Jack Lykins sends us a really amazing video he assembled using Ms. Pinky, the vinyl control system, and its included Maxi-Patch Max/MSP/Jitter patch to control animation interactively. We’ve seen vinyl triggering and controlling video, of course – as on the Serato VIDEO-SL, previously reviewed here. But there’s something about Jack’s style of “narrative” animation on the turntable that’s really compelling.
After our previous performance at Game On, Sampology and I have been asked to return to the State Library of Queensland to wind up the Game On exhibition with a bigger, brighter, geeklier AV turntablist set, which we’ll be streaming live tomorrow night.
You’ve already seen what Sam can do with Serato Video-SL (as reviewed previously on CDM), so instead I’d like to share with you my new favorite Herovision video. Featuring Vader’s 501st Legion (and the Dark Lord himself making an appearance on stage) playing, what else, but the Dark Lord Ozzie’s Black Sabbath - Paranoid.
Sam and I will be preceeded on stage by Yahtzee (of Zero Punctuation) and Matt and Yug (of Australian Gamer), who will have a screening of their show Game Damage, and then talk about games rather a lot.
Recently I was able to collaborate with Sampology, a local turntablist, for the last Game On night of 2008. Sam used Video-SL to put together a gaming-themed AV set, and I added a selection of security cameras and mixed it all together with the Vixid.
This performance was fantastic fun, and Video-SL really shines when piloted by a skilled turntablist. The addition of video to this kind of set gives audience members another sense to help them understand what all that frantic action behind the turntable is actually creating, as they have visual cues to go along with the audio for juggles, scratches and other esoteric DJ techniques.
Earlier this year we posted a clip of DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist’s “The Hard Sell” performance. Soon afterwards, one of the architects of the visuals for this show - Josh Cardenas - got in touch, and I was able to meet up with him for an interview the morning after one of their performances in Brisbane, Australia.
Josh designed and built the robotic pan-and-tilt camera rigs (and wrist-mounted camera) responsible for The Hard Sell’s strikingly intimate look at the work of these two top turntablists, and he was very open in sharing his experiences and the technical details behind his part of the show.
Also along for the tour is a couple of V4s, DVJs, and a Pioneer SVM-1000. Josh gives us some background on the tour and insights into how the rig works.
Some of the most common post-gig remarks I heard from crowd members was that they wouldn’t have understood or appreciated the show nearly as much if they hadn’t been able to see so closely what the DJs were up to. Josh’s robotic cameras really brought the performance to the people, and in a form factor which was completely unobtrusive. A remarkable achievement, and still he was happy to share details on how this was achieved.
We’ve seen visual vinyl, via the video stylings of Serato’s VIDEO-SL plug-in. But here’s a more literal approach: stick the camera on the turntable. Via a multi-camera setup, Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow are doing that with their honest-to-goodness, scratching turntablist sets. I especially like the camera up close on the turntable itself — something instrumentalists might try, too. (Well, maybe you want to stop somewhere … no endoscopies during your performance, please, unless you’re an avant-garde performance artist or something.)
More on this sort of thing soon, but there’s something to get the thought process going. Thanks, Jaymis!
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