skynoise.net

2013, Year of the Swiss Tasmanian Tiger Monkey

HELLO INTERNET.

The slow fade out of Melbourne’s summer = an opportune time to re-spark the skynoise engines. It’s also likely I just miss writing things longer than 140 characters. Especially since I’m just about to finish reading a 3000 page novel ( The Baroque Cycle, Yo!). Regardless of the roots….. expect some fruits.. scattered across the next few months – riffs about visual culture, and likely some weirder tangents too. That’s what ma bones are saying. And sooner than that – some long overdue reviews:

Quartz Composer book from ILQC
nVeil (SVG based visual FX software)
Millumin (interesting timeline based visual performance software)

Below – the summer that kept skynoise drooling on its pillow:

Dec 2012:
Stereosonic – Touchscreen video booth installations for an energy drink tent. (photos got animated, projected and sent online.)
Sampology at Falls Festival Dec 30 ( Marion Bay ) + Dec 31 ( Lorne ) ( Mixing camera sources with Sampology’s live video).

Jan 2013:

MONA FOMA Projections on a 4 storey fire escape stairwell, and custom animations for the FAUX MO cinema. Fun was had. Some keywords to throw in a blender: Chicks on Speed, No Zu, Digital Primate, Soda Jerk, a sequined ninja, MONA, David Byrne’s reflections about MONA, and Richard Flanagan’s New Yorker article about MONA founder, David Walsh – the professional gambler responsible for “building a private art museum in Tasmania dedicated to sex and death”. MONA museum is also famous for ‘The O‘ – “the mobile device given to all visitors who walk through Mona’s doors… there are no labels to be found anywhere on the walls of the museum.. these devices provided access to information about the art.”

Feb 2013:

Developed an audiovisual performance with The Swiss Conspiracy ( Moses Iten from The Cumbia Cosmonauts, and Christoph H. Müller from Gotan Project ) , which was performed at The Swiss Festival. The show ended up featuring footage shot at Alpenrail, the largest Swiss Alps railway model replica in the Southern hemisphere ( gopro train tunnels! ) and goats from a Swiss goat cheese farm SW of Hobart.

Rebirth of A Firebird – Helped out with some live projections for a couple of sequences for a ‘hip-hop sci-fi’ short film being made by Alan Nguyen (aka 2 Pants Rotation – in his giant monster rapping mode).

Mar 2013:

At the Adelaide Festival – did live video for The Cumbia Cosmonauts at the fun pop-up venue, Barrio. The theme for the night was ‘Animal House’ – which meant there was a camel, piglets and geese nearby, as well as dog masseur doing live demonstrations on a table.

And Then It Was Now:
– Developing an audiovisual performance for Wide Open Spaces, a wonderful desert festival held out near Alice Springs in May. Longtime collaborator Suckafish P Jonez is back from Barcelona, and we’re excited to be exploring AV again. Weekly rehearsals!

– Am co-hosting a studio elective at RMIT within the design faculty, looking at video production, projection and installation – from an interior design perspective (which tends to include a lot more materials and building related research / development). It’s a fun studio, which uses mapping processes, and comic / graphic novel storytelling techniques to help inform video installations.

– Am slowly rolling out a series of updates to the skynoise.net/projects page, finally uploading documentation from a range of projects… including the snippets below, developed for 360 last year.

Elsewhere:
I PREFER VIMEO: ((Better quality encoding/resolution/interface/community comments etc))
OTHERS PREFER YOUTUBE: ((More eyeballs. And clients sometimes want it here.))

FACE IS THE PLACE : ((Finally succumbed – click facebook.com/JeanP00LE – for all your Zuckerborgian messaging / subscribing / liking needs)).

More words soon! *I, promises.*

by j p, April 2, 2013 0 comments

Cumbia Cosmonauts Music Video

Above : more proof that Space Is The Place…. at least when it comes to Mexi-Australian tropical bass genres.

That’s the fruits of a few quick projection and filming sessions with the Cumbia Cosmonauts, featuring custom graphics made by the CC VJ – Martin Hadley (I especially liked his spaceship control deck!). I’d like to think if there’s ever a Mexi-Australian space program, that it looks something like this… ie has that Ed Wood in space vibe about it, maybe with styling by Lee Scratch Perry & Sun Ra.

