It’s not the lumens that count; it’s how you use them. But it’s easy to forget that when your projections just got blown out by lights, which someone used because they can move and your projection can’t. And it’s easy to get frustrated with the limitations of projection when you’re again looking at a static 4:3 rectangle on another flat wall.

Unfortunately, the art of using mirrors and other techniques to make projection more dynamic aren’t nearly as well known as they could be. Alternative projection techniques have also tended not to be productized. One significant exception is VMS or VideoMovingSystem. It’s the rare case of a hardware product made specifically for creative, live, performative projection. VMS is similar to the iCue moving mirror and some other tools, but it takes the kind of tools previously customized for lighting and specially adapts them to projection. You can actually buy a VMS unit with a projector already attached, or buy a unit that will fit a standard projector, making these more effective and easier to mount and use than lighting-specific instruments. It’s not a cheap solution for an independent VJ, but it is cheaper than competing custom lighting solutions. And if you read this site, you should already know that digital, computer-powered projection can do all kinds of things boring motorized lights can’t.

artificialeyes’ Michael Parenti and Todd Thille have taken a unique role in both championing the VMS tool and developing custom applications for it, as well as rocking Istanbul with the results. Michael said repeatedly that it saved the whole act of VJing for him. We got to talk to Michael and Todd about VMS and why it’s important — and, better yet, we got to play with these units, remote-controlled by artificialeyes’ 3L software and Michael’s iPhone. Even if you don’t plan on picking up VMS yourself (or I should say, convincing a club to buy them for you), you can tell from the interview how much of a difference changing a projection technique can make — not lumens, and not content, the two things we often get hung up on.

Jaymis: I have plenty more video from the ae guys waiting to be edited, both long-form looks into Thrill, and quick tips as well. That said, video is a bit of a new step for CDMo. This past year we’ve been talking about being a visualist mostly through the written word, so it would be great to get some feedback. Do you find video reviews and articles useful? Like the editing style? Think Peter should do voiceovers for software training videos? Hit the comments.

© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Motion, 2008. |
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2008 is looking like an extraordinary year for visualists: there’s an explosion of new software tools for live visuals. One of the most eagerly-anticipated is 3L (pronounced “Thrill”), a multi-purpose live visual application for Mac, from the massively-talented artificialeyes trio of Pascal Lesport, Michael Parenti and Todd Thille. (Todd, FYI, you may have to change that last name to 3iL.) We’ll be showing and explaining where 3L fits in, but let me jump into my unedited geeky take on it first.

3L is unique in that it takes a lot of the cool generative effects people are doing in individual patches for Max or Processing, loads them into one massively modular interface, and mixes in the prerequisite amount of pixel processing, audio, and MIDI. It’s like the monster Jitter patch you’ll never have time to finish, all on one screen — one very big screen; the software actually requires 1440×900 resolution to operate. If they had just done that, Thrill might fade into the blur of other modular environments created in recent years, but the software has also been packed with features tested by the Artificial Eyes crew in their gigs — meaning a whole lot of what you’d want to be able to do in a club is there already, including countless features you may not have even thought of yet. Pascal also apparently coded his way around limitations in Jitter.

We got an inside peek at the software in Perth. In fact, we peeked at a little too much — so much, we’re still, erm, editing all the footage we shot. And we might have gotten into that editing in Perth were we not out until the wee hours of the morning VJing with Thrill. Jack and Coke, Western Australian nightclub filled with ridiculously young-looking clubgoers, plus a completely unfamiliar interface that looks like the love child of Max/MSP, a 747, and a spaceship? Hell, yeah. With everything wired for MIDI and sound reactivity, Jaymis and I immediately found ourselves zoning into pulsing abstract patterns, even when we weren’t entirely sure what we were doing.
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This is my first try to create a slightly more complex, gravity based particle system. Just a quick first test, built with processing using traer.physics library.

the particles are drawn towards invisible gravity orbs in 3D space.
Thanks for sharing such a great, complex, yet very simple to use library! I am really looking forward to use this stuff for more conceptual work!

Cast: moka

Cast: Rik Lomas

Music video of Elektrik Shiivers by Aliceffekt
Screened at Minute Moments 2008 on Jan 29th 2008

Cast: ikaruga

The road between us exploits the proliferation of geo-localized images on Flickr, constructing fictitious journeys from the position of these images on the world-wide territory. These routes will be integrated like real traces in the already existing multitude.
Our program allows you to choose a place on earth where you want to find a route. In this area, it selects a first shot at random. From that image, it then determines the closest photo, and draws the link that connects them. It continues like this until there are no longer pictures nearby.

You can then view the route, the photographs that make it up (one by one or in a slideshow), as well as the avatars and the names of the authors of these images.
The route is also exported to a KML file, viewable in Google Maps or Google Earth.

Once the trails recorded, we send an email to the authors of the photos, thanking them for their participation in this wonderful ride We send it to everyone in claiming to be the others, being as a server waiting for the results of these exchanges.

Although they’ve traveled into the same spaces, the authors don’t know each other, and find themselves forced against their will to remember a ride they haven’t done.

Faced with these routes that are as micro-narratives, we personally have a hard time imagining that they haven’t been together.

The road between us can too be viewed in physical installation :

We’re working right now to adapt the program into a web application, so that everyone can create its own routes. The app was built with Processing, using the proXML library. Flickr offers the use of its databases with this API.

more informations at http://theroadbetweenus.net

Tinkering with Processing + Ess Library. Song is Apologize by OneRepublic.

Author: randomjig
Keywords: processing.org processing generative visualization
Added: January 29, 2008

An older piece, i’m going to revisit with Vera soon for an upcoming performance in Stuttgart

Still loving the music Arran had put together ….

Made with Processing. Audio by The Flashbulb (’Warren’ off the album These Open Fields).

Test render of the code I tweaked for my talk at UCLA. Still getting things just right. More to come.

Cast: flight404

Tinkering with Processing and the Ess library.

Cast: jig

Cascade on Wheels is a visualization project that intends to express the quantity of cars we live with in big cities nowadays. The data set we worked on is the daily average of cars passing by streets, over a year. In this case, a section of the Madrid city center, during 2006.

http://trsp.net/cow

Cast: steph thirion

Cascade on Wheels is a visualization project that intends to express the quantity of cars we live with in big cities nowadays. The data set we worked on is the daily average of cars passing by streets, over a year. In this case, a section of the Madrid city center, during 2006.

http://trsp.net/cow

Cast: steph thirion

Live performance using custom drawing software, made in processing.

Music by Arran Poole

Cast: fliegerhorst

KZero, a company specialized in consulting and research on virtual worlds, released a first version of a map showing the size and the age of specific users of the virtual worlds. As you can see, the users of Second Life are at large over thirteen years, as well as the Habbo Hotel, that one for kids, got far the most users in January 2008. KZero also have a metaverse growth forecast besides other interesting things.