Life as an Artificial Lifeform

Having had the pressing need to get my thoughts into a project I did a ultra speed production of a small VJ narrative - to be presented to the audience at AVIT Brighton. I had so many sleepless nights with all the theories behind a possible VJ narrative that I was not sure anymore if it would work at all. So getting out on thursday with 5T3PH4N at a for me unusual time (5 am) we drove to Alexander Platz in Berlin and shoot a little narrative. The narrative is short to tell. Someone comes out his home drives throught the city with a cybermobile stops at the TV tower hacks this and turns the buildings around him into HUGE TV screens - first blinkenlight style but second the biggest building at Alexanderplatz into a fullcolor screen. It all was shot in 3 hours. I then had a very very productive week to crank out about 70 individual loops that explained the journey put it in some style and made it loops.
The evening at TikiRik in Brighton UK went by and could put the show on. First I thought the loops would hold out for only 30 minutes. I stretched the first part of the narrative - the boring drive through town until it got very boring (for me at least) - good that fRED supported me with some of his rythm loops. Then I looked at the watch and figured out that I already spend over 30 minutes just on the drive by loops. Sadly I then had to rush through the end part of the story but this made it quite tight and suited for the bar setting at hand. The atmosphere was very tense and I think the people where actively looking at the screen at most time (putting a lot of pressure onto me. - I would have liked the first performance of this thing in a closed friend setting)

I think it all worked out great - for a 0.1 beta 1. Better then expected. Things that I need for this first teaser story: better explanation loops that also act as rythm loops. The story could have been more obvious if I would have used clear type. I am so bad in Typography but there is no way around. I need to fill in these voids by introducing the character (hopefully causing more anticipation in the audience). Then explain the drive more clear. The HUD display was a good step in the right direction but the visual look of it sucked :/. Also I need more rythm loops while the driving is happening. I was thinking about Reklametafeln short subjective views of the 5T3PH4N looking out seeing lovely girls - geeks - older people (going a little more into the social side of things and describing the time where this happens). Describing the city in which this happens. As for the hacking part. This went pretty well (ones I have ordered my loops and number them right ;) but again I need to use clear type saying LOGGIN IN. CONNECTING. SCANNING. TURN ON WINDOW 5/23 HAUS DER LEHRERS or the such to make it more clear that there is a connection between his hacking and the buildings that get turned on also I need to adjust the HotelView and add the Volumetric Light to the Fernsehturm in the back otherwise this breaks all revelations before inside the audience. in the end I need the "hack the planet" typo as a plain Text Animation not on the house and I need a stronger picture to mark the end. But in general it all worked out very well and I can work on top of this experiment and can look forward for a great narrative production in the next year....

lovely

Posted by fALk at 11:05 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

from the department of UberCool Interfaces - SonyCubeMusic

In the constant research of hubtic interfaces and collaborative art sony has come up with something eye-opening simple. it uses touch sensitive brick like building blocks to create musical pattern. The cubes can be arranged in different patterns and can behave as multiple nodes. The whole interface is ON the cubes. A little LED screen provides visual feedback and and is at the same time touch sensitive. Touch it and the function change. Touch it longer or shorter and the music plays faster or slower. The whole concept is a beautiful blend of Cellular Automata research (book-tip: Steven Wolfram - A new Kind of Science) that states that with simple blocks and a set of rules you can yield complex patterns and collaborative art projects and interface design per excellence.

german article at telepolis:

http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/musik/15938/1.html

Posted by fALk at 10:40 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

AVIT Brighton 2003 is over and it was - as usual - a lot of fun

Slowly returning my brain from the Brighton VJ conference. It was the meeting of the usual suspects with some new faces and some surprising guest. In general it was a great meet and great. The conference program was well layed out and the ShowNights had a good concept.

So no fun without bad and I think there were some problems with the choosen venue. The brighton center was just to corporate centric for me and I would have felt better in an abondoned building with some dirt. To put the MassJam/MultiRig in the convention hall was probably even a worse decission. No spirit in this building and throwing the visuals on the wall with every projector differently calibrated and not all beamer not straight and some pictures over doors and a much to bright room did make me really happy that I was not performing there. The DJ and the Soundsystem had again the centerstage in a event that was to promote the VJs. The VJs themself where caged in in the middle of the dancefloor. Downstairs was much better Audio and Visual Act on the same level, great beamer installation but the size of the venue was too large and there was simply not enough audience for a real joyfull evening. I do not want to start about the drug policies of that party. People come to Berlin to see what Partying is about :/

As for the saturday night I personally had a very joyfull gig with fRED and mo-greens in the TikiRik. Besides some problems with the rigging (Lucidhouse could not set his PCee into PAL mode -> get a mac please) and the resulting bluescreens and the late coming Robotfunk who was completely beside himself as he has not slept the night before - the evening was a little success in all. I love those small bar like clubs. But why in the hell do the bars close at 11pm when they are full and have lots of visitors that pay for drinks. :/

The later night went not so well. We tried to get into the Pressure Point and this other club whose name I forgot - this was around 12:00 pm and both clubs where full and noone was allowed in. We went back to the hotel to get drunk with Vodka. Quite frustrating to travel for 1400 km and not be allowed into the clubs even when you have performed in one of them for free.