The Cumbia Cosmonauts are a Melbourne band who are celebrated around the world with their take on Mexico’s cumbia music, and so fittingly, they release their new album, Tropical Bass Station, on the Berlin label, Chusma records, on Nov 23, 2012. The track ‘Our Journey To The Moon (And Back)’ comes from that album.

(Other recent video projects)

by j p, November 21, 2012 0 comments

Dr Seuss + Elefant Traks At The Sydney Opera House

4 days later, and am still buzzing from the Elefant Traks vs Dr Seuss show at the Sydney Opera House.

Developed and performed for the Graphic Festival – it was an audacious project – inside a tiny time frame, create 18 songs and animations to reinterpret or remix the books of Dr.Seuss for the stage. It never felt like enough time – and yet, the amazing zoo / crew at Elefant Traks pulled it together and nailed a dynamic audiovisual smorgasbord (that apparently had some of the Seuss publishing folk moved to tears!).

My role was to develop and live trigger the animations for the show, which was akin to developing a feature film in 6 or so weeks.. while liasing with around 20 different musicians… “hey man, I’ve got this new idea for a beat / I’ll get you those lyrics soon.. etc etc” – so I wasn’t surprised to find myself still rendering out clips on stage, right up to the last minute.

I’m going to put up some more animation info later, over at skynoise.net/projects, but for now, while still floating, I wanted to put out a huge thank you to:

– Jono ‘Dropbear‘ Chong + Darin Bendall, who did an amazing job, animating half of the tracks between them.
– Urthboy – who oversaw the crazy production, as well as performed throughout the show
– Unkle Ho, who helped tie together the visual production, and developed his own flash-based interactive visuals for the show, AV jamming on a wii-board to Green Eggs & Ham, with Jim from Sietta + Angus from Hermitude.
– Luke Snarl Dearnley, who did a stellar job as technical producer, keeping the whole show smooth as butter.
– Owen Field, who covered all the logistics with grace and calm…

And that list could go on and on – there were endless Elefants who who were such a pleasure to collaborate with…

Some Elefant clips:

X-Continental, a clip I did for the Herd back in 2001.
Urthboy, Ozi Batla, Solo, The Tongue and L-FRESH: Cipher at the Opera House
and below, Dropbear’s fantastic animation for ‘And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry st’, which was performed as the first track of the show, by Urthboy, Jane Tyrrell + Angus from Hermitude. Ozi Batla had just given his show-intro in an aviator costume, and hooded Urthboy came on to do a quick rap about Dr Seuss, before pulling back the hood as the lights came up, the decks started up, and MCs roamed the stage with this as backdrop:

by j p, November 15, 2012 0 comments

A Tribute to Runwrake, 1965-2012, RIP

I cried last night, upon reading that John Wrake, aka Run Wrake, has passed away.

I’d first learned of his cancer diagnosis a few months ago, after wandering once again to his youtube page, and noticing a short and simple message underneath his most recent short film:

Down With The Dawn, is Run Wrake’s usual virtuosic animation, but knowing that this 8 minute short film was his response to being diagnosed with cancer, made it quite confrontational viewing. I was shocked then, but somehow presumed he was turning things around, he was on the slow path to recovery, that although tragic, everything would be okay.

Award-Winning “Rabbit” Director Run Wrake Dies, 47
The Most Talented Dude You’ve Never Heard Of
A Genius Gone Too Soon. British Animator Run Wrake Loses Battle With Cancer.

“It is with incredible sadness that I have to let you know that our darling Run passed away very suddenly at 5am on Sunday morning as an end result of his cancer. He had spent a beautiful Saturday with his two children Florence and Joe, his sister Fiona and myself. We left him at 7pm doing what he loved best- drawing and animating with peg bar and paper.
I was with him for his last moments. We love you Run.
Lisa Wrake.”

Above, hard-drive snapshot of some of my favourite RunWrake animations.

I first learned of Run Wrake around 10 years ag0, through his compilation Gas DVD, “Dinnertime”. Somehow it had laid unwatched in a pile of media for a few months, until late one evening I spied it again and lazily inserted, then pressed play. What followed was dizzying and overwhelming – that mix of exhilaration and exhaustion when discovering an artist so consistently good, so relentlessly inventive, and so utterly prolific that you’re left wondering if they exist under different laws of time and space.

A few years later, I was thrilled when Run Wrake agreed to an interview (published in 3D World magazine, as well as skynoise in 2006).

