Memoblast is a group performance in a fax-based office. Raquel Meyers, Jacob Sikker Remin and Goto80 are office workers who handle the flow of information by following rituals and rules for efficiency. They work with conventional office tools such as text editors and spreadsheets to create graphics, music and memos.
Every day we maintain and develop rituals to keep up with the flows of information. Memoblast can be understood as a metaphor for the modern database lifestyle, where personal expression is conditioned by technology more than we like to admit.
Fax machines are ancient, but also advanced and exclusive: They produce tangible objects from telecommunications, which can be annotated and modified directly, in the flesh world. In this respect, Memoblast also demonstrates the shortcomings of modern technologies. The ability to doodle on a piece of paper and materialize it directly on the receivers’ end, has never been recreated with modern media. Fax is a dangerous and spontaneous technology, and Memoblast is open for you.
Fax & Frankering for Folket, Paperback book
The book is a collection of faxes produced during the performance Fax & Frankering For Folket, Copenhagen 2011.
There has been three projects that caught my interest on first sight and that I’ve been keeping tabs on the last few years. And since one project was finished and released this year and there was some major developments in the other two, I find this a perfect moment to present a progress report.
The Spark D-Fuser DVI mixer
In the beginning of December the Spark D-Fuser DVI mixer finally showed up. There’s finally an affordable hardware solution for mixing HD video. I’ve been really keen on this idea ever since I first laid eyes on the project three years ago and it ended up being the most covered hardware project on this blog so far. I communicated so much with Toby Harris, the father of the Spark D-Fuser, that I ended up being a tester of the video processor and mixer software. There were a lot of bumps on the road that caused massive delays so it’s great to finally see this project come full circle. Especially since it’s a project that was born in the VJ community.
A few similar projects has come up this year like the HD Rabbit from Carrot video, a prototype that is based on the same video processor and the various mixers built for the Black Magic ATEM switcher by Kasper Skaarhoj. Even Roland came out with a new HD video mixer but non of these projects are as cheap as the D-Fuser, certainly not the Roland. The whole Spark D-Fuser kit costs £870 which is just slightly more than a trusty old Edirol V-4. If you already own a TV One 1T-C2-750 scaler you can purchase only the mixer unit for £270 but then you’d miss out on the additive mixing mode that you only get if you get the full kit from Sparklive.net.
Toby has just recently released a getting started video that goes through the basics of the final product. Sign up on the Sparklive site to get in on the second production run.
The Glitch Grinder
I read about this project for the first time on Create Digital Motion in April of 2011. It was a beautiful little machine called The Glitch Grinder by the Vienna based artist Juergen Koppmann. The machine trashes the video input and spits out the beautiful glitchy result at the other end. I instantly fell in love and got the impression that this was a product that was going to be released soon. I wrote to Juergen and asked and after a few emails I understood that sure, he wanted to turn this into a product but he couldn’t really explain how he had put it together. He told me that it wasn’t that hard but since he hasn’t studied electronics he doesn’t quite know how to explain it.
I signed up for his blog to keep track of the project but was mostly fed with artsy camping pictures and very rarely something about the Glitch Grinder. But just recently we got in touch again because Juergen finally found someone who could help him write down the schematics and make a better prototype. His new partner, only mentioned as Moosehead, has made something that works but the result does not yet look the same as the output of Juergen’s original prototype. They are still working on the new prototype on a bread board level and doing more tests the following weeks. It’s hard to tell when the Glitch Grinder is going to be finished but the plan is to have kits and maybe have some assembled units for sale “soon”.
The Codanova VMX Activ8
This French controller sounded promising when Andreas Apelqvist reported on it over two years ago. The “beer proof” controller was showcased at the Mapping Festival in the spring of 2010 and promised to be released in September that year. The controller was made especially for Garagecube’s Modul8 VJ software and the buttons and sliders of the Activ8 reflects Modul8’s user interface. But surely it would be possible to use the controller with any other MIDI compatible software.
September passed and no release. Another promise was made the following year. I got in touch with Codanova to check on the progress and received a reply that oozed of Google translation and the email conversation got a bit weird. What I could harvest from the correspondence was that the main developer of the Activ8 controller had quit and they had to start over almost from scratch causing more delays. In may 2012 Garagecube reported that the controller was showcased once again at the Mapping Festival and “performed flawlessly”. In November Le Collagiste announced that the legendary French Midi control maker Codanova would be closing down. However, the same post mentioned that the Activ8 prototype was fully functional and that the project had been handed over to Garagecube and was ready to go into production if Garagecube choose to follow the schedule.
So will Garagecube release the Activ8 or not? I contacted my friend Ilan Katin at Garagecube to get a comment butI got stonewalled. This is a normal tactic of Garagecube, they almost never promise or hint anything about up coming functions or release dates, so nothing to get worried about there.
