Life as an Artificial Lifeform

Its rare that you get a peek into research development of a big software company but Adobe is pursuing a more open path lately with a high profile blog that spills some inside beans and now some researches allowed to put their pet projects on youtube some video sharing site. Now the stuff they are developing is insanely great but the guy ended a totally let down statement "I can´t guarantee that any of the stuff you are seeing is making it into adobe products". Anyway they seem to have found the holy grail of motion tracking if anything that the movie shows is an indication. The part with the two people in the woods and a million trackers are totally stuck to creases on their grey sweaters must be the best motion estimation out there and it seems to work in almost realtime, it can differentiate between different objects and is 2.5D at least (I would venture to guess to get the different objects it has to be actually a 3D tracker). Adobe would be well advised to put out well working easy to use realtime 3d tracker on the market - but then they have to watch out - they might be bought out by the Autodesk 3d monster.

Interactive Video Object Manipulation from Dan Goldman on Vimeo.

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As reported mogreens and me had a special kind of gig in Toronto last saturday. We splitted our souls and uploaded them through the clogged tubes to reassemble our creative output over there. Well it worked in so far that the signal arrived but its no hiding that there where issues with our limited upload bandwidth and a portforwarding problem with the audio made it necessary to send the audio over the internal microphone and a separate very chunky iChat connection. I want IPv6 and multicast or a working bittorrent streaming protocol - everything else just sucks. But in the end it was a very worthwhile experiment with a high learning factor and one that we will get deeper into in the very near future - stay tuned.
Thanks goes out to Brian T. Moore who made it all possible.

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Just stumbled over this. Thought it is kind of amazing that the term showed up in 1987 - never knew but you never stop learning I guess - music is of course taste but me as almost 80s kiddy tends to not dislike it.

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The more I read and think about it I think there is a big issue with the new display port that Apple is trying to put under the rug. They want to plug the analog hole once and for all. I think its not only to do with copyright shit - so I am reasonably believe that is one of the bigger underlying issues - its also the floppy drive issue. Uh? Yes I am actually of the generation where apple removed the floppy drive without asking anybody. A huge outcry and then a year later people applauded them for the move - you know there was nothing really nice about floppy drives and cd burners where just better and looking back it was one of the smarter moves for apple - pushing the whole industry forward - for the few that needed a floppy drive they could just attach one through USB - sure for them it was the more expensive road but it must have been a tiny minority - I know for myself that I never looked back to the floppy era again.
Fast forward eight years later and Apple brings out a Laptop that for the first time is missing any way to connect analog video to it. Mind you I am a VJ and the only way to do our thing is through analog video cables - but also I am vfx professional and go into any professional video studio these days and have a hard look around and I promise you - you won´t find any kind analog video anywhere anymore. Now also the projectors that do not have a digital video input option of some sort also seem to have died out. So in quite general I would say that yes its a move that from a very very far perspective makes sense on Apples part - ditch analog video and the world sees innovation an crisper pictures and maybe soon wireless digital pictures. Now there is only one big big problem with that thinking and I can see that Apple is not seeing that angle - because they rarely come into contact with it - the whole event bussiness needs to bridge ultra long distances with video cables and as of right now the only digitial standard that can bridge 50+ meters is digital SDI - a very professional option that almost no beamer under $5000 on the market supports nor does apple have a video out solution for that either - especially not on their portable laptop line. I am sure with budgets above 10.000 Euro per event you can cook up a all digitial solution already but this is not the market where 95% of events are in - also the whole backend has not switched to an digital format either - unlike the Floppy that was already replaced by the CD burner and shortly later by the USB flash drives - there is no standard in the video world for digital video. It starts with the cables, goes to compression and codecs through framerates and resolutions - there are about a trillian combinations and no market standard has prevailed so far. So forcing a switch over from analog to digital video at the moment is not a clever idea - no matter what your motivations are - and when half your motivations are bad already (DRM evil evil DRM) then this switch is going to alianate a LOT of people - even if the event market might only make up 0.5% of Apples laptop buying population I think people needing analog video still at this moment approach more 5% (old beamers, old TV sets, bars wanting to show a video etc. pp) and that is a huge chunk. I am quite sure Apple has to come out with a native adapter at one point. The current solution when you ask an Apple employee? Get an old DVI to video adaptor and get minidisplayport to DVI adaptor and chain them together - very elegant Apple - very professional - very reliable such an adaptor chain. BTW - just 3 years ago you could just plug a SVHS cable right into your powerbook without any kind of adaptor - apple used to be about simplicity - these days seem to be waning.