A snippet below:

Where did ‘Run Wrake’ come from?
Actually a nickname earned whilst keeping wicket particularly badly during a game of cricket aged 11. A friend was sent in for sarcastically shouting ”Run”, as the ball went thru’ my legs for four.

With so much animation under your belt, what has it taught you?
It’s taught me that I’m very lucky to have the desire and ability to scrape a living doing what I enjoy, and that you will never make a piece of work with which you are entirely satisfied.

To what extent do you storyboard your clips? Or how do you approach narrative?
”Rabbit” is the first film that I have rigorously boarded, with a view to telling a story, and I thoroughly enjoyed the discipline.

Any desire for feature films, or longer works?
Absolutely, watch this space*.

(*As of 2012: Wrake was developing an animated feature, The Way to a Whole New You, with writer Neil Jaworski for BBC Films.)

One of my questions was whether Run Wrake had ever animated a skateboarder, and Run Wrake was kind enough to add a note at the end saying that he’d done an ad featuring a skater, and that he’d attached a little quicktime movie of it for me. One of those wow moments – a favourite artist sending me something they’d made?? Below, a screenshot sequence from it, which demonstrates one of his trademark ‘perpetual zoom outs’…

A glimpse at his biography (have you seen a more delightful online CV?), showed some of how this was all possible. Run Wrake had gone through the Chelsea College of Art and Design, and the Royal College of Art, before achieving a breakthrough with his 1990 student film Anyway on MTV’s Liquid Television. With Anyway, several strengths were already evident – an eagerness to playfully deconstruct form, an ability to adapt and incorporate many kinds of media and animation styles, and an incredible capacity for fluid transitions – smoothly morphing into wildly different scenarios or character transformations.

The DVD documents the development of all those strengths, as well as introducing others – a highly attuned sense of animation rhythm and pacing, and a flair for visualising sound and loops. That kinship with music was partially nurtured over time with his job as an illustrator for NME magazine, (the DVD includes a virtual gallery of these illustrations, narrated by a flying turtle-armed boy.), but is most evident across his trajectory of music videos, most notably those with long-time collaborator, Howie B.

Some favourite moments?

The alarm clock sequence within ‘What is that?’

How he plays with loops, one minute into Music for Babies by Howie B. (At time of writing, vimeo had just made the clip a ‘staff-pick’, in honour of Run Wrake’s passing.)

The intro sequence to ‘Jukebox’ – no, actually, just all of it…

The ‘Buttmeat‘ clip for Howie B. (All those liquid visual transitions!)

Music video directed by Run Wrake for Spacer’s 2001 single ‘The Beamer‘. (Love the scene transitions, and the disregard for time/space conventions).

And below – a sequence transition from Lessons in Smoking (this video link showcases it better),- produced by Run Wrake for his compilation Gas DVD, “Dinnertime”.

With all that under his belt, it’s easier to understand how he gets to describe his career highlights as including…

“my first job, commissioned by an Elvis suited Jonathan Ross to make a title sequence…making Jukebox, my first animate! commission, a two year slog…meeting and working with Howie B, initially on a short film to accompany the release of his album Music For Babies, and subsequently on a series of freeform promos…presenting storyboards to Roy Lichtenstein in his New York studio for U2′s Popmart Tour visuals…and the critical acclaim for Rabbit, a short film completed in 2005.”

Less easy to understand is why Run Wrake wasn’t better known, even amongst animators. Even though he worked on U2 tours, and Rabbit won plenty of awards, it still felt that there was an animation giant walking amongst us, and not enough recognition of how much terrain his work covered. That was at least partially remedied, earlier this year, with a Run Wrake Retrospective at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, with the title referencing one of his favourite characters:

RUN WRAKE: MEATHEADS, RABBITS AND THE DAWN

Below, artwork recently donated by Run Wrake – as part of CEL: an online fundraising project to keep the Animate Collect online, ‘On The Brink of Manhood’.

Runwrake.com
Runwrake on youtube
Runwrake on vimeo
Runwrake reworking personal home movies for live Audio Visual sets. ( Yes, he VJ-ed occasionally! )
A video interview with Run Wrake about his animation process.

