Ilias Bergstrom has created a tool for mixing Processing sketches live in performance. (Thanks, Bart!) The resulting tool lets you cross-fade between sketches and easily host a series of sketches in a gig. The process is pretty straightforward:

1. Use the included Foetus library with your sketch to prepare it for use (your sketch needs to use the OPENGL renderer, but I generally find that to be the best route, anyway)

2. Initialize your set for use in the code, setting it up to respond to input if desire (which is the whole fun of it, of course)

3. Put all your sketches together in a folder

4. Configure a text INI file to set up your OpenSoundController, so you can control your sets live with OSC-ready hardware and/or software

5. Play your sketches as “synths,” complete with cross-fading!

Put it all together, and you’ve got one bad Mother (watch your mouth!) The first release came out a bit earlier this fall. It comes with the library and some examples built in Max for control. Everything’s GPL v3 open-sourced.

Onar | 3D blog

processing-mother @ Google Code

Ilias and Beau Lotto have also written an academic paper on the tool.

Of course, once you start down this road, you could naturally come up with a lot of other potential features – and it’d be really, really nice to have this basic playback capability in a full-blown VJ host, so you could go back to some traditional clip mixing.

I haven’t had much chance to play with this, so anxious to hear feedback.

Do you play live with Processing? How do you do it? We’d love to hear how different people are working.

You can go hear Onar3d’s music on Last.fm. Something else to listen to while you code.

Updated: PC only for now, but a Mac version is in the works. (Could also be nice to test this on Linux…)

Decibel Festival :: Thursday Quickie from momo_the_monster on Vimeo.

Ed.: Visualists are constantly looking for better exposure and better fusion with musical events. In the US’ Pacific Northwest, one highlight of the North American calendar year is unquestionably the legendary Decibel Festival. Our own Momo is there, at an event that also attracts the likes of another favorite visualist of ours, Scott Pagano.

Momo sends along this dispatch from Decibel. -PK

Kotaku points us to a very odd an interesting looking prototype gaming console. The gist of the system is that it captures real-time data from sensors, such as GPS, a camera system, etc., to mold reality into an immersive gaming environment.

Kotaku puts it rather well :

I don’t come from the future, where everyday people carry s*** like this around in their back pocket. Sadly the device is very much in the prototype stage, and may not even be put into production … at least not until the year 2019, when people’s minds will be ready for it.

However, it did get me thinking of interesting uses for it and similar systems that integrate lots of sensor data with desktop processing power. It seems it would suit itself far more to immersive interactive improvisation, which lines up quite well for what many VJs try to do. Either way, I’d rather use something like this in a club or a concert hall than playing a first person shooter running around the streets of New York. Those 2019 cabs still hurt. I’ll admit this is rather far off, and that I am stretching, but I can imagine doing some really fun and creative things with a device like this.

Via Kotaku : Hewlett-Packard Unveil New Prototype, Vid For Gaming Handheld

Ed.: Far off? I don’t think so. Strap an Arduino or other sensor-to-digital interface to a Nokia N800, and you’re there! (GPS + camera + sensors.) For visualists, too, we have an added edge: you can take a simpler mobile machine as the interface device, wirelessly connected to a computer as a base station for the heavy lifting. Result: a very affordable device ought to work. -PK

Diesel’s latest fashion show featured some 3D holographic projection that is just beyond cool.

Creative Review has the scoop and spoke with a mysterious tech who hinted at some of the inner workings:

“The visuals are projected through a series of ‘foils’ into mid air, so you see the images in mid-air. The models can then interact with them and walk through them. We used plastic foils placed at 45 degree angles so that the projected light from the ceiling goes onto a foil, is reflected on to another and then into the air.

Creative Review has some more information regarding the setup, but the short of it is, 2 HD projectors, pre rendered CGI footage at HD resolution projected down from the ceiling, and a stunned audience (well, they had better be).

An interesting comment at Creative Review suggests that the effect is an updated “Peppers Ghost” setup, which means in theory, some enterprising VJ could set this up today. Either way, it looks incredible.

The tour with Bobby Flynn is hotting up now. Over the weekend we had two shows: In Brisbane and the Gold Coast, which meant that I spent about 8 hours of my weekend setting up and tearing down my rig, aligning projectors and screens, running cables, and running around. The tour map currently displays 16 gigs down Australia’s east coast, and we will have another 35 or so joining them over the next week or so as dates are finalized. The cardboard box protecting my V4 during transport has already torn, and I’m sick of plugging and unplugging cables. So I need to get this stuff cased up, for the protection of my hardware and my sainity.

The current list (left to right, top to bottom):

• Wii - for pre-show warmups and after hours fun. Need to organize a wireless sensor bar.
• Behringer BCD2000 - Ghetto, but functional.
• Behringer BCR2000 - less ghetto than the BCD2000, and more functional.
• Numark AVM02 - Reviewed here.
• Samsung 940n 19″ LCD Monitor
• Lacie 200GB External Drive - Several years old, so should probably be replaced
• Macbook - Main Laptop. Running VDMX, Max/MSP/Jitter, Ableton Live etc.
• Thinkpad - Backup laptop. Running Ableton Live, Max/MSP/Jitter, Processing etc.
• Korg Kaoss Pad Entrancer - Video/Audio effects unit.
• Edirol V4
• Small Form Factor PC
• Voxson portable DVD player/monitor