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This saturday we are undergoing a big big experiment - something very very unique - something that saves a lot of CO2 - something that could change the face of parties around the world... got your attention? great :)

MoGreens and my lowly self (proto.beamaz:fALk for the search engines) will be playing a VJ/DJ (or A/V as it might be called in some cirlcles) gig in Toronto/Canada. But instead of flying over there trying to cope with jetlags and the pretty torontonian girls we are safely in the prototypen office using the intertubes to forward our signals to the crew around Brian Moore who are doing their awesome media jam in the coolest property of all Toronto.
Since we can´t stream to more then one computer because in the year 2008 there is still no universal multicast or streaming bittorrent protocol (that works on a mac (so I heard swarmplayer is shaping up nicely)) the only way to experience the awesomeness of a the first and only real global party (massmedia induced Bono concerts don´t count) is to go to it live - either to Toronto for the full bang loud social event at 9 oclock in the evening or come to the proto.office near Berlin for a relaxed chilled friends circle atmosphere at 4 oclock in the morning - your choice - but I am sure you don´t want to miss it either way.

Saturday November 22nd 2008

411 Front Street East Toronto /Canada
9:11 pm EST
&
proto.office Kleinmachnow(Berlin) /Germany
4:00 am CET

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This sewing machine sews in soundwave patterns. Whicked - now you can wear your own songs. Maybe a good machine to get when Apple continues to cripple its hardware.

soundsbutter.com

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The vOICe is a system that takes the input of a camera that is hidden in some eyeglasses and maps that signal into sounds. This is then fed to earphones and is supposed to enable blind people to "hear pictures". Its supposed to actually work - blind people are capable of learning to hear pictures and oriantate themselfes in 3d space with this system. Its like a learned synesthesia (fusion of two or more sensory inputs in the brain). This quite possible means that people are capable of learning synesthesia mappings. Quite mind boggling.

Articles also in the New York Times and BBC News.

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So last night was the big announcement of the RED digital cameras and did they announce. They basically turned the whole movie making industry on its head, poured pure caffein on them then splashed some more cold water - rinsed and repeated a couple of times. Some users are speculating that they raided Area 51 in the night and stole a camera chip from the UFO there and reverse engineered it. Why? Well there is for one the insanely expensive far off big bambooza of a 28k Monstro chip. You know the most high definition films that are going through post production are 4k with I think Batman for the IMAX topping it with 6k. Now how you would sufficently post produce a 28k movie is beyond me - also beyond me is why you would such foolish thing - but you know you can crop, zoom, pan later and still have 4k. But why I am much more exited is the modularity approach and this might not just be a game changer in the camera business but maybe even the computer biz. Imagine Apple sold 2-3 different enclosures for laptops and you can fit a wide range of gear in them - pretty much plug and play. New motherboard, new processor, new graphic card, new display, different keyboard. Well this is pretty much what red is doing for their cameras - yes you can switch out a 2/3rd, 12bit, 11+ stops sensor and replace it with a super 35mm 16bit 13+ stops sensor later, when you made the money or whatever. Also of course you can change anything else, batteries, outputs, lenses, handles, screens, shoulder mounts whatever. Oh and for the added bonus: it can do 3d too (with two cams that fit together nicely for that option). Now they are not hitting quite home the original goal of 3k camera that works out of the box for $3.000, but the smallest brain (or body) is $2.500 - for about $5000 you should be able to assemble a working unit. Its very revolutionary stuff they do over at RED. Since delivering the REDone nobody doubts their ability to deliver these two new camera systems either. Its just a bit late - don´t expect to hold any of the new ones in your hands before fall next year (thats a year away). Now its going to be more then interesting what the big shots like sony, panasonic, canon and nikon are doing (and hasselblatt) this invades their turf big time.