I want to positively point out the LAPTOP JAM on Thursday. One of those occasions where you think that in general collaboration is the way to go. It is so extremely inspiring to see your own visuals mixed with others and have the music react live to them as the visuals to the music react live.... LOVELY also this was the only place where there was an open non egoistic atmosphere where you could actually talk about the work .... :7

In general I respect the hard work the organisers have put into that event. In general things have worked out. There was no police popping in, there was enough equipment for the conference panels enough beamers and a gaffaless installation at the massjam. But its all about the details and the event failed in about every detail for me. The only thing that made me cheer up were the brilliant talented people at this event. I had lots and lots of good person to person talks and would like to submit that the whole experience of AVIT is about meeting and for a next AVIT this should be the focus point (lounges during the day where you can relax with some music and chill with your fellow VJs, bar nights in preparation for the nightly gigs - one home relaxation center where you meet up, a SAY HELLO panel to open the conference etc etc..)

Clapping hands for the work done - but we have to evolve this!

As for a visuals critic. I just want to give the girls a BIG THUMBS UP. lara and nix from simplistic just stole the show from the guys with their ultra lovely visuals with social and political content.

For more discusssion about AVIT Brighton 2003 please visit:

http://www.vjforums.com/forumdisplay.php?s=2d752c0556a35f6caaf442304bc9d5cc&forumid=31

Posted by fALk at 9:52 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After months of betatesting VDMXX (4.0) has made its debut

and it is great.Modular. Its saving presets and in general has all the features you would want in a live Video Mixing Application. The SDK will follow shortly (the release was delayed because vidvox crew wants to implements MACROS - how cool is that :).

I had a very ultra lovely VDMXX session with Johnny DeKam (founder of Vidvox) in Brighton for a AVIT VJ Conference. I finally got to meet the guy after 3 years of constant email contact and feature suggestions sessions. Sitting next to him for about 2 hours and just clicking throught the program made us both aware that there are totally different approaches to this program. Great that the demands of our styles are meet with this program. Looping vs. Scratching was the name of the game and it inspired me a lot. I hope I inspired mr DeKam as well at least a tiny bit....

Get the demo or a license at:

www.vidvox.net

Posted by fALk at 9:19 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new tool for the communities to edit text together and have a fair voting process on the changes in a text document.

3d17 is a tool for collaboration on text documents over the internet. Unlike a wiki 3d17 allows the users to vote for the changes going into a document and make suggestions on what to change. Right now it is tight into 3d17.org but I would guess it will be a free software for you server to be installed on (I might be wrong about this but the nature of this project surely looks like it). If you are into Blogging, wikiing get into 3d17ing NOW:

3d17.org

Posted by fALk at 8:43 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Law in Order in a world not known - Unplugging BINA48

My favorite futurist Rai Kurzweil has set up a fictious court battle at the International Bar Association conference in San Francisco, Sept. 16, 2003. The case involves the first intellegigent computer BINA8 and if the company who owns "it" would be allowed to pull the plug. Highly interesting peek in the future and the problems this society will face rather sooner then later:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0594.html

Posted by fALk at 12:27 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you want to know what workshop is when - the schedule is finally available

If you want to know what workshop is when - the schedule is finally available:

http://www.vjforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=4354

Posted by fALk at 1:20 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Athlon64, Apple Music Store thoughts, VDMXXFC3, VMP wiki additions

First I had a little battlefront discussion going on regarding the new Athlon64 processor and the "real life benchmarks" in the PC magazin:

http://www.vjforums.com/showthread.php?s=5d0655b8463b4650118c2538e502ae51&postid=33779#post33779

There was not information on the configurations. Also they used the highly unoptimized 3 year old Adobe Premiere6 as a test suite. They said something about DV to Quicktime conversion -> DV is quicktime on the mac there is no conversion needed *shrug* the only real life test that I see as valid was the photoshop 7.01 and there the G5 came out ahead. Please someone with an Athlon64 do the AfterEffects Benchmark http://media-motion.tv/aebenchmarks.html.

As for the apple music store announcement. Well I am impressed with the bussiness side of it. Giving out 100Mio songs for free will generate a HUGE sale boost. Time will tell who will come out ahead in the whole OnlineMusicBussiness but Apple - so far - has still the lead and will be able to claim 200 Mio songs "sold" by next year and I think that will make the media mills spin full speed.

Also today I recieved the last FinalCandidate 3 of my favorite live video mix software VDMXX from vidvox . The latest release is very stable and fast fast fast. So I do use a very optimized minimal OSX system with close to nothing running. I will put up a detailed explanation how to set this up in the future.

Also after some debate you can check the VideoMixProject Wiki with updated documents etc.

so long

Posted by fALk at 12:23 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

ALks first rumblogging in the net. a test and some info on the VideoMixProject

Hello world,

I always wanted to say that. Looks like apple has finally gotten around and made the iBlog and .Mac compatible with each other. So here is another useless Blog from someone who seems to be addicted to Technology, the internet and pixels.

To make this entry not a total waste of bandwidth I want to share with you my dear reader the wikipage of a very great project that I have the honor to be part of. The Video Mix Projects aims to socialize the VideoMixArtists and give the whole scene of VideoMixArtists a vision for the future. The wiki is here for only one day and if you need more information then is available on the wiki just wait about two weeks then it should fill up. I know I need to make my comments shorter otherwise noone will read them, well let me learn ;)

http://www.vmix.org/wiki/

Posted by fALk at 7:10 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)