A bank of faders, a touchpad, and then … it just does anything you want. Even today, the idea of a fully-integrated visual instrument is a pretty profound concept. Ableton’s creators thought about the design of the Synclavier digital synth (the rival of the CVI’s music sibling, the CMI) when designing their software. At least a couple of you have some strong ideas about the future of "visual instruments" and live visualism in general. Certainly, I’ll be thinking about the CVI as I look at the setup of my live visual rig. The effects themselves on the CVI don’t all date well, especially after the CVI itself popularized their use (and overuse) in the 80s. But the elegance of the design as interface can still inspire.

Co-creator Peter Vogel has kept satisfying our appetite for gems from his VHS library. Thanks, Peter, for saving these from permanent deterioration. Top: watch a BBC host get a kick out of turning herself into a video star. Bottom: the original demo video, which gives a good overview of the effects capabilities. (Especially interesting, as students and artists learn to recreate some of the same effects from scratch in tools like Max/MSP/Jitter and Processing.) Tomorrow’s world, indeed.

This brief video, uploaded to YouTube by Fairlight co-founder and designer Peter Vogel himself, gives a brief history of the development of Fairlight’s legendary video hardware, the CVI. The CVI was a theoretical (in name, at least) visual counterpart to the ground-breaking CMI digital sampler instrument. And, like the CMI, the CVI had a major impact on artists and produced some of the best digital creation of the 80s — and some of its most-repeated cliches.

Vintage Fairlight Computer Music Instrument Videos [Retro Thing; see also Create Digital Music]

But here’s an important difference: has the evolution of visual hardware and software really equaled what’s happened since the CMI on the sound side? Music hardware and software has evolved and exploded since the CMI. The only real visual hardware today available to consumers that’s not a mixer is Roland’s CG-8, and it’s arguably narrower in scope than the CVI, despite being two decades newer. Even in software, the idea of a visual instrument you can play is still evolving. Now, I suppose you could argue visualists have more to play with — powerful 3D capabilities, for one — but perhaps that’s why visual gear has been slow to catch up.

What do you think? Is there a visual - musical cap in digital tech? Or am I trying to compare two things that really can’t be compared, whether Australian designers gave them parallel acronyms or not?

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

This week on VJ-U, Benton-C Bainbridge interviewed Ray Sweeten, an audio and visual artist who pushes the creative limits of the oscilloscope, creating gorgeous, abstract forms with intense waves of sound.

Watch VJ-U episode dvadeset i dva: Applications in cross-modal media

Click To Play

Bill Etra, the analog video processing pioneer, has been posting some of his original works from the late 1960s through 2005 on video sharing site Blip.tv. It’s a sort of ongoing retrospective of his work. His techniques are varied, including Rutt-Etra processing (using the hardware he co-designed), hand-controlled oscillator-to-RGB inputs, and laptop-based software rigs.

While not a complete archive, it’s an interesting look back at important works and techniques. I’m glad this is online; it’s hard to find useful archives of older analog pieces simply because most techniques involved were incredibly hard to capture to tape. Usually only re-scanning would work (re-scanning is a fancy term for pointing a camera at a CRT). More work will be added, so check back occasionally. I think archives like this are invaluable for inspiration.

Bill Etra’s blip.tv Page

Ed.: We’ll definitely be watching for updates, and hopefully cdmotion can help encourage more documentation of this stuff online. -PK

VJ-U has posted a wonderful livecast on Operator 11 featuring the restoration of 3 Rutt-Etra raster analog video synthesizers. I was fortunate enough to be invited to check the machines out in person and have some time to try and help out. Mathew Schlanger and Benton C Bainbridge help explain the history and unique capability of the Rutt-Etra. Certainly worth a watch for those interested in the art form and unique hardware.

For those unaware of what a Rutt-Etra is, be sure and check out Audio Visualizers page on the subject. There is a lot of history with these machines, and they are still quite competent tools with a very unique look and feel.

Think vintage video hardware has nothing on classic analog music synths like the Moog and Buchla? Think again.

The Rutt-Etra video synthesizer, circa 1972, did sophisticated video raster manipulations. The invention of Steve Rutt and Bill Etra, the Rutt-Etra may not have had its Keith Emerson, but it did inspire Nam Jun Paik and Gary Hill. If the feedback effects look 70s, the more unusual raster effects put software to shame. And it was all done with hardware, producing creative effects, a certain purity of technique, and lovely soft edges — not to mention knobs and faders for the artist instead of the lines of code needed for software. Audiovisualizers.com has a history with some Real video clips, with assistance from the creators. Any other good resources, please leave in comments:

Rutt-etra Video SynthesizeR - ( 1972) [Source of image above, labeled Vasulka 1992]

Vade points to a 2004 video by the talented peoples of Ghost Robot. Check out Staring at the Sun by TV on the Radio. Director Elliot Jokelson is lucky enough to own the gear, and he puts one of these classic devices to great artistic use. Had the effects focused on the simple mono raster effects alone, you might have assumed this was some new digital technique.