For more info (or info overload might be better) head over to the REDdot.

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After a very long abstinence from doing the normal club gig thingy I was persuaded to play this Saturday for my friends from the Polyphon -> Impulse Potsdam collective who are doing parties again after a long abstinence too. The thing that caused me to agree to play was the kind of music they are playing - DubStep - the new electronic music hype on the block. Fusing Dub, DrumNBass and Electro and about anything else that fits - what would you want more. So if you are so inclined - come around the bend my friend and say hello to Potsdam dying clubculture.

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I must have missed this but these guys are doing a cool thing. They take video audio and text streems of the presidential debates while they are happening and remixing them live on stage in a "news commentator" like setting - only that they are just talking with pictures. Without music its bound to be not so energetic as the ReVolution08 movie from Coldcut a couple of days ago - but their approach is at least as relevant. Its like a live audiovisual commentary that puts the spotlight of the event to subtleties that you wouldn´t see if you just saw the TV version. And what I also love about them is that they stress the live character of their event not even attempting to make a recorded version available - some things are just better live I guess.

Here is their trailer:

ReConstitution 2008 - Live Presidential Debates Remix by Sosolimited from Sosolimited on Vimeo.

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When I was in Toronto for the blinkenlights project I meet up with Brian T. Moore - one of the local VJs and a heck of a community organizer there. He put on a VJ Jam in his awesome residence and invited the vjs of Toronto to play. I was honored to play there too. CommandN is a local video podcast that has shot the show - even so they did some factual mistakes (like calling me mr blinkenlights) they still pulled off quite a nice episode about the event. And the heavy psychedelic visuals across Brians face where an exception. Just before the interview there was about the best collaborative mix (together with one of the lead programmers for Houdini - whos name I forgot but I will write about his selfwritten "VJ" software that he developed for Pixar) on that screen that I have ever attended. Sadly that part has not made it into the podcast.

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I looked over it when it appeared on mogreens blog, but then clicked on the play link and was blown away. This must rank as one of the best mash up videos of all times. And its more - this has the possibility to be played live. If you are a vj and you are using samples - take notice of this video. Its would be Live Cinema at its best: Message, Story Line, Style, Energy. Did I say it fucking rocks?

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I will give my Live Cinema Lecture on Sunday at 13:45 at the "Die Verstärker" music conference and fair at the e-werk in Erlangen / Germany. The Lecture will be a bit shorter then usual (I hope) clocking in at one hour and in return might be more digestable for the short attention span croud. I will give the talk in german as this will be a 99% german audience. After my talk fRED and some visual Berlin people will talk about VJ networks. Also there is a a "state of the art a/v" talk and "how to produce your own loops" workshop going on in addition to lots of copyright/left and more music orientated lectures. You can get more information prices etc. at the Die Verstärker website.

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I have now finalized my setup and am testing for tonight. I am going with 4 layers. Two of those are what I call "story" layers - mostly video content telling the stereo love story. One layer is rythm loops and typography and the 4th layer is a special "pixel perfect" layer that maps pixel by pixel to the house - so I can adress specific windows without any antialiasing around them. There is one custom plugin that makes all the right connections to the house and lets me readress the output to specific screens on the house and lets me turn off one of the two buildings individually (to compensate for the mirror effect). Also there is a "blink" plugin that cycles through the screen and turns them on and of one after each other.

All in all I produced 220 fresh loops just for the house and repurposed 90 of my old loops (mostly rythm stuff) in just over a week. I don´t know if the story will come through because some of the story loops are just not working on the low resolution but I will make sure it all looks pretty tonight...

