In case you haven’t seen the stunt spreading, meme-like, around the blogosphere, graffiti artist Skullphone hacked ten Los Angeles-area billboards owned by ClearChannel. It’s the coolest thing to happen to LA’s billboards since L.A. Story. And that was a movie, not real.

See it on Skullphone and Curbed L.A. via Textually and Supertouch, and F.A.T. and Anti-Advertising Agency, via Gizmodo and MAKE.

Now, this deserves special mention here because I imagine almost everyone here has dreamed of hijacking giant digital billboards — the way musicians dream of playing the Hollywood Bowl or being on the cover of Rolling Stone or something.

Not that we condone such behavior, of course. No, that’d be illegal.

Too bad you can only get away with stuff like this in LA and not, say, Times Square or Tokyo.

Okay, maybe not “hacked.” If by “hacked” you mean “rented from ClearChannel, the owner of the sign,” then this is a hack. Oops. Speaking of which, I’d better make sure to check my bank balance and make sure I can hack this month’s apartment. So much for sticking it to ClearChannel, evil corporate overlord. (Now, does someone know if you could hack these signs?)

I like Wired’s term, too — “checkbook culture jamming.” And now you know what to get your favorite visualist for his/her birthday, eh? (Thanks for the correction, mememamo!)

Guitar Hero? We want VJ Hero. And the AV Arcade Table, now part of the Boredbrands Digital Funfair, is exactly what you’d want it to be like.

It’s got the hardware — a DIY, cocktail-style arcade table, just the like the one you spent playing Ms. Pac-Man on, slightly drunk.

It’s got the software — a Windows PC running VJAMM.

And it’s got the content — Guitar Hero and Rock Band have rock classics, so this has some classic clips from VJs.

Official description:

The AV Arcade Table is a simple hybrid, a table top arcade cabinet that has been converted to run Vjamm, the best Audio Visual VJ Software by miles! Using the joystick and buttons 2 people can trigger audio visual samples and create beautiful collaborative audio visual collage/ a chaotic mess** (delete as appropriate!).

The Table was originally created for Cybersonica 2007 and was featured as part of “Soundwaves” at Kinetica Museum

Thanks to Eclectic Method, Exceeda, Hexstatic and Vjamm All Stars for supplying content.

AV Arcade Table @ Boredbrands Digital Funfair

Incidentally, reasons to give some props to VJAMM, even in this overcrowded world of VJ apps, and even though everyone went out and bought MacBook Pros last week, it seems:

• Coldcut uses VJAMM. I mean, celebrity matters little to us here, but they do use it well, and that counts.
• The Novation SL line of keyboards supports Automap in VJAMM. (It’s England, so I’m guessing that idea got worked out over a pint — which is certainly the way I like to make deals.)
• They have this cheery slogan on their website: “VJamm3 is the world’s leading audiovisual instrument, the ultimate tool for sound and image mixing, the true 21st century artform, the new hip-hop.”
• This table

Thanks to Gav for the tip — great work, mate! And to all readers of CDM: go for the shameless plugs. There’s no shame in it. We love to see the cool stuff you’re doing.

You’re an incurable font geek and you love sound. Can’t choose? Combine them. The MeekFM synth is both a visual synthesizer for typography, and a synthesizer — it actually sonifies the letterforms you generate. This is synesthesia on such a high geeky level that my mind is blown wrapping my head around it. But I love the approach — and while I can’t search even my deepest serif fetish to work out how anyone would come up with this, perhaps there’s a parallel for other generative visuals. Think synth.

meekfm.org [Official Project Page]

via: The Meek FM Typographic Synthesizer [Synthtopia]

Previously:

Illuminating Lettering as Digital Process, in Elegant, Open-Source Mac NodeBox

Free, Open Source, Remixable Fonts, and Embedding Fonts in Flash 9 / AS3

I miss ANSI art. In the character-only days of the online world (pre-Web), these text-based graphics had a strangely pop-art quality, with hard edges, digital textures, and bold colors. This is not to be confused with ASCII art, mind you — ANSI art had lots of extra graphical features. Even by the early 1990s, landing on a modem-based BBS with ANSI art felt like leaving the grungy dullness of the country for the Los Vegas strip.

Which brings us to the relevance to this site. I’ve seen lots of cheesy ASCII art filters for video, implemented in environments like Processing, for one. But how about motion graphics with ANSI? Now that’s an interesting challenge. Or, for that matter, given infinite choices, how can you make your own creative constraints to do something essential and artistic? ANSI’s appeal might be purely nostalgic, but it suggests that more power over pixels has sometimes given us less freedom, not more. Something to ponder while you’re coding / editing / visualizing — there’s a chance to make up your own restrictions.

