Memo’s ongoing quest to get his application MSARemote on the iTunes App Store has hit what is hopefully its last rejection today, this time because one of the screens “infringes an Apple trademark image.”

This is a reasonably well documented failure mode, so hopefully this is the final invisible, electrified hurdle they expect Memo to sense and clear before MSA Remote is made available.

In the meantime, Memo has published a new video displaying the app controlling VDMX [on CDMo] and Ableton Live [on CDMo, on CDMu], and showcasing its velocity sensitive keyboard.

MSA Remote + VDMX + Ableton Live from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Via: Twitter @memotv. The CDM account is @cdmblogs. I’m @jaymis, and Peter is @peterkirn.

D-func, one third of German DVJ trio Weissgold.TV, picked up a Lemur [on CDMo, on CDMu] a couple of weeks ago, and has put together a fantastic custom interface which controls VDMX [on CDMo] over two machines.

VIDVOX Forums - I finally found my perfect set-up!

VDMX’s UI customization is one of its biggest strengths, allowing you to create the setup which is just right for the job you’re doing. Combining this with the Lemur - a controller whose interface you create to fit the job you want it to do - gives a very sleek, unique setup. Weissgold are projecting on a pyramid, and have a tab of the interface devoted to setting this up:

Ed.: Our guest superstar VJ Momo the Monster returns. Coachella isn’t necessarily a VJ convergence: VJs are aliens in a kingdom ruled by musicians. But with this crew, the gig rigs and artistry were flowing freely. Here’s just a glimpse of part of who and what was assembled. -PK

It’s now a week to the day since the start of the 2009 Coachella Festival, and I’m finally getting down to sorting notes, transferring pictures and video, trying to wrap the whole thing up in my head so I can file it away.

Doing visuals at Coachella was fun as hell, and also the craziest and most seat-of-my-pants show I’ve ever done. I was contacted by Brett Spivey of Xochi Media on March 31st (a little over two weeks before the event) and invited to join their crew. I joined them in Encinitas a week later for rehearsal and mind-melding, which is when I started my Coachella VJ Blog.

The Mission

Our job was to be the House VJs - we would do visuals for anyone who didn’t already have something prepared. Spivey emailed all the performers to find out what they wanted, and the big guessing game began. Some groups got back to us right away, others didn’t respond until we were already setting up at the festival, and some never did. Of the groups that responded, some told us they wanted no visuals, some had a logo or an album cover, and others, like Groove Armada, provided us with Gigabytes of beautiful content we were to work from.

For many groups, we had to guess - Shepard Fairey was easy since he’s also a visual artist and has plenty of prints we can animate, but for someone like Christopher Lawrence, we just listened to the music and organized groups of clips to work from.

The Gear

Oh, so much gear. From memory:

VJ Kung Fu: Structure in VJ Performance from Momo the Monster on Vimeo.

Sometimes, paradoxically, doing more prep and adding more structure is what allows you to really let loose when you improvise. That’s true of music, and it’s just as true of visuals.

You’ve no doubt seen “button-mashing”, chaotic VJ sets - and maybe, in weaker moments, done that a bit yourself. And I’m sure there’s a place for that. But our friend Momo the Monster wonders in a new video how he might make the most of live improv by structuring his clips a bit in advance. Using vdmx - ideally suited to the purpose with its customizable, semi-modular nature - he sets up four layers. As he describes it:

• 1. Background - Scene-setting clips.
• 2. Playground - Video Instruments (Quartz Composer)
• 3. Foreground - Elements on black, textures.
• 4. Overlay - Logos, text.

MGFest, the Motion Graphics Festival, continues its multi-city tour March 5-8 (next weekend), on its way to Boston / Cambridge, Massachusetts. The whole conference is just US$7 for all the events.

Here’s a quick look at the schedule and highlights:

• Screenings: if you’re ready to see motion reels on a big screen instead of YouTube, there will be screenings Thursday and Friday 12-2 in Harvard Square.
• Thursday: A meetup at the Daedalus bar/pub in Cambridge, followed by a field trip to check out the Shepard Fairey show at the ICA.
• Friday: Workshops during the afternoon at MassArt; I know Vidvox’s David Lublin will be on-hand to talk vdmx.
• Friday night: Live performance showcase - I’ll be playing an audiovisual set with some handmade visual software, Joshue Ott will be doing tablet-generated superDrawings in 3D, Morgan Packard will be creating beautiful soundscapes with his self-made Ripple software, and there will be Wii-controlled sacred geometries, psychedelic stuff, and conference founder and VJ Mason Dixon. Good stuff. Performance details.
• Saturday night: installations - lots of work shown in the Axion Gallery, Cambridge, 6-10p. Don’t know what we’ll see, but looking forward to finding out.

The only part of the conference you can’t get into for $7 are the intensive workshops, which run $120 for a full day. I’m doing Processing, and there are also workshops on Cinema4D, 3D workflows in Adobe Creative Suite, and After Effects expressions.

Josh and Morgan were fantastic last night here in NYC; more on their event this week.

We’re also planning a little intensive geeking out next weekend, so I’ll be sure to report back on that.

Photos at top: a lineup of music and visual gear for the Chicago showcase (photo: me), the obligatory guy with laptop with projections photo of me (courtesy MGFest).