I would be more then happy for any feedback after the event.

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The cheaky buggers filmed me last night without me noticing :) Look at it - its very small part of what you gonna get tomorrow. BTW I didn´t even have a contrast or brightness control in the test setup (besides Tim mentioning that on the blog) - but it helps to have tested on the house with a bad gamma curve the days before to know what works and what not.

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Yesterday I was able to conduct the first real live test from the plaza in front of the house wirelessly live to the house and it was bombastic. While inside the headquarter on 4th floor West Tower got my mood a bit down because I couldn´t really see what I was playing couldn´t really sense how the visuals would come through - basically I was thinking nothing works its all doomed. Yet down in front of the building I found a massive lovely vibrant reactive fast screen that worked with 80% of my prepared footage. All my ideas for effects where working, the software hardware side worked and I was massively pleased and could rest well.

Now all thats left for me is making "some" more rythm loops and making my software setup stable and usable (hey I got more then 24 hours for that so p-l-e-n-t-y of time).

Thanks goes out so far to the amazing hard and software gurus in the crew - without them nothing would be possible.

I am going to post some pictures here later (hopefully)...

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After long debug nights with multiple reflashings of 200 dimmers and only chaotic pixels last night was the big moment where the first of four screens starting to work as intended. On the first picture you see the first homogeneous pixels array on Upper West Screen - the second picture shows a letter loop directly from within VDMX (its originally from my Biometric Passport LoopCast).

Posted by fALk at 18:33 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have now a whole array of content creation tools for the Blinkenlights house available. There is still one missing that I hope the Coding Monkeys downstairs will be able to pull off in time - its one where you can convert video loops directly into .bml files that can be played on the house - in the meantime so there are already available an extensive set of plugins for Apples Quartz Composer, The classic Blinkenpaint in the Stereoscope Paint edition and an enhanced Simulator with a record function. You can get the apple centric collection here.
Also there is now a Processing Library available. For those not familiar with Processing - its a Programming language for interactive media installations and with the processing blinkenlights library you are able to make programmable animations cross platform.

As said there is still more to come - also for the video peeps out there.

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Tomorrow I will be leaving to London and then from there on Monday to Toronto. But before I even arrive we have managed to send some packets over there - packets of the electronic type that is.
My favorite VJ programm VDMX has gotten a Quartz Composer implant that in turns has a custom programmed implant that takes an input image and sends it out a as a blinkenstream to a proxy server. This proxy server can then be listened to by anyone with an internet connection - so to you or the guys in Tonronto (The CodingMonkeys of SubethaEdit fame - who are hard at work programming the iPhone app at the moment).
This all goes straight out of VDMX without anything in between - very sweet - vjing directly to the world so to say. I must say that this has prompted a bit of a shift in my perception of the artform - I will reflect about that after I am back from Toronto - I think its quite awesome.

As soon as there is an official version of the program that displays the data stream (mid next week) and an official proxyserver (tomorrow?) I will post it here - so you can watch what's on the towers or me practicing (not that much fun I guess)...
I will also post the plugins for quartz composer straight when I have arrived in Toronto.
this blog will see a new Category called "Blinkenlights" for those who are interested in my updates on the project over the course of the next 3 weeks. All quite exiting.

Of course there is also the official Blinkenlights Blog for more current information...

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The word is officially out so I can talk about it publicly. Project Blinkenlights is awakening again and its bigger and more badass then ever. The Blinkenlights crew will turn the Toronto City Hall in Toronto/Canada into the biggest-analog-lowres-giant-dual-screen on earth. As seen before in Berlin and Paris every window will turn into a pixel with 16 steps of brightness and sustaining an impressive 30 frames per second picture feed across two buildings. Classic computer games, crazy controllers (*cough*iPhone*cough*Wii*cough*), love-letters and a custom tailored live VJ performance on the houses are all in play.

