Like a continuously expanding themepark emerging sprouting towers through a forest floor, audiovisual tools – they keep developing at a cracking pace. Here’s a quick scan of the recent* topography. ( *well, actually, it was April Snippets, but then there was this minor issue of a spamwar and entire blog rebuild to deal with… still some pixel-juicy links below though.. )
(above Melb VJ Keith Deverell + DFUSE in last minute preparation mode )
Live Audiovisual Performance
Kids’ve been busy in the Northern hemisphere it seems. The Euro-experimental-media festival circuit has been charging ahead, much of it documented at createdigitalmotion.com by by 1 x Toby *spark, wolverine UK VJ of note, who trampled his way through the AV Social at London – an event which featured performances and discussions, but also a fantastic compilation of VJ narrative works, cream of the crop, each complete with a URL to explore. Next stop was the Node 08 festival in Frankfurt, exploring the VVVV software and the gazillions of projects spawned by it. Then the Mapping Festival in Geneva, put together by people connected to the VJ software Modul8, another smorgasbord of sublime AV performances and installations. Dizzy yet? Then the Vision’r festival in Paris, where Toby observed “a strong culture of innovative live performance, which brings visualism and a/v trickery with it, but through a very different lens”, and a new release of Resolume, the long dominant PC VJ software now becoming available natively on OS X as well. Coming soon Visual Berlin and Live Performer’s Meeting in Rome.
Elsewhere in the North, Vague Terrain offer up a fantastic cross-section of VJ + AV related articles in a recent journal, including an interview with VJ Solu ( Finland / Barcelona ). And the consistent DVblog offers up this fascinating performance / video event where the screen is made up of large white cubes which are continually deconstructed during the event, playfully changing the nature of the projections ( Event by myspace.com/pixelbirds )
Video Hardware
The much hyped 4K resolution RED camera gets plenty of mentioned over at the EDIT blog, but the blog is worth checking out for it’s general tips about editing and hardware, software etc. Having a 4000 pixel wide image isn’t necessary for most people though, and some have even been shying away from HD cameras for all the extra headaches and hard drive space the extra image size needs. Seeing the UK’s DFUSE preparing for a performance in Melbourne recently though, opened my eyes to some of the more creative options that HD allows. Even if you still choose to work with smaller resolutions, having that extra width and height to play with can prove useful in all kinds of complicated zooming, panning, tilting and multi-screen scenarios.
Video Software
Yes, a new version of resolume is out ( now for mac + pc), and along with it a new version of the popular freeframe effects, now optimised to take advantage of graphics card acceleration. If needing some clips to play in that, youtube has started including much higher resolution clips and the Google Operating System blog notes a useful hack to access and save these videos as mp4 files ( allowing editing and much easier use for VJing ). On the Quartz Composer front, Machines Don’t Care has been kicking many goals with lots of experiments building all sorts of effects, plugins and real-time graphic mutations – all of which can be then inserted into various OS X VJ software.
Video on the Interwebs
Yes there are over 200 video uploading services now, yes there are a key dozen or so with better options than youtube ( including payment options, higher resolution, better interfaces, browser based remixing, better social functions etc, but no, none of them have a fraction of the eyeballs of youtube. Which makes the recent extension of youtube’s partnership scheme into Australia significant. This means if you have original clips you own the copyright to, you can enter into an agreement to share part of the ad revenue these clips generate on youtube.
Popular photo sharing site flickr recently made a splash too, adding the ability to add video or what they call ‘long photos’ to their site. There’s something appealing about the way they have implemented this, and the outlet for shorter clips amongst the well defined flickr community. After a splash of motion graphics? Try flickr.com/groups/vdmx/ or flickr.com/groups/cdmo/pool.
audio-surf.com – this one intrigues – a music adapting ( PC only ) puzzle racer where you upload your own music to create your own game parameters. “The shape, the speed, and the mood of each ride is determined by the song you choose. Earn points for clustering together blocks of the same color on the highway, and compete with others on the internet for the high score on your favourite songs.
Feed Me?
Brian Kane of the seminal AV act EBN has too many projects and provocations happening now.
UK’s United Visual Artists now have blog, and apparently did a great presentation of works at a recent Melbourne design conference.
Tutorial sites are multiplying fast which is great, found Embryo recently.
Art of title sequences? Sure : www.artofthetitle.com
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