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

Imagine what’s now possible with a mobile phone: anyone with a supported device can jam with other artists, walk up to an installation, connect to other creators and other software, all using supported protocols. Leaving behind the days of painstaking manual adjustment of MIDI commands and obscure drivers, and even the act of having to physically connect gear, software - and with it, digital art - can simply talk to each other in standard ways.

That’s why we’re excited about software like Memo Atken’s MSA Remote. It uses the standardization provided by the network-savvy, open protocol OSC, with additional plug-and-play (or, erm, don’t plug, do play) functionality from the TUIO protocol. OSC provides the communication; TUIO makes the messages standardized.

To avoid confusion: You do NOT need a Mac to use OSC. OSCulator is a cool app - and makes bridging to MIDI easier - but it’s just one tool among many. You can use this app with Windows and Linux, too, and visual apps like VDMX, Resolume Avenue, Pd/GEM, Processing… the list goes on. In fact, almost every visual app today worth using uses OSC, even as the music world is painfully slow to catch on.

Netzstaub has been pumping out all kinds of great code and projects over on his blog. Here’s an especially sweet example: he’s got Processing working with a basic headtracking process. The input involves oscp5 and netp5 used with the Mac-only DarwiinRemoteOSC library, but could be adapted to other operating systems.

Wiimote Headtracking in Processing via wesen’s Twitter (follow CDM at Twitter: cdmblogs)

Once the data is there, the rest is basically math. You position the camera to look straight ahead, and then adjust the viewing angle based on incoming data.

The sketch is available, so go try it — and see if further improvements or other applications are possible.

In case you aren’t already familiar with it, here’s the now-famous video featuring Wiimote headtracking, by Carnegie Mellon’s Johnny Chung Lee:

We’ll have some more on the Robotic Camera thing soon, but in the meantime, check out the Pilot View FPV 2400 kit. It’s not quite the gyro-controlled version (below), but apparently they have a pan/tilt coming soon.

As an intellectual exercise, let’s price a similar setup from aforementioned cheapie online store DealExtreme:

USB 2.4GHz Spy Camera Set: $120
iTheatre Virtual Vision Video Glasses: $149

Ok. I don’t think I should be considering this any further. VJing is an expensive enough hobby, remote control flight would be the end of me.

(via Make.)

Aforementioned visual synthsizer slash exercise tool WiiWhorld has been released for public consumption.

Jeff Mission has tied together GlovePIE (for Bluetooth/Wiimote input (previously on CDMo)), Whorld, and his own secret sauce (a GlovePIE script to control Whorld).

Put them all together with a dash of virtual midi port, and you get this:

Or as Jeff describes it:

Whorld is a free, open-source, live visual synthesizer for sacred geometry. It uses math to create a seamless animation of mesmerizing psychedelic images. You can VJ with it, make unique digital artwork with it, or sit back and watch it like a screensaver. The WiiWhorld project makes it possible to control the Whorld visualizer with the Nintendo Wiimote.

WiiWhorld.

Jeff Mission writes to say he’s been working on a new project that couples the Wii remote with generative visuals — all built in free software. Like it, but think it could go further? It’s free, so have a go (soon, at least). Jeff writes:

Chris Korda, developer of the open-source VJ softwares Whorld and FFRend, and I have been working on a project to control real-time, generative geometric visuals with the ever-popular Nintendo Wiimote. We dubbed the project WiiWhorld.

I am pleased to announce that the first proper WiiWhorld demo video is now available online:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bw1bHVPHk_g

Swirly colors, techno, dancing, and lots of smiling faces! Anyway, I think it does a decent job of capturing people having fun playing with our little digital toy.

The video was cobbled together from about 90 minutes of party footage shot a couple months ago. We set up our rig and invited people to play around, with a minimum of instruction. It was great fun to watch people play around, figure it out, and then teach new techniques to one another.

As for the project itself, it requires a Wiimote and a bluetooth-enabled computer. All the software involved (GlovePIE, Whorld, and FFRend) is 100% free, making this (we hope) a project that others can adopt and expand in the future, at minimal cost. We hope to publish more detailed information soon, so that others can try WiiWhorld for themselves.

Please give it a look, leave comments and ratings, and pass it on!

The project is apparently brand new — and Jeff says more web content and videos and documentation and such are all coming soon.

And yes, GlovePIE, Whorld, and FFRend are all free and open-source Windows apps. (And you thought Linux had all the fun.) beatfix (aka Jeff) suggested them and got our Windows free apps round-up going:

VisualJockey Goes Freeware; Free Windows and Cross-Platform VJ - Visualist Round-Up

Anyone who wants to get us rolling on a similar Mac or Linux list, drop us a line.