For the VJs out there is maybe of interest that a lot of the picture making process is driven through quartz composer - there will be even an official blinkenlight quartz composer plugin soon. That means not only can you preview your graphics in quartz composer to see how they look on the house (3d is in the works) but you can actually use quartz composer to stream videos to the blinkenserver that is then serving them to the house (30fps I mentioned right?).

The installation will light up mid-end september and stay on for about 2-3 weeks.
As mentioned I will do a live performance on the houses on the 4th of October - the night of the Nuit Blanche. Standing on the Nathan Philips Square in front of City Hall with music and all.

There will be a live stream of the feed that goes to the house and stay tuned here as I will be "live blogging" as much of the installation setup and tryout as my time permits. Its whicked and monumental and I am proud to be on the Blinkenlights team.

(thanks Tim for putting trust in me).

The official website.
The official blog

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I have been looking for years to get a "perfect" midi controller for my live visual endeavors. That is no exageration. I have high expectations toward a midi controller. I want to lug it around the world - so it has to be small enough. I want to a plethora of functions on it so it actually helps me perform and is not just a gimmick. It has to be robust to withstand outdoor gigs with sandy gusts and water spray as well as indoor gigs sweat dropping from the ceiling and 80°C heat from above lamps. It has to be scalable and adaptable to new software coming along and it somehow has to fit my own style of performing - which means the knobs need to be properly soldered on - the faders have a solid feel and the buttons been tested to withstand 1.000.000 times pressing.

I have been impressed with the Mawzer concept two or three years ago because it was poised to deliver on that promise. Yet the final product they came up with is much less extensible and much more expensive and much bigger then what was originally proposed - the midi controller for everyone it was not. So I was looking up on building your own. There are kits out there and with access to lasercutters through the web that looked like a good alternative. There was only one problem - someone would have needed to shower me with some time to make such a project feasible. Soldering, testing building rebuilding a midi controller is - no matter how good the kit you are bying - a task of months. Sure you have the perfect controller in the end for your needs but the time to get there I would rather spend on creating content that looks whicked.

Then along came a project (next blog entry in a minute) that requires to leave my trusty videomixer (an edirol V4 1st generation) at home because it ain´t going through the old route of outputting digital video through an analog cable back to a digital projector - but instead it goes digitally over the air directly to the very analog output. So the only piece of hardware that gave me direct access to my output outside of the laptop I have to toss out for that even - and since the event is quite big and lot of focus will be on what I am doing a replacement for that loss had to come.

But lets make a little detour. Some might ask "oh you have the laptop as input controller". Yes thats true and while I use the keyboard of the laptop extensively and I can feel blind where the cursor is when using the trackpad there are still some things that are not fast enough using the computer. For example changing the speed of a video clip. There is just nothing that allows you to quickly do that - quickly as in "make decission in one beat of a 120bpm clip and have the speed change at latest at the 4th beat or next downbeat". For that direct control is absolutely necessary.

So I had another information scavenging on the interwebs to see if there is any solution to my controller need. I looked at all the ones that are used by vj friends. Cheap ones, expensive ones. I tried to imagine using them and always came up with shortcomings. Most are just too big with too little functionality - not one would fullfill all my needs in one piece. I need Trigger pads, Sliders, Knobs, Rotaries and lots of them - like LOADS of them and as said in a small package to travel. I almost gave up seeing myself trying to move the mouse cursor in unmatched fashion to some crappy output.
Then I stumbled over faderfox. I don´t know how I got there and its even a german company - I have missed them all those years. Apparently they are very well known in the tracktor/live world of musicians - I jut had never seen someone using one of the controllers they offer nor have I ever stumbled across their website.

Their website at first put me off a bit - as you might have noticed in the beginning paragraph - I need some serious professional gear. I just don´t want anything to break half way through a performance. Things need to be sturdy and the knobs and faders and buttons of exceptional quality to not loose that great break in the music that might make a difference for the feel of a whole performance. So a website that looks like its done in the mid 90s and never been updated makes me suspicious as of the professionalism - yet in my midi research I found out already that the midi hardware guys don´t have a great sense of astethics when it comes to websites (doepfer anyone?). Also on their front page was something that was so ultimately intriguing that no bad design could ever throw me off before I figured out more.

