I’ve spent much of my VJ time this week mesmerized by feedback effects in the VJX16-4.

Vixid Feedback Testing - Electroguy with Astronaut BBQ Party from Jaymis on Vimeo.

I’ve been documenting the more interesting combinations I found, and have put together an initial VJX feedback overview video.

Vixid Advanced: Feedback Setup and Demo from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

I know that just about any piece of visual hardware, (and much of the software we use too) is capable of feedback, but I haven’t encountered anything quite like this before. A lot of the look reminds me of Fairlight effects.

I’ve amassing a bit of a collection, so if there’s interest I’ll package it up as a feedback VJ loop pack.

If you’re not interested in the Vixid mixer or 3L, then I apologize for my posts over the last couple of weeks, but after a year of touring and creating on someone else’s schedule, I’m very excited to be able to set my own agenda and focus on the things I’m interested in.

Disclaimers aside, I’ve been working with my cheapie security cameras, feeding them power and conducting their video to somewhere it can be useful. Once wired, the challenge was to get the correct doses of midi to the Vixid, and thus motivate it to output The Crazy.

But now The Crazy is out of the box, so I’ll show you what it looks like, then explain how it came to be.

In putting together this effect I tried both Ableton Live and VDMX to no avail. Both programs were able to send the correct values over the right midi channels, but the VJX control I’m trying to achieve requires sending of distinct CC messages for very precise, quick switching. If I’m aiming for “proper” one-camera-per-frame bullet time, that’s one input every 40 milliseconds. To use 8 cameras I also have to switch inputs for each layer. This switching causes a 2-3 frame freeze on the input - as it puts the video stream in sync - so layer inputs need to be switched when that layer isn’t “active” and currently visible.

These constraints led me to Max/MSP, mostly because I had a review copy already installed on my machine. I’d read through some of the tutorials, but never actually attempted to program anything with Max. So this afternoon was spent traipsing through documentation, patching, and testing. After several near-misses and a realization that I wouldn’t be able to achieve an elegant solution without wasting time studying, I went back and created a brute-force solution using the modules I understood.

(Possibly NSFW due to excessively hacky code)

I’ve posted my first two videos for the Vixid@CDM Minisite. These cover both the ridiculously basic - how to get started with the VJX - and the reasonably advanced - using cameras, midi and Ableton Live to create a seamless-scrolling effect across two projectors:

Vixid 101 - The Basics: Inputs, Outputs, Routing, Blend Modes, Compositing
Multi-projector Spanning: Cameras, Cables, Midi and Ableton Live

Aside from the exciting possibilities this opens, I’m also happy about the Vixid 101 video as it uses a rather strange aspect resolution - 500×600px - which allowed me to display both the physical view of what’s being done to the mixer and the output.

This is all quite new for me, I don’t have much practice actually talking to cameras, so I’d love to hear your feedback. Is the format working for you? Does my trim-every-extraneous-second editing style scare you? Would you like to see more videos like this on CDMo?

If you follow CDMu, you might have noticed Peter’s recent Kore@CDM announcement. Today I’m extremely happy to be able to officially launch of our first visual minisite; for the Vixid VJX16-4 video mixer:

Vixid@CDM, http://vixid.noisepages.com

The visualist world is in a real period of growth at the moment, and we think that Vixid are one of the companies who are doing great things to help this growth. From our first moments with a VJX we know that we wanted to spend more time and really get to know it. So we approached Vixid about partnering with CDM to create a site devoted to exploring the VJX16-4, and how it can help our art grow and develop.

How this partnership works: With a tool as deep and flexible as this, the traditional “couple of days or weeks” review loan wouldn’t really work. So Vixid have sent me a VJX16-4 to keep. This will allow me to spend time learning its tricks, trying it in different configurations in both live and studio settings, and to share what I’m learning.
In effect Vixid are paying for this content, but it’s not a “home shopping network advertorial” kind of situation. There will be no hand up the back of my shirt or sanitized autocue telling us what to say. We’ve built vixid.noisepages primarily because we love the mixer, and want it to become part of what we do. Getting paid for writing about it is an added bonus, for everyone really: Readers and users get new information and inspiration on what the VJX can do for their art, Vixid get a resource to help their existing users (or inspire new ones), and I get an amazing new toy to play with to spend some very serious and scholarly time doing educational research with a technologically sophisticated device.

I’m quite aware that some will consider this to be “selling out”. Peter and I have spent a lot of time discussing how we want CDM to progress, and we consider this kind of partnership to be an important part of building the visualist site of the future. We’re aiming to grow CDMo to a point where we can spend more time writing and creating, to document and to help this artform mature, and sponsorship from developers we think are pointed in the right direction is just one part of this plan.