RIP Runwrake…. thanks for adding your splash of colour to the world.

by j p, October 27, 2012 1 Comment

VDMX 5 Review

(Above, a messy example VDMX interface of mine. Click screenshot to see full version)

Here’s a review brewed since I got my review copy back in 2005 (when VDMX first turned 5, says the Vidvox software museum*). Now that it’s 2012 and we’re at Beta version 8.0.8.1, it seems as good a time as any to declare VDMX 5 ripe and ready. Let’s do this.

What is VDMX 5?

VDMX 5 = A ‘modular, highly flexible realtime performance video application‘ developed by vidvox.net.

What does that even mean? The six word executive summary by @Protostarrr :
‘A hipsters version of After Effects‘ is cute, but misses a crucial difference – VDMX is software built for real-time usage – ie no waiting around for rendering, it means live adjusting, manipulating and sequencing of video clips and video parameters – during a theatre performance, while musicians play on stage, within an installation, or to create some hybrid of what might be called live cinema. Just as hiphop and electronic music producers have long been playing live with audio samples, we now have the ability to shift from a studio production mentality, towards using video samples in a live setting. This means VDMX must be capable of letting it’s users adapt and respond to any unfolding events – and the importance of having that flexibility is reflected with how Vidvox define their software:

“VDMX5 is a program that lets you assemble custom realtime video processing applications. This is an important distinction- instead of being stuck with a fixed processing engine and a static interface, it gives you the freedom to assemble not only whatever custom processing backend you desire, but it allows you a great deal of creative control over how you wish to interact with your backend.”

VDMX interfaces

(Example search for ‘VDMX interface’ )

So what can VDMX 5 do?

– Trigger separate clips for playback across different projectors ( a desktop with multiple outputs, or an external graphics card for laptop is also needed)
– Mix several clips together to create layered collages and compositions (multi-blend mode options / compositing options / cross-fade options / customisable quartz transition modes)
– Map separate video layers onto physical objects (VDMX5 has basic perspective mapping functions, or can send video layers via syphon to other mapping software)
– Organise video layers into groups (which allows composition or FX parameters to be adjusted per layer or per group)
– Re-route any video layers into other layers / compositions (enables easy creation of visual feedback loops, or addition of more organic complexity with FX)
– Adjust or control any video parameter or Fx parameter easily with an onscreen slider or button – and in turn, control these by various data sources (eg mouse / midi / audio analysis from built-in laptop microphone / LFO oscillators and wave values / midi + OSC controllers / wii controller / iOS or android controller etc ), and these values can be flexibly refined by using a range of in-built math behaviours ( eg invert values, smooth values, multiply values etc).
– Build Control Surface Plug-ins – which are ways to consolidate various controls into a a customised interface ( eg have 4 meta sliders, each of which may control any number of other parameters, when activated )
– Capture camera inputs, apply effects to these. Can also record and playback camera samples in real-time.
– Capture the visual output from a window of any other application running, and re-route this through the VDMX signal chain (eg mix in a live webcast from a browser, bring in a photoshop sketching window, bring in a skype window etc )
– Record your clip-triggering and visual FX experiments to disk (Fast and reliable, records directly into a VDMX media bin for immediate re-triggering / remixing / recording and etc etc )
– Use a built in step sequencer for arranging clip-triggering or FX over time.
– Save and trigger presets in extensive ways (global, per layer, per FX chain, and per slider. And more recently, we can cut and paste parameter settings between sliders. Very useful for quickly copying refined parameter and interactivity settings from one effect to another.)
– Tightly integrate customised quartz composer patches and FX, including customised interface elements – where each of these can be controlled by the various methods described above. (It’s hard to overemphasise how useful and powerful this is).
– Use flash, text and HTML files, as well as Freeframe FX.
– New : send DMX (Artnet) data – to control / interact with lights / lighting desks… (I’m yet to play with this, but it’s a great addition. Requires a computer to DMX box such as the Enttec ODE. )

There’s much more, but you get the idea – it’s flexible, and can be adapted to suit your project by project needs. These open ended possibilities are both a strength and weakness of VDMX – it’s fantastic being able to make your own customised interface to suit a particular workflow or project, but first time users tend to find can be daunting to approach for first time users.