Ghost Robot videos

Updated — vade explains who owned the gear in question in comments:

Elliot does not own the gear, and the Rutt Etra was Benton C Brainbridge’s. The processing was done in realtime and the output was re-scanned (or re-imaged if you prefer) into a digibeta deck for editing later on. This is because technically speaking, the Rutt Etra does not output anything *close* to a standards compliant NTSC video signal. The only possibe output device is a CRT, which you have to point a camera at. Really nice stuff. It should be noted that the Rutt Etra’s output is black and white. The color was added in post.

As in music synthesis, even if you can’t get your hands on the original gear, there’s a lot to learn just by trying to re-conceive these classic effects. This gets me thinking about 3D projects in Jitter and Processing. Anyone done something similar? And, forgiving my ignorance, I wonder what would it take to build hardware like this using 2007 tech?

Updated again! Answer: vade is already on it, with an in-progress Jitter patch. More good links in comments.

DIY hardware isn’t just for abstract and noise musicians any more: visualists are getting in on the act. While on the subject of glitchy visuals from bent gaming hardware, GetLoFi reports this week on several new DIY projects to delight the eyes.

The EX PMX is a homemade analog video synth that … does … something. Something with lasers. And stepper motors, for sequencing audio and video. Good grief, I think you can actually create whole rhythmic sequences just by mechanically switching video inputs. (And as regular readers know, it’s rare that I’m completely stumped on what something does, meaning this gets extra cool points.)

EX PMX homemade video analog synths [GetLoFi]

For fans of glitchy, distorted visuals, Tokyo, Japan was just host to a whole workshop on creating visual bends from toys, Famicom game systems (the original NES, as shipped in Japan), and more. Details again at GetLoFi:

Visual Bending Workshop in Tokyo, Japan [GetLoFi]

You can watch the event in photos and videos at this Japanese site:

Visual Bending Workshop [Photos, Videos, Japanese-language description]

For those new to this, GetLoFi is definitely the best site to watch for circuit-bending, musical and visual. Now back to programming ActionScript, though it sure would be nice to have some hardware to hack, too — controllers and switchers should keep even those who dislike glitchy aesthetics in their own work plenty busy.

[tags]hardware, hacks, DIY, synthesis, video, circuit-bending, Japan[/tags]

Circuit bender Gijs Gieskes does work that can be seen as beautiful kinetic sculptures as much as instruments and synthesizers. That’s certainly the case with his Sega MegaDrive2: watch as he reroutes patch cords via magnetic connections in a lovely tangle of wires, or listen to the mechanical sounds of the device in operation. (This bend isn’t intended as a musical instrument as some of his previous work has been, but the incidental noise of it running sounds great, anyway.) He’s designed the whole thing to pack into a small, wooden suitcase for on-the-go visuals.

And, while we’ve seen distorted and broken video output from game consoles, here the patches create a rhythm of glitchy images. That, and there’s something strangely satisfying about watching Yogi Bear run through a dystopian snowstorm of analog static.

GIESKES.NL/CIRCUITBENDING/SEGAMEGADRIVE2 [Artist site; photos and description]
Bent Sega MegaDrive2 in action [QT Video]

[tags]circuit-bending, hacks, gaming, glitch, synthesis, oddities[/tags]

Here’s more on Steam Driven, the interactive performance that mixed music and steam-powered machines, from composer Stuart Smith. Stuart writes:

The show went well and also sold-out. A nice piece of theater as every visitor had to manually stoke the fire with a chunk of coal,
thus waiting for enough “steam” pressure to begin the show. During this the Engineerium owner to give a brilliant introduction and then the visitors were led into the main hall
where the 16 ton machine was manually started by one of the engineers. The show begins!

The laser triggers gave us:
1. A tap tempo which gave us a central BPM (exactly 86.5)
2. A LFO phase reset if needed.

We used 3 different Infrared proximity sensors placed near moving arms and gears which gave us:
1. Control over audio pan, timbre, amplitude, pitch, loop-point, etc.
2. Control over video color, playback rate, clip, start-stop, movement etc.

I wrote a master Max/MSP patch which encompassed all the sensors and translated this into useable data which was sent over the LAN to our laptops and also to 8 other remote computers each with it’s own video projector and video clips we created.

We wrote a basic Audio/Visual “score” to follow as we played live using laptops and guitars(!) utilizing all the incoming data from the machine. A great show but “loads” of programming! This will the first of many to come, maybe NYC?

Thanks, Stuart! Hope you do make it to NYC — or I make it over there, one or the other! -PK