So Mexico morphed into MOFO… and now it’s late January 2015. Anyways. Here is some documentation for what happened in Hobart, the Mexican samples will have to wait a little longer.
I was in Hobart to do triple-Screen Video Projections at ‘ Faux Mo‘, which is the afterparty venue each night for the MOFO Festival, connected to the MONA gallery in Hobart, Tasmania. It tends to be eclectic – here’s the program.
Highlights included doing video for – the Frikstailers, (rad Argentinian duo), ZA! (Barcelona crazies!), Chupacabra (Hobart based Latin American band),Vulgargrad (Russian-gypsy-punk!), The Osaka Ramones (Aka Shonen Knife doing Ramones covers), Mad Professor (dubb-b-b), and The Bird– and getting to animate the illustrations of Hobart artists – Tom O’ Hern and Dane Chisolm.
Video-wise, I was running a combo of VDMX and Millumin to trigger, manipulate, sequence and map the videos to a mainstage screen, and two side-wings.
(click the image below to see a larger version)
Other festival good-times while wandering:
– some of Tim Hecker‘s set had me transported, Zammuto(ex-Books) have a pretty engaging and fun audiovisual live set, playing on Robin Fox’s laser-organwas surprisingly engaging, Filastine + Nova delivered a very tightly crafted audiovisual set, there was some impromptu whisky-bar parkour by Jamin, Keith Deverell‘s beautifully shot film installation used mirrors and a walk-through screen very effectively, and finally managed a few moments inside the inflatable labyrinth by Architects of Air, before departing. Thanks Hobart!
Click through for a photo-slideshow below, or browse directly.
Am super excited – it’ll be my first time in any of the Americas. From Nov 26 – Dec 22 I’ll be wandering through Mexico City, Oaxaca, Tijuana, as well as Cuernavaca, Metepec and a few other places in between.
I’ll be doing live-video for the Cumbia Cosmonauts tour (you can help theCumbia Cosmonauts tour crowdfunding campaign below, + get assorted Mexican goods in the mail… postcards, marketplace mixtapes, tshirts etc) – and outside of that I hope to be holidaying through Mexican landscapes, crazy butterfly reserves, Aztec ruins, mexican wrestling matches, visiting unusual rooftops, haggling about weird vintage Mexican Masks, practicing my duolingo Espańol (si, level one!)….
…and where possible, doing some live video projection + filming outdoors with any Mexican artists / film-makers / performers.
Love to hear from anybody with Mexico-tips, or weird filming locations / fun people to film / project with etc
And aye, flying across the Pacific Ocean to Mexico means going via Los Angeles – so it seemed insane not to be spending my first few days in the United States on the way back.
Love to hear any Los Angeles tips – places to visit/ good rooftop filming locations / people interested in outdoor projections – or Death Valley trips?
Chancha Via Circuito – a favourite listen in recent years – has a new album out – Amansara (Wonderwheel Recordings). I first discovered his enchanting atmospheres and mixing on his wonderful ZZK Records mixtape (promoting his previous album Rio Arriba). His music seems to thrive best in mixtapes (see also Mixtape Cumbiero European Tour 2013 and a mixtape at Testpressing for new album ), reminding at times of early Future Sound of London and their wandering from soundscape to rhythm and back again. There’s a warmth to this music, and despite a slower tempo, there’s a momentum to it all as well. Recommendo!
Oh and a special shout-out too, for Paula Duro, who makes the enchanting artwork for Chancha (and featured in the backlayer of the collage above), as well as much of her own cool stuff. Check out her playful cosmic palette at flickr.
So I’ve been reading a lot lately. And swimming in words returns me to writing. Or at least – some words about books.
The infinite shelves at Goodreads are responsible for the bulk of the book orders above (want to swap recommendations?). I don’t know what took me so long to finally join Goodreads, I’d long been finding it tricky to get interesting book recommendations (particularly – good fiction – compared to say music or movies). Amazon has a decent catalogue, but I’ve found it unreliable for recommending new fiction of interest. And while I prefer the hand-curation of say – the Brainpickings bookshelf, the McSweeney’s Journal or DJ Rupture’s Mudd Up Book Club (includes a pretty great collection of sci-fi set in non-anglo cities), each of those are a pretty limited lense.
Anyways, I seem to have my reading for the next while sorted, which is also going to mean some more words here over time.
And if you’re not already aware of the second-hand booksellers below, this is where I found the bulk of the above:
Book Depository (my first choice – best range, generally cheapest overall to send to Australia)
BetterWorldBooks (good range – but seems deliberately deceptive in the way they offer ‘free postage ‘ – they show cheap prices after a search, but every single time, clicking on a book found in search, shows up as a much higher price, when you want to buy it.)
As real-time video software continues to evolve, we’re starting to see some really thoughtfully considered applications – such as Millumin, by Philippe Charaund, software dedicated to “create and perform audiovisual shows”. In part, Millumin is possible because of today’s easy re-routing of video between applications (thanks to software such as Syphon on mac and Spout on PC), which has enabled some developers to focus on specialty areas, and allowed others to provide ways of usefully integrating different parts of a video workflow.
Where does Millumin fit in?
While there are a lot of real-time video tools and specialities available, Millumin’s great strength is as over-arching software – and providing useful ways for co-ordinating and controlling other software ( eg triggering and manipulating clips inside VJ software, and recompositing, mapping and sequencing that video with Millumin, easily jumping between very complex compositions).
Millumin will especially be of interest to those seeking to sync media in tightly curated shows eg syncing video with important theatrical cues, conference cues, or a specific sequence of events in a music show. Aside from the time-based controls, it’s also a pretty effective piece of mapping software – which includes a built in capacity to edge blend between projectors.
In other words, Millumin provides good control over time (sequencing) and space ( compositing and mapping). It’s a unique recipe – while there are other apps that offer more advanced portions of what Millumin does – eg Vezer‘s sequencing and timeline options, or Madmapper‘s mapping controls – there’s nothing else that quite manages to do what Millumin does. QLab is probably it’s closest competitor, with the strengths and weaknesses of each meaning one or the other will suit your workflow better.
Millumin’s Workflow?
From their site guide: 1. Drag-and-drop files from Finder to the Dashboard, and click on the cells to play them 2. Use the Workspace toolbar to move, map, warp, mask … to rotate and scale the layers directly in the workspace. 3. Change blend mode, add effects, transitions and more from the Properties Panel 4. In the Library, manage your files, Syphon servers and inputs 5. Create a Composition, then organize your media in time with keyframes
– includes ability to play compositions within compositions ( like nested compositions in After Effects)
– Also like AE – includes adjustible keyframes – change opacity, position, scale or rotation change over time to specific values.
– cue points can be added.
– pause on cue points 6. Import this Composition into the Dashboard + switch between complex compositions easily. 7. The Magic Key is [SHIFT] : maintain it to multi-select and snap items
Features?
Control of time / sequencing: Millumin’s key-framable timelines will be warmly familiar to everyone who has used video editing software, and tends to find such functions missing within VJ software. Most VJ software will show a timeline / playhead for each clip – but much more rare is a capacity to place many clips along a timeline, and easily add cue points, and easy linear arrangements. Example nice touch? Drag and drop a clip onto a timeline, then drag the end of it to auto-loop as long as you need.
Room for improvement? There are lots of little user interface quirks that could be removed / better designed. Admittedly this is partly because Millumin reminds so much of video editing and compositing software – which brings a whole bunch of fine-tuned expectations – and sets an unfair benchmark – relatively new software made by one person could hardly be expected to match the resources and foundations of established editing and compositing software.
Control of space / compositing:
Video compositors will find it a pleasure to be able to create complex compositions, and nest and even animate these comps within other comps. In this respect Millumin is the closest thing to a real-time After Effects that exists. Sequencing and switching between various comps is trivial to implement…
.. and these ‘presets’ / ‘dashboard selections’ – can be triggered from other software using midi or OSC – eg the M1-m10 presets built into a VDMX control surface window below.
Millumin can also take in as many syphon inputs as can be thrown at it – which integrates it well with VDMX’s capacity to send out many. All of these can be composited differently in Millumin’s compositions, allowing for a huge amount of flexibility and convenience. (Snap below includes sequined ninja in oyster cave footage used at recent Dark Faux Mo festival in Hobart.)
Control of space / mapping:
Millumin features great controls for multiple outputs, and features multi-screen edge blending and feathering of masks:
Room for improvement? Being able to work better with multiple projectors that have different aspect ratios to each other.
Visual Effects?
As a standalone application, Millumin has a limited range of visual effects. On the other hand – deep syphon integration means easy piping in of video from other software, for sequencing or compositing, and quartz composer integration means being able to easily add customised QC elements, effects and compositions to any of that video piped in.
Requirements:
– Mac OSX 10.6 or later. (PC version in the pipeline)
– 599€ (VAT not included) = A license for Millumin on 2 different computers. for 2 computers . Educational and rental pricing available by negotiation.
Verdict:
Millumin is very thoughtfully crafted software, with a nicely expanding feature set. And while it’s missing refinement or lacking more detailed control in a few places, it continues to develop and evolve into a fantastic and versatile tool for live video, especially with multi-screen compositing.
– Lotech (NZ) for inspirational use of Millumin @ Splore – each VJ could send a signal into the machine running Millumin, which effectively let them play on a pre-mapped structure, and for ongoing feedback about Millumin over time.
– Jem the Misfit (NZ/Aus/Ger) – for highlighting how creatively Millumin could be used for compositing.