So, rationale aside, what can you expect to see coming up on Vixid.noisepages? I’ll be going through some of the basics, like how to set up, and differences between “traditional” VJ mixers and the “Vixid way”, and more advanced stuff, like using MIDI to do crazy stuff with live inputs, and how to get the Vixid to operate as 2 virtual mixers outputting to separate screens. Oh, and I recently received 16 security cameras in the mail. The Vixid has 16 inputs… that should be interesting.

We covered a source for cheap visualist miscellany last week. It included cheap NTSC CMOS cameras, but unfortunately DealExtreme doesn’t seem to stock much PAL gear.

I had gone looking and placed an order with another site, but didn’t want to recommend it until that order had arrived intact.

That order has arrived intact.

The source for these cameras is DHGate, which is a “marketplace” rather than a direct merchant. DHGate provide a database of products and act as an escrow for payment, it feels a little like eBay. Terms are set by the individual seller, so it’s not a free-shipping wonderland like DealExtreme, but the prices are still finger-tinglingly low. I ordered 16 of these little cameras, which seem to be the PAL version of the NTSC ones at DealExtreme. 16 cameras cost me US$219 including shipping ($13.70 each) and they arrived in about a week. I’ve unpacked and tested them, and they’re all working perfectly.

OMIRI com VIXID from mspinky23 on Vimeo. (Warning: Contains some NSFW imagery. Jaymis.)

CDM’s Jaymis has just gotten his Vixid VJX16-4 mixer, but we continue getting other hands-on reports from VJs. This one comes from Tiago Pereira, who’s posted a video of him having some healthy play time. Thanks, Tiago — looks like you’re having a blast. Keep them coming, with this or your other favorite gear.

Deepvisual has posted a second Vixid demo video to VJForums, showing off the layer arrangement functions, preview selection, and blend mode layering:

There is currently a VJX16-4 with my name on the box, en-route between France and Australia. It should be arriving in the next couple of days - just in time for a run of shows at Sydney’s The Basement - so expect plenty of Vixid news, reviews and tips to come.

Previously: Blend Modes, Keying and More: Vixid Function Demo Video from Deepvisual.

Deepvisual have posted a 3 minute look at some of the VJX16-4’s functions on VJForums.

More tutorials on a variety of gear can be found on their website.

In case you haven’t noticed, a theme has been emerging on CDMotion: alternative interfaces geared for performance, software that expands the range of expression, and projection that gets visuals out of the 4:3-ratio box. There’s no one solution, and the expense involved in the tools covers quite the gamut. (I may have to personally start the “ghetto” guide to this stuff.)

But bringing together these elements is still essential to raising the impact of visuals. I still hear the “but the visuals aren’t as important” over and over again from people outside our field, and I think it’s a phrase that is — mercifully — doomed to extinction as visualists expand their craft.

So, one artist collective we’ve been covering is Turkey-based artificialeyes.tv. We’ve seen the Video Moving System, the automated mirror system for projection, the Vixid mixer with its matrix and multiple blend mode features (among other things), and the eyeball-scorching interface of 3L (”Thrill”) now in beta.

To see it all put together, of course, we’d really like to hit the club in Istanbul. Barring that, though, Michael from artificialeyes.tv has directed us at some images and video.

It’s really clear to me from these images how little you need lights. And in motion, with architectural effects amplifying the imagery, the projector itself can be more than just lighting effect (especially with these in motion, something you don’t get from the stills).

The era of the visualist has come to an exciting point. From a relatively fringe activity, we have seen tools and techniques develop quickly over the last couple of years. The idea of a VJ as a performer is steadily gaining more public mind share. Along with this growth, hardware and software concepts from both new and established developers are helping to further expand the possibilities we have for production and performance.

One of the most exciting groups to enter the VJ consciousness recently is Vixid. They’ve been working on their VJ mixer - the VJX16-4 - for several years, and it finally started hitting the market in 2007.

Unlike the other semi-recent entries to the vision mixer market - Numark’s AVM02 and Pioneer’s Big Expensive Thing - the VJX16-4 isn’t just an incremental upgrade to the basic task of "mixing between two sources of video". Vixid have designed it from the ground up to be a considerably more advanced way of working with live video.

Fortunately, Michael and Todd of artificialeyes were available to guide us through this exciting and slightly confusing new world. We shot many hours of video with the ae guys at ByteMe Festival last December, including plenty of time with the VJX. First up: An intro and overview to this superb piece of kit. The video runs for 10:30. Considerably longer than we’d intended to make these CDMtv videos, however we believe the Vixid is such an important and potentially influential piece of hardware - and such a big investment - that you’d want to get more detailed information rather than a superficial overview. For those who are impatient or feeling texty I’ll follow up the video with some of my first impressions and thoughts.