Below, an example of 3 layers being mapped to suit particular shapes. (The canvas controls can be enlarged for easier mapping / alignment, with pixel increment adjustments on corners, available by pressing arrow keys )

Understanding the VDMX Workflow

With the above multitude of options, getting to know the ropes is pretty important. Here’s a few learning pathways:

1. Plug N Play… aka ‘explore’ : Even within the downloadable demo software, VDMX5 comes with built-in template projects that can be accessed through the topscreen menu. These can be easily modified and used as a foundation for your own projects. Playing with each template will show some of the features and variety on offer.
2. Vidvox Wiki : Extensive, detailed listing and explanation of the progam’s various parameters. Read over, then go back to step 1 and play some more.
3. tutorials.vidvox.net : In-depth video tutorials from the pixelated horse’s mouth.
4. VDMX forums : Over time, I’ve probably learnt more about the program here than anywhere else – as with any software of depth, the possible solutions to any particular problem posed, are multiple and varied, and am regularly learning new ways to use VDMX through the discussions here. The developers also contribute frequently, debugging problems, clarifying how various aspects work, and helping point beginners in the right direction.

Some Example VDMX Projects

Aka – here’s some links to material I’ve used VDMX for.

– Compositing video for 3 different projections and walls at Cockatoo Island, Sydney. ( Pattern Machine, at Underbelly performance )
– Generating and recording audio-reactive visual textures (with VDMX and quartz) (Visual backdrops for Audego)
– Generating textures and audio-reactive elements, then mapping these to suit physical shapes I’m projecting onto (Mat Cant music video)
– Triggering live video onstage with Gotye (so the right part of each animation happena when the live musicians reach the chorus etc )

VDMX Elsewhere:

How to set up the VDMX basics..
Learning VDMX at the Audiovisual Academy, Videos – Part I, Part II and Part III.
A 32 minute intro to VDMX (via visual-society)
Iso50 overview of how he uses VDMX …
Connect VDMX to Madmapper (via official Madmapper blog)
How to send multiple outputs from VDMX to Madmapper … (via destroythingsbeautiful)
(Actually, Destroythings is destroying things for VDMX (mostly VDMX ready-quartz patches )
Making loops live with the Wii and VDMX ( 4 video tutorials via moongold)
VJ Kung Fu: AV Sequencing with Live + VDMX + Monome
Using VDMX to create stop motion animation – by synchronising video projection playback with the sequencing of time lapse photos. (by Zealousy )
How to use a window from any other mac software, within VDMX (eg for live photoshop painting etc / via 1000errors)
How to create a 16 frequency graphic equalizer for Ipad Lemur to use sound for controlling various FX in VDMX. (via 1000errors)
Creating a Sound Visualizer with VDMX + Unity 3D (via creativeapplications)
Experiments with Quartz Composer patches in VDMX (via Goto10 at vimeo)
Telecommuting the mix: VDMX, Syphon, CamTwist, and Skype (via noisepages)

Requirements :

Mac computer with an Intel processor
Mac OS X 10.6 or later
NVIDIA or ATI Graphics Card
4+ GB of RAM

$349US – Refreshingly, this licences the user to run VDMX on up to three different computers for personal use. On one level it’s a very generous licence – but on the other, it’s merely acknowledging the likely practices of most digital artists (across many workplaces, home, venues, installations, multi-screen set-ups etc). At any rate, very handy.
Educational pricing = $199
There’s also a ‘Starving Artist Discount’ – ‘Put your skills to work helping out the VDMX community and you can get a license of VDMX5 for only $199 USD.’

Verdict?

While VDMX 5 is overkill for some people, and others might prefer the complexities of say of MAX/MSP or coding their own software, for me it strikes a great balance of depth and accessibility. Complex results and interfaces are possible, with relatively little mental investment. Once that initial learning has happened, it’s a very versatile tool, easily refined to suit each project (eg for this gig, let’s make the playback timeline fill the whole screen, so we can fine tune tiny little loops more easily – or let’s create 3 media bins so it’s very clear which samples to trigger for each of 3 stage characters – or let’s emphasise the FX palette here.. etc etc). VDMX 5 has evolved over many years, taking on board much user feedback, as well as introducing users to better ways of approaching video signals and introducing all manner of nuanced interface elements and processes. There is a lot of significant functionality in the program, but it’s in the nuanced details of those features, that the merits of VDMX 5 really come into play. Take it for a test drive….

[[*VDMX software museum visitors and yesteryear software interface fetishists might also like: VDMX 2 review (2002) or VDMX 4 review (2003) ]]

by j p, September 20, 2012 6 Comments