News collected March-April

Since we haven’t posted that frequently during the beginning of this year I thought I’d summarize stuff that has passed through my internet channels the last two months.

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News from Audiovisual City

Marco Savo from Audiovisual City updated me on what is going in Barcelona. They have just carried out BIT or not to BEAT which was the first in a series of audiovisual jam sessions. Check them out on Facebook.
AV City are also organizing an AV meeting in Barcelona together with Niu Espai d’art that takes part 7-9 of June. There will be two days of workshop and lectures and the last day will be dedicated to AV jam sessions and performances. The name will probably be AMB but there seems like there is some more decisions to be made so stay tuned for more info and links. The meeting will be held at the very cool industrial venue Fabra i Coats. It’s going to be interesting to see how they make it work with all the beams.
Marco also announced that an anthropologist from Australian National University named Saskia Lillepuu will follow AV City and wile working on her PhD. Her project is called “An anthropologic research on the AV culture”.

ExpressBox 3T

Magma announced the upcoming release of ExpressBox 3T, which is a box where you can insert PCI Express cards and connect to your mac via Thunderbolt. A good solution for people who cry over the PCI Express port being replaced with by the rather unnecessary SD card reader. You still need a computer new enough to have a Thunderbolt port.

AV Mixer pro update

James Cui a.k.a. VJ Fader announced AV Mixer Pro 2 for Mac & PC and a quick start guide

FROM OUR FACEBOOK GROUP

Using a DVD player for mapped video installation

Johannes Ferm Winkler (Winkelfilm) initiated a thread about using a DVD for a mapped video installation. Members were pointing the problem with locking down projector and projection objects so that they don’t move and also the issues with calibration of the video. It was also pointed out that it’s harder to edit for DVD and get the aspect ratio right and suggestions were made to use a digital signage player instead. Two models were listed: BrightSign HD110 (recommended on VJ Forums) and the Popcorn Hour S-210.

The Raspberry Pi

There has also been talk about the upcoming release of the $25 Raspberry Pi computer and what it could do for VJ-ing and audiovisual installations. Here are three useful links:
The Raspberry Pi web site, The Gertboard which is an expansion board for the Raspberry Pi that makes it possible to get sensor input and control motors, etc. And here’s an interesting list of side projects that expands the Raspberry Pi.

The first edition of the RPi doesn’t have a case and because of it’s size there aren’t any holes in the board to fix a case. Marco Alici has a solution to that problem. He has created a case that fits very tight and snaps together. It has air holes for cooling but there is still some space left to be able to fix the unit to another object with double adhesive tape. The case will be available at Shapeways for 3D printing on demand. The ironic part is that the case will be more expensive than the Raspberry Pi computer. It’s expected to cost just below $40.

Equipment running hot

Another interesting discussions was around Macbook Pros and other equipment running really hot during performances. Mattias Lindberg (Fake Pilot) got his MBP up to 99°C running VDMX. One culprit seemed to be the AIC video codec. It was also mentioned by Patrik Johansson (Nrlnd) that his external Blackmagic Ultrastudio was running so hot it left marks on the table. Another problem that has been pointed out by Patrik is that the Ultrastudio isn’t possible to daisy chain so you can’t digitize video and output video at the same time. Patrik recommended investing in the slightly more expensive IO XT box from AJA instead since it has double Thunderbolt ports.

VJ Booking

VJ Booking became members of our Facebook group and I’ve seen that a few Swedes (including myself) have created profiles. I don’t know how many VJs gets gigs from that site but it doesn’t hurt to put your name out on more sites on the net.

FROM VARIOUS TWITTER CONTACTS

Bicycle Midi controller

ElektricKingDan (from Startsladd) posted this video showing a bicycle midi controller that controls Traktor over Bluetooth.

Be sure to watch the making of video as well:

Bangnoise updates Sampler plugin

Bangnoise has updated his Quartz Composer Sampler plugin to version 2.

See how the plugin has been used by the Australian Dance Theatre.

TouchOSC updates

TouchOSC 1.8.1 + TouchOSC Editor 1.5.5 has been released.

Cool links from Synthetics

My buddy Ben Cook (Syntheics) tweeted about a great article from 1970’s synthesizer mag Synapse on the subject of .
He also retweeted Warp Records tweet about Squarepusher’s new LED video for “Dark Steering”.