What I saw was a modular midi controller concept of ultra small units that are made for ultra portability. And on top I could figure out instantly that all I need in control ever is there in a maximum of five units - with three units already controller heaven. I googled a bit more and found out that people who bought them liked them and where impressed with their professional feel. They are even running battery powered and three of them are not wider then a typical apple pro lappy. Also the DJ2 unit they offer pretty much replaces all the controllers of my Eridol V4 videomixer. So I ordered one.

The order was processed with human kindness (yes a person on the other end - seemingly the developer himself) and delivered in outstanding speed (next day after money arrived). But what I got blew all my expectations. Not only was the controller everything that was advertised - lightweight, professional build quality - faders as solid as they can be - but it was way more versatile then I ever thought. You know you look at a controller and see all the buttons and your mind maps them to functions, but this controller crams more functions in his small space then most other controllers I have looked at 10 times its size. Buttons are all dual configurable with the shift button - that means there are 36 button messages you can get out of the controller, the xy joystick (which ist sooo smooth) can send on four different channels - switchable in a nanosecond, the two rotary controller send out continuus data on 12 different channels and notes on four and have a "push down" event on eight channels. All Sliders and knobs can be muted to avoid jumps on the controlled buttons by holding down the shift key. Everything works flawlessly after a week of testing (so the rotaries are not supported by VDMX yet (nor by quartz composer) which sucks) and its a lot of fun using. There is a (chainable in case you get more controllers from them) poweradapter coming as extra add on, it all supports midi chaining and midi through. Batteries are included and are supposed to hold 80 hours (so through the longest club session ever if you are so inclined). I can recommend this whole heartly to anyone out there - especially vjs - looking for that perfect transportable midi controller with more control then the mind allows. The price - so it does seem steep for such a "small" thing - is fully warranted.

Posted by fALk at 16:22 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just had a very good but exhausting 2 hour interview for Chaos Radio Express hosted by Tim Pritlove. The interview was about the history of live audio visual art and my take on it in todays time. What Tim didn´t tell me before that it was also broadcasted live over the ether on Funkwelle FM - a one month local Berlin radio station sending from the tower of a church on the PrenzelBerg. You can hear it over at the chaos radio podcast or through the radio prototypen podcast in the next few days. I think it is informative and gives a good overview where we the VJs have come from and where I personally want to go - it definitely raises awareness to our artform - which I think is still very important. I would love to hear any kind of feedback or correction or additions to things I said during the time.

Posted by fALk at 17:57 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

OCZ - a modder company selling overclocking and cooling devices normally - has introduced a computer brain input interface. No its not an "coming soon product" it is apparently available to buy pretty much now for a mere US $147,00. The devices detects brainwaves, facial muscle movements and eye muscle movements to enhance your input possibilities. There is a great writeup from hothardware using it and reading that makes me very itchy. This could very well be a great additional solution to some input woes with complex programs - especially complex programs that need fast reaction time or programs were you need to push more buttons at once then you have fingers. Like VJ programs for example... Sadly the device is Windows only at the moment and mostly aimed towards gamers. But I expect this to become a common form of input if it is really working as described in the article.

Posted by fALk at 9:39 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes the project is still on defrost and with an amazing change of code in my VJ program of choice - VMDX - its now actually much closer to what I envisioned - its kicking fast (finally full 25 fps+) dancing to the beats and propping superior visual quality. Together with a DJ set that has been talked about in very depth with DJ Jóse before the performance and a festival location that is sported in the beginning of the film and fRED kicking it with me this will be for me a very exiting event. The performance will be around 11:00 pm at the prototypen stage.

The entrance fee for the whole festival will be 15 Euros and entrance opens at around 4:00 pm.

More information on the festival on the Lauter website. If you happen to be around I would be happy to hear your comment - oh and pray for good weather ;)

Posted by fALk at 11:56 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Visual Berlin + DMY = AVITs!
Flux from visualberlin.orgjust notified me on the upcoming micro mini avit berlin - for the first time in conjunction with the DMY.

"Since the successful AVIT>C23 in December 2006 we’ve been looking for opportunities to continue our Berlin vj conferences. With the Chaos Computer Club we’ve been in tents in the summer and underground in the winter. Now in the form of DMY, a crew who organizes annual design tradefairs and exhibitions around the city and beyond, we have a partnership that should allow us to go even further.

VisualBerlin participated at DMY in 2007 and it worked out really well. This year DMY is hosting video installations and VJ showcases curated by VisualBerlin and we have decided to organize a one-day mini VJ conference alongside the festival - the microAVIT at DMY. For 2009 the micro will change into a macro and we are already making plans for a big AVIT event…"

Read more over here. Or head over to the main site at dmy.avit.info.

Posted by fALk at 18:01 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well we all know what good stuff you can do with a multitouch interface. The only problem is that there are not many commercial versions out there and the DIY versions that have been presented before a re HUGE installations rather then "take it with you" projects. The movie below shows you how to make a small multitouch box to take with you on the road.

Posted by fALk at 10:09 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wired hosts Björks Wanderlust Video with a Red/Green 3D effect. Its quite a psychadelic treat for those evenings where you need a trip to a different planet.

Get it here. (a Quicktime for a change)

Also in 2d and a making off on the same page...

Posted by fALk at 9:35 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well I have this orphaned category called "personal spyware" for times when you need to do any counteract surveillance. Today I found something very worthy to put in this drawer again. Digital Cowboys Spy Camera Pen. Thats a pen with a camera (obviously). The pen is fully functioning as a pen too (duh) it also sports a build in USB connector to just transfer over those nasty videos of the guy that just sold you a contract that ripped you off. Good to show the kids to learn on how not to do business... ;) Oh and you can take the mini tiny camera module out of the pen and use it on its own (like put it on a helicopter and make cool arial videos as this is light enough to be fitted on those ultra cheap mini helis?

The translated (from Japanese) product page

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This guy from flight 404 is playing around making animation with magnetic ink. The images look stunning to say the least they have incredible detail in them and apparently there will be videos forthcoming where the ink intereacts with music.

More on the project here:

http://www.flight404.com/blog/?p=101"

Posted by fALk at 8:32 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I didn´t know that Kraftwerk commissioned a 15 minute psychadelic trip video for their Autobahn song made by Roger Mainwood. Sporting a green artificial lifeform and a lot of the techniques of Fischinger & Co... lovely monday watch.

Posted by fALk at 7:34 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A Dutch comany called HoloCube starts marketing a similar called Device that lets you project movies in thin air. Its about 20 inch and geared towards the 3d advertising market (why? because it probably costs lots of mo and therefore the advertising market is the only market it could survive on). Expect StarWars HD quality holograms at your next fair visit. But don´t put you hand in one of these or they might get beamed to a 3rd dimension. (oh and of course in the video below you can NOT see the 3d effect as the video itself is only 2d! so just imagine the videos floating in air - if you believe the company. It must be the hardest thing to market anything "3d" with 2d mediums.)

Posted by fALk at 7:57 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I normally don´t like to comment on products in general but I know that some fellow VJs have this big problem and this is just the perfect solution. The problem? Recording a 1+ hour set.

There are some solution already available but they are all bad, but lets recap them

1. Recording to a DV Camera
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The Good:
• Good quality
• small formfactor

The Bad:
• Expensive equipment
• Camera record head has limited live span and if you record a two hour set every week the camera will last about 4 month
• maximum record time per tape 120 min with reduced quality 90 minutes full dv quality
• for further distribution you have to digitize the stuff back in (loosing 90 minutes in the meantime)

2. Recording with a DVD Recorder
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The Good:
• dvd recorder are quite cheap
• you have a dvd in your hand in the of it

The Bad:
• I have to see one DVD recorder that just works
• heavy basstly music will make the lens jump and leaves you with a broken DVD and mostly no way of recovering you footage - this happens VERY frequently
• putting it on the web (gooTube) requires you to rip the dvd - a long process.

3. Recording to a spare Laptop
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The Good:
• Full Quality/Codec/Format Control
• you have it on a harddrive and can just copy move it around recode it whatever

The Bad:
• EXPENSIVE who has earned the money to get a spare laptop to do just video recording - a raise of hands please
• Takes up lots of space
• cable mess
• spilled drinks

As we can see all these solutions are far from perfect and mostly stop gap measures to find a truly portable, cheap recording medium. Well a company that I once had a lot of love for but then got bought up by AVID and since then has not putting out much of interest has the perfect device. The company I am talking about is Pinnacle - people who have done video editing in the late 90s probably know it. They used to produce professional capture cards and computer/video stuff of high quality. Their new product is called - rather unispiring - the PINNACLE VIDEO TRANSFER. Its geared towards consumers but is just the perfect thing for the VJ warrior. It has video/audio inputs (S-Video, Composite-Video und Stereo-Audio) and a USB port. You feed it the video and connect a Harddrive of USB2 flavor or a PSP or an iPod or an Memory Stick on the USB port and it record you video to this massstorage of your choice as an MPG4 in a user customizable quality up to 720x576 25fps (full pal video (or NTSC if that is what you need). The thing without a drive costs kidney saving 129,00 Euro or as a bundle with a western digital USB2 harddrive you get it for 199,00 Euro.

4. recording with PINNACLE VIDEO TRANSFER
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The Good:

• Storage only limited by the Connected Harddrive (1TB of MPG4 should get you about a week of footage)
• Small formfactor
• relatively cheap
• portable
• relatively high Quality (better then MPG2 DVD for sure! Not quite DV but close)
• little failure rate (especially when used with an SSD Drive or Memory stick -> no bass-moved heads jumping around)

The Bad (oh there always has to be one):
• Converting it to something else is about as painful as converting a DVD
• Converting it to something else is bringing you some bad quality loss

But since no one does DVDs anymore anyway you just set to the quality you need for your website and there you go no need for conversion ;)

This is what a VJ should have in its bag if she wants to record their sets - the ultimate solution for now.

You can get more information here and buy it here

Posted by fALk at 13:25 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Step Across The Border is a documentary about the rock guitar improvisor Fred Frith. I have not watched the whole documentary(full movie in the link) yet but the open sequence seen below on the YouTube snippet of the film rocked me deeply. Brilliant typographic play in a very vj like manner.

Posted by fALk at 9:33 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well if you didn´t like the iPhone until now you might start liking it as someone has hacked the thing to record video -> with the full resolution of the camera -> thats 2.9 megapixels of video or roughly HDV resoltion. No word on compression algorythm, codec but at the moment the app can record at 10fps and when finished at 45fps! Thats more then any kind of camera below 5000 Euro can do at the moment (in that resolution with that framerate). Somehow the iPhone just became cheap.
The restraining factor is the onboard memory with just 8 GB its only 5 seconds of fun at the moment.

http://hollywoodstory.tistory.com/ has the link to the Drunkenbass for your unlocked iPhone to record video at extreme resolutions. If anyone has an iPhone please tell me if this is uncompressed?!!

UPDATE: Link above links to correct article now!

Posted by fALk at 15:55 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Immersive Environments get more and more press over the years, as they finally become more rich and interactive. Its not only the "Goggle 3D thing" anymore its also blackboxes. One of the funkier ones I have seen and one that serves to teach children a bit about tree growth (namely that they need water to grow ;) and is generally great looking is Funky Forest. Children can create trees with their bodies, divert water with handmovements all in a immersive four walled environment that has some style.