Beatesthesia Custom Visulizer from olly gore on Vimeo.

Beatesthesia is a new open-source, cross-platform VJing/music visualizer application programmed in Processing. It sports some interesting design decisions, including an audio-reactive user interface. Its an interesting idea, and is certainly pretty and definitely novel. At first glance, I didn’t like the blinking UI; it struck me as being far too distracting, but, after second thought, it’s a pretty decent way of conveying content and disambiguating a UI elements purpose. Well done. Check out the Vimeo video and home page to get a feel for its capabilities.

Beatesthesia strikes me as being more of a music visualizer than a fully featured VJ application, but it’s open source, which means it will grow as it pulls in a dedicated user base. Beatesthesia’s website also hosts shared projects, so you can explore other users visualizations. [Ed. For what it's worth, it looks like more than just a visualizer to me -- especially as you start to edit the ways in which it works and make more elements "performable" -- and if you don't like this specific implementation, you could certainly code your own in Processing! Anyone performing with this or building something similar, let us know. -PK]

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:

Livid’s Union VJ software has been steadily adding features. The latest upgrade may be a “point-five” release, but it’s got some pretty significant additions, mostly along the lines of “stuff Union lovers were asking for.”

Among what’s new:

• Audio-responsive tools: audio filters, audio-aware effects, and an audio waveform generator
• Video captioning
• FreeFrame plug-in support for the popular, open standard for video plug-ins (see also: support in Resolume, vvvv, etc.)
• Video layers for easier compositing
• Performance enhancements
• “Advanced MIDI integration” which works with Livid’s lovely, optionally-wooden Ohm controller, which created quite a stir (lovers and haters alike) over on Create Digital Music

Windows + Mac, US$75 upgrade or US$299 new.

And yeah, you can add this to the 2008 visualist software fever. It’s like all the visual developers are kicking into high gear. I’ll have what they’re having. (Actually, I may need to have what they’re having for breakfast just to be able to read the user interfaces some of them are designing.)

I’ll be hanging out soon with Jay Smith from Livid to take a look at the new Ohm controller, pictured below, and he’ll be joining us for a special party at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin next month — more on that soon, as well.

If you’ve been intrigued by all this talk of Quartz Composer, the free visual creation software that ships with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, here’s your chance to actually learn how to do cool stuff with it. Our friend Momo walks us through a basic tutorial on simple 3D and audio processing, which you could easily apply to more complex ideas. With QC support in the upcoming VDMX5, you could drop this into a VJ set with traditional clips, as well. We’ve got step-by-step instructions, plus a video. Let us know if you create anything wild with this as its basis.

Quartz Composer: Lighting 3D Cubes and Moving them with Audio Input from momo_the_monster on Vimeo.

In this Quartz Composer tutorial, We’re going to make a 3D cube that responds to our voice.

First we start up Quartz Composer. The icon will be different depending on whether you’re running OS X 10.5 or 10.4.

From the File menu, choose New Blank (or simply ‘New’ in Tiger).