut Pro, understandably, but it’s a fascinating tool for visualists.