Now I’m moving into speculations: I’m not that sure Garagecube will waste any time or money on this VMX Activ8 controller that is so tightly bound to the Modul8 user interface. The Modul8 software has been given very little love by Garagecube lately and a job post from May this year suggests that GarageCube and 1024 Architecture has a new multi platform engine for realtime multimedia applications in the making. Also keeping in mind that Garagecube seems to have painted themselves into a corner with Modul8 when it comes to The QuickTime API, Quartz Composer, Syphon input and locking functions in the interface. It’s a fair assumption that they are spending most of their time on that new project rather than reengineering Modul8. Thinking of how well MadMapper (GC’s first joint venture with 1024 Architecture) turned out, I’d be very interested to see what will become of this new project… whatever it is.
Back in 2007 I was working for the Pixelvärk festival when it was under the leadership of Björn Norberg. I remember how stoked I was when Björn told me that he had invited VJ Vitascope to perform at the festival. Vitascope a.k.a. Simon Richardson, is an artist from Glasgow who performs with 16mm film projectors. Unfortunately we couldn’t ship his projectors nor get hold of the similar model so Simon ended up performing with a digital version of his work. It was still good, but would have loved to see the “reel deal”.
About a month ago I was invited to do a VJ demo at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. I knew I’ve seen a mini documentary about Simon on YouTube but it was in really bad quality. Since I was keen on showing it to the students I got hold of Simon who told me that Jim Rusky, the guy who made the documentary, was a good friend of his and he managed to dig up the original files from an old hard drive and send it to me right in time for the demo. Simon has just uploaded the better quality version of the documentary to his Vimeo account for everybody to enjoy.
Getting new members injects energy into the organization. Fake Pilot (a.k.a. Mattias Lindberg) is one of our latest additions and he has been cramming Quartz Composer and Processing books lately and he has shared valuable tips and video experiments in our Facebook group lately. I thought I’d share some of that here on the blog.
Mattias created this audio reactive experiment after reading “Learning Quartz Composer” by Graham Robinson and Surya Buchwald. Mattias states that you can get a 30% discount on if you buy the electronic version and disclose some personal information.
The authors of the book launched a website recently called I Love QC that offers free Quartz Composer tutorials and project files (registration required).
After investing in a Microsoft Kinect Mattias bought the book “Making Things See” by Greg Borenstein that teaches how to use the Kinect with Processing. Apparently he wasn’t quite happy with the results because according to the caption of the video above, he switched to Brekel on Windows and imported the result into Houdini and rendered it out in After Effects. So it’s no longer live, but the result is stunning.
If you want to see Mattias’ visuals in Stockholm this weekend you will have a chance tonight (friday) at Spy Bar and at Unfokused/Hngr, Nordic Light Hotel saturday night.
Yesterday I met up with Dan (ElectricKingDan) from Startsladd during his brief visit to Stockholm. We talked VJ-ing over tacos, beer and coffee. He mentioned the “after video” they made after VJ-ing at the Galantis live premier during Stay Out West. Dan pointed out the difference between a gig video and an after video; the after video focuses on the event and not so much on the visuals. As always a nice edit from these video pros.
Toby finally got the site up for the D-Fuser DVI mixer. Between September 1-9 you will be able to order a mixer from the first production. Read all about the pricing, shipping and other details at the brand new *spark live web site.
INTERNATIONAL TELETEXT ART FESTIVAL ITAF
in ARD TEXT page > 770
16.08.2012 – 16.09.2012
Participating artists: Ashley Anderson, Bym, Frederic Cambus, Max Capacity, Cordula Ditz, Maria Duncker, Dan Farrimond, Kathrin Günter, Francis Hunger, Juha van Ingen, Raquel Meyers, Dave Needham, Rich Oglesby, Seppo Renvall, Janne Suni, Jarkko Räsänen and Kari Yli-Annala.
The International Teletext Art Festival is a FixC cooperative project in collaboration with ARD Text. The works are shown in ARD Text on page 770 and at Pflüger68.
I’m on OSX but I’m not at all an early adopter when it comes to operating systems. I just upgraded to Lion in June and the next release, Mountain Lion is already here. So is it worth upgrading yet? The subject was brought up in our Facebook group and Mattias Lindberg (Fake Pilot) stated that he is running VDMX without problems so far but says that Vidvox has adviced against upgrading yet since there might be performance issues and plugins that won’t work. Since X11 is not supported in Mountain Lion, you will have to install XQuartz for VDMX and a few other apps to work. Mattias also states that all Vade’s V002 plugins works great.
Patrik Johansson (Nrlnd/Current Current) had a talk with Kineme and reports that Data Tools has been updated for Mountain Lion but Kineme core and Kineme 3D is not working yet.
My searches on the Internet reveals that there doesn’t seem to be any problems with Modul8, Resolume, CoGe and Arkaos. Let us know if you disagree.
It’s already time to apply for the next edition of the prestigious Mapping Festival in Geneva, Switzerland. The festival will take place May 2-12 next year. There are two different call dates depending on what you are submitting:
This is probably the most covered hardware project on the SVJU blog. The D-Fuser is a mixer that together with the HD video switcher 1T-CT-750 from TV One makes the most affordable HD mixing solution for visualists.
No one could have imagined that it would take this long time to make the D-Fuser ready for production but the time is finally here. The site will open on the 17th of August, orders will be taken August 24th – August 31st and production will start on September 1st. Bookmark the site, set your calendar and get your money sorted.
Read more about the project on Toby’s blog. Or read our previous articles about the D-Fuser:
