When it comes to controlling software, let’s put it bluntly: OSC good, MIDI bad. With OSC, it’s possible to control the array of things software might do, with easy use of high-resolution data, descriptive names in plain English (or your language of choice), a path hierarchy that makes it easier to structure messages in modular software, and smart networking features that makes assignment and communication a breeze. With MIDI, um… well, prepare for lots of mucking around.

Happily, visual software developers proprietary and open source alike have done what music developers generally haven’t - embrace OSC. Thanks to the fact that this community is unburdened by tradition and commercial development tends to involve small, responsive teams, change hasn’t been so tough.

So, visualists, it’s time to reap the fruit of that development work, and make the live performance rig work the way you’ve always dreamt it should work. Our friend Gian Pablo (check out his fantastic blog) clues us in to some recent developments with Resolume 3 “Avenue.”

Via Aaron Meyers, who’s getting ready for some fun projects at Eyebeam here in New York this week, anyone using a camera for capture, live video, or tracking needs to check out this copious thread on the OpenFrameworks forum:

beginners ~ Sony PS3 Eye

We already knew Sony’s US$40 PS3 Eye camera was a wonder; that’s why we strongly recommended its use in the tangible interface hackday hosted earlier this month. But while we’ve heard some good luck squeezing performance out of the thing on Windows and Linux, the Mac - while reliable - could use more options and performance. Theo Watson, one of the OpenFrameworks team, comes to the rescue with a patched version of the macam open source video driver - halfway down the page. (I hope his changes get rolled into macam?)

You’ll find lots of other tips, not only for the Mac but other stuff, as well.

We’ll keep collecting tips on this camera. Macam experiences, anyone? I’m still trying to successfully build the Linux driver; once I sort that out, I’ll share.

You know the ideal audiovisualist setup: two PCs, one running sound, one running visuals. But connecting those two machines can be less than ideal. Enter EthernetMidi, a completely free implementation of MIDI over Ethernet. It’s Windows-only for now – the Mac has its own free MIDI-over-IP implementation built into the OS. But there’s reason to root for EthernetMidi even if you’re not a Windows user primarily: the project is open source, and work on a Mac and Linux version means this could be the first tool to allow MIDI-over Ethernet between different platforms. (Pay no attention to the “LinuxSampler” name – they need a new moniker.)

Showing off how powerful this can be, pure_angles has put together a detailed tutorial for combining to favorite tools, Ableton Live and Resolume.

Zarah Cabañas akaLady Firefly has a radical concept: what if you treated visualists properly as professionals? But she doesn’t make any assumptions that people working with visualists will know what to do. In a new manifesto posted to “Respect Your VJ,” she spells it out so there’s no mistake — including practical advice for making it happen.

You probably won’t learn anything by reading it. But the person hiring you (unfortunately) probably could. In short, the idea is:

• Give credit.
• Love them - including letting them play onstage.
• Visualists are artists, not tech crew. (You should love your tech crew, too, but you wouldn’t highlight them onstage - unlike the visual artist.)
• Pay them, and promptly.
• Go over tech specs.

In fact, the whole idea is to communicate with the visualist, and give them the kind of input that will allow them to do more for you.

http://www.respectyourvj.net

Check out Zarah’s work:
http://www.fireflylab.com/
Zarah (Lady Firefly) on Vimeo

The “respect your VJ” suggestions are all simple stuff, but boy, is it often missed. I love the idea of it being on one website. Have a look; I’m curious if anyone has items they’d add.

Zarah writes with more of her thinking:

Kevin Kelly recently posted about digital continuity on The Technium. He references David Pogue’s experience of having problems reading DVDs which were only 4 years old.

No problem, I thought: I’ve got all of the original iMovie projects backed up on DVD, in clear cases, neatly arrayed in a drawer next to my desk. (My hard drive wasn’t big enough to hold those 50 videos a year.)

Guess what? On the Mac I use for video editing, most of the DVD’s were unreadable. They’re less than four years old!

Tried them on another machine. About half of them were readable.

This is an issue which effects all digital artists, and visualists in particular, as digital video tends to take up large amounts of space. Traditionally I’ve used optical media to backup and archive my work, but recently I’ve changed my habits and now I’m keeping everything on hard drives, consolidating smaller drives on to bigger ones as often as architecture changes or Moore’s law makes it affordable. 750GB (around 11c/GB) seems to be the current dollars-per-gig sweet spot, (especially when you keep in mind the increased manufacturer ripoff factor for a “1TB” drive). 750GB will fit around 170 DVDs worth of data, which obviates even the financial argument for burning DVDs - even if it only takes 4 minutes to burn each DVD, that’s over 11 hours of burning time.

My current stack of drives ready for Moveage

Update: This post has already generated some fantastic feedback, so we decided to expand it slightly, and promoted it from an Aside to Full Article status.