20 goto 10 in San Francisco will feature “ANSI”, curated by Acid Jazz from artists Somms & Lord Jazz.

20 goto 10 gallery page

Rhizome News: Escape Code to the Past

For those of you who didn’t make the awesome CDM Party last Friday night after NAMM, I’m pleased to bring you a recording of the live AV Remix that I performed with Acid&Bass.

Karate Kid AV Remix from momo_the_monster on Vimeo.

Performed live at the Unofficial NAMM After-Party using 3 MIDI-synced machines:

Video Machine:
Operated by Momo the Monster
Software: Isadora (custom patch for show)
Hardware: MacBook Pro, Monome 128, UC-33e, E-MU 0404

Audio 1:
Operated by Shane Hazelton
Software: Max/MSP With custom software IMPS (Improvisational Media Performance System), Lucifer
Hardware: Receptor VST plugin Player with Zounds of VSTs, Novation Remote 25, BCR 2000

Audio 2:
Operated by Stephan Vankov
Software: Ableton Live, Lucifer Plug-in (sending MIDI to Video Station)
Hardware: Mac, BCR2000, MPD16, Remote25LE, AirFX, NuVJ

Artist Caveats: This version was cut from the original 25+minute length to a more internet-friendly 7-1/2 minutes. Also, this is version one of the performance - we rehearsed only twice before this show, this is really our first run-through with everything (mostly) working. Comments welcome as we continue to develop the idea.

Karate Kid live remixing music performance from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

It’s happening. Slowly, slowly, VJ as term that means “host of silly music video show” is being supplanted by VJ as “master of live visual performance at a club or other venue.” In the meantime, though, we get to enjoy unintentionally hilarious images, like this one, found at music video cable network Fuse.

Okay, hilarious to a tiny segment of the population that is us.

Hey, I remember right before my first-ever Eyewash (NY party), crying into my diary…

Message to FUSE: if we put this on a t-shirt, will we hear from your lawyers?

Cheer, indeed. We know how badly many of you want to get out from behind your laptop and out into a venue once in a while. Here’s a solution: wear your display. And it helps if that display has the insane interactive capabilities that this one does. Marco Tempest of newmagic.com writes CDMo:

A little X-Mas greeting for all of you! Showing of my Photonic T-Shirt. Wearable visuals. Haha…

I’m still working out whether that “haha” is an evil scientist “I’ll take over the world with this” laugh, a laugh at the rest of us that don’t have one of these t-shirts, or a jolly laugh of holiday delight. I’m betting some combination of the three. (Or, as suggested in comments, simply “hahaha, this isn’t actually real.” I take it then as inspiration to make something that does this but actually, you know, works, without needing sly magicians and fakery. I’ll leave it to you to determine what’s going on.) Just watch:

Yeah, I know, most of you probably read Digg, but this was simply too good to pass up: Flickr user Integral Lens has posted a wonderful set of in camera glitch effects. I’ve seen quite a few variations of digital camera glitches, but these take the cake simply for being so different, and aesthetically interesting. Lovely.

Check out the gallery for inspiration

Has anyone seen anything remotely like this? Have a special piece of gear thats broken in just the right way?

Be sure to check out Malfunction Junction for more photos gone awry.

Previously:
Beautiful Camera Footage from a Dead CCD

I’ll raise your Anjou Speaker Cables ($7250 for 12 foot of cable) with the Rundco MBX-1 3 Chip DLP Projector. The amazing specs are as follows:

• Variable Light Output up to 5000 ANSI Lumens


• 3-Chip DLP^TM System with New, Dark Metal Process Technology


• 1280 x 1024 Resolution


• Contrast Ratio: 1100:1


• Image Sizes up to 500″ Wide


• DTV Compatibility: 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p

All for the low cost of $249,995.00. Oh, by the way, no keystone correction. I’ll take a Christie or a Barco, thank you very much.

Runco MBX-1 @ Aurant

Ed.: That’s unusual. I guess the pixels are, uh … more … pure? Anyone seen one of these bad boys? Does the humpback whale snout in the lens really make that much of a difference? ;) -PK

Sure, you have fun with your one projector. But don’t you sometimes want to add giant water fountains, with water projection? And more video? And fire? And lasers? And some creepy wizard guy? In South Korea, spending money on such things seems strangely commonplace, as at the multimedia/fountain installation at Kangwon Land / High One Resort. Friend of CDM (and Jaymis) Rainer Knobloch had a major role in the project. This definite counts as our Massive Neo-Baroque Multimedia Spectacle of the Day.

Seen other stuff like this you liked? Let us know in comments.