Our friend Richard Lainhart sends this lovely "swirly thing" (to use technical terms). His description:
An abstract HD film animated in After Effects. The soundtrack, "The Beautiful Blue Sky", is a realtime electronic synthesizer improvisation for Buchla 200e and Haken Continuum.
My description:
Mmmm…
Oh, sorry. Forgot what I was saying: staring into swirly thing. Hey, it’s the weekend. Enjoy!
Beeple’s Audiovisual exploits have been featuredtwice on Create Digital Motion, and raised a variety of questions. Momo the Monster cornered Mike Winkelmann in a dark alley and forced him to give us the information you crave.
What can you tell us about your method?
Well, usually I write the basis for a song using loop-based software like FL Studio, then i take and export all of those loops and make video that syncs precisely to each note in the loop. If it’s a melody line, then I will try to make it so that you can discern the different notes that are being played. If it is a more rhythmic or atonal sound,I will try to make some piece of video that “looks” like that sound. Then I render the loops of music and video together into one video file. Next, I take those video files into a NLE (I use Vegas 4, mostly) and attempt to write a large piece using my audio/video loops. I layer all of the pieces of audio/video, and because they are all individually synced, bits of my piece, the end product kind of makes itself in terms of video.
We’re big fans of NIN’s new album, Ghosts. Now, visualists will get to freely interpret the album in an open YouTube “festival”…
I’ve come out of my self-imposed solitary confinement only due to my man love for Trent Reznor. (Don’t ask.) Following up on the huge success of the Ghosts I-IV release (grossing a cool $1.6 mil during the first week), Trent is announcing a partnership with YouTube to present a user-submitted film festival for works inspired by Ghosts. From NIN.com:
First of all, a sincere THANK YOU for the response to Ghosts. We are all amazed at the reaction for what we assumed would be a quiet curiosity in the NIN catalog. My faith in all of you has been restored - let’s all go have coffee somewhere (my treat)!
Today we announce the expansion of the Ghosts project into the visual world. This record began as an experiment with us using sound as a means to describe visuals. Early in the project we thought it would be interesting to see what the community could create / collaborate on as a reaction to the music we were making. We wanted to keep the canvas as blank as possible for you, hence the lack of descriptive song titles and the primarily textural artwork and packaging.
So here’s the plan: we’ve teamed up with YouTube to host a “film festival” around Ghosts. The concept is for you to take whatever tracks you feel inspired by from Ghosts and create what you feel should accompany them visually. You will be able to see all of the submissions, and a team of us (including me) will be sorting through them and setting aside ones we feel are exceptional. Eventually (within a couple of months?) we will present a virtual “film festival” with me and some special guests presenting selections of your work.
This isn’t a contest and you don’t win elaborate prizes - it’s meant to be an experiment in collaboration and a chance for us to interact beyond the typical one-way artist-to-fan relationship. We’ve discussed some interesting ways this could go, including multiple installments of the online “film festivals,” to broadcast TV specials, to a one-time live performance of the entire Ghosts record with your visuals involved. It really depends on how this progresses and develops.
We are all very much looking forward to what you come up with, and hope you enjoy the experience. Visit our YouTube channel for information on how to participate.
NIN’s music has been and continues to be some of the most visually inspiring and cinematic music I listen to; now here’s a chance for myself — and everyone else — to freely be share their work and use NIN’s music without repercussion. If only there were more time!
Delving into Audiovisual performance, it’s easy to get overwhelming. Mashing up commercials, music videos, sampled footage and more can quickly lead to eyeball meltdown.
Here, then - Mike Winkelmann (as Beeple) takes simple and distinct typographic elements, synced to a minimal lo-fi tech soundtrack to create AV that is masterfully compelling and straightforward.
Mr. Winkelmann continues to produce and release as Beeple - he’s created new more fanciful works since his first appearance on CDM. See his whole library at Beeple.com.
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.
People can argue and theorize about digital art as a medium all they want. The answer is as simple as a simple word:
Iterate.
Do it over and over and over again in little bits developing techniques. Start small, add small, but keep adding over and over and over again. Iterate.
flight404 does that about as well as anyone in the Processing community, and it shows. His latest visualization of a Goldfrapp tune, now with lyrics, is stunning. And the addition of lyrics shows that these kind of techniques aren’t just eye candy — they can convey information, and do it elegantly and expressively.
Robert’s techniques are typically far from real-time, so part of why I enjoy them so much is they’re a challenge to those of us on the performance end to figure out how to do more interesting things live.
The other interesting thing here is the beat detection. Eventually, he wound up adding the beats manually, as detailed in the post linked here. That in itself is telling to me — as a composer, having worked on scoring and how things line up creatively, I’ve always found indirect relationships compelling. So this speaks to me of the importance of creating some imperfect algorithms, algorithms that don’t always line up so they challenge our ear and eye to make the connection.
Oh, and I love the fact that “Frankenstein” appears in the end, like a cameo by Alfred Hitchcock.
Lucifer is a plug-in that does real-time audio slicing and repeats — as in for music. So what is this plug-in, running in Ableton Live as a host (hmm, music again), showing up on Create Digital Motion? Because our friend Momo used its MIDI output capabilities to trigger video — and got an unusual interaction between sound and visual as a result. Now, I’m in the camp that says Ableton Live should stay a music app; there are too many well-developed visual tools that Live would never equal. But this is the exception that proves that point: by thinking in a musical way when triggering visuals, you get a relationship between the two you wouldn’t otherwise. Momo shows us how in the latest VJ Kung Fu tutorial. -PK
If you’re not familiar with Lucifer, it’s a VST/AU plugin for realtime beat-based cutup/repeats of audio. What you’re going to do is route the MIDI from Lucifer out to another program that will do Video cutups. This is useful for more than just video - with the MIDI signals coming out of Lucifer, you can control and trigger and MIDI-capable software and hardware.
We figured out a way to control video using the awesome Lucifer plugin while working on our Karate Kid AV Remix. In response to a few inquiries about just how we made this work, I put together a video tutorial showing how to set up Lucifer to output MIDI.
While this particular implementation is specific to the Lucifer plug-in, it’s a thought-provoking approach to doing AV Cutups. You could build a similar method by creating MIDI clips that output common/useful triggering patterns, and trigger those instead of mashing buttons to directly start your videos.
Also, this method involves looking at the MIDI Sync information coming from Live and using that to figure out a proper loop-length for your video. This way, you can use a longish video by simply adjusting the ‘play start’ point rather than cutting your videos down to 8 or 16 proper-length versions.
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.
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.
The release was original mainly CD Audio only at the time as general release formats didn’t allow for an AV album. All the visuals were made at the same time, basically the the visuals is the music and here for the first time is all the video album in one place::::::
Skip to 3:19 for a truly brilliant mashup moment, which appears at 3:27. Then watch it from the beginning. I can only imagine how difficult this was to create using the technology available in 1995.
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.
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