Goodbye Tweet Posts

The idea of tweet blogging was good in theory and may have worked well at times when we had many blog posts and few tweets. Now the site seems to have been diluted by the tweets. We have decided to remove the blog tweet functionality but tweets will be back in the new design that we will be release some time in the next quarter. The tweets will move to the right column in the new design. But to not mess up the history completely we list all tweet posted  by ElectricKingDan and themidithief below. Fail whale image by Yiying Lu.

 @themidithief: Via @h3xl3r Introducing TouchViZ. Professional, portable VJ system for iPad 2 http://t.co/enaBteWV

@ElectricKingDan: Live FX and mapping in the new advertising project from Sony PlayStation. http://t.co/4IdhTyVt

@themidithief: Ableton has a great christmas offer: 25% off on all Ableton products! http://t.co/x7dTtabV

@themidithief: Via @_syphon We’ve updated http://t.co/AeV3t6BD with a more complete list of native applications & plugins. #syphon

@themidithief: Via @_syphon A new Vimeo group for showcasing videos, techniques, tools, combinations and results using Syphon http://t.co/sNQTZmM2

@themidithief: Via @visualberlin 20% discount offer on COGE http://t.co/XxStUyac

@themidithief: RT @_syphon Just Add Music Media demos JAM2 #syphon support in Ableton Live: http://t.co/M1O8JlJU

@ElectricKingDan: #Resolume 4 Beta 2 Now Available http://t.co/xCE77MUB

@ElectricKingDan: COLORCODE VJ for iPad. http://t.co/4Uy3Y1Xf Someone who has tried it? #VJ #iPad

@themidithief: Great article about “Modul8 + MadMapper powers a 8bit invader”: http://t.co/7fZHePEF

@ElectricKingDan: Kinect and particle production that look really nice. Making of: New Look – Nap On The Bow, by Tim&Joe http://t.co/L66tpULy #Kinect

@ElectricKingDan: Mapping Festival 2012 Call for entries is now open! Start blogging! http://t.co/RFuCYVJv http://t.co/KLT7yX26

@ElectricKingDan: Splashy Hugo Boss-McLaren Architectural Projections with nice sound FX // http://t.co/58HbzDIF // #Mapping

@ElectricKingDan: Experimenting with real Particles. Andrew Kramer shows how // http://t.co/jMeJNcS //

@themidithief: Via @LeCollagiste: Top story: CoGe 1.0.3 out now | The lov’s QC blog http://t.co/ONx1TJ8

@themidithief: @Codanova: Codanova VMX v64 Available – Codanova VMX – MIDI controller http://t.co/PRCB5NO

@themidithief: From the @modul8_team: We have released an update today, v2.6.4. Please read the blog post for details. http://t.co/wE1R4n6

@ElectricKingDan: @franksentus are more than VJ’s! http://t.co/CxAOn0y #AudioVisualRockBan #AV

@ElectricKingDan: Arvika Music Camp http://t.co/m3PzBfO

@themidithief: Swedes: TV4 visits the H-A-C-K installation by @joeldittrich, Håkand Lidbo and A. Tilliander. Tune in to TV4 right now!

@themidithief: Videomappers, seen this yet? VLS Video Mapping Trophy http://t.co/rkWZw8w

@themidithief: TouchOSC 1.7.3 and TouchOSC Editor 1.5.3 released. Encoder control, multi-push and more: http://hexler.net/forum/viewthread/356/

@ElectricKingDan: Visuals with a bunch of boxes, music and sound effects. probably a big bag of money. Designed by Leviathan

@themidithief: Via @_syphon this mapping keeps getting madder http://t.co/Rfog7S7

@themidithief: #VJU member and 8-bit star Raquel Meyers featured in Wired. http://tinyurl.com/6xt2bsq

@themidithief: CoGe has been rewritten and is going commercial (but cheap) (info via @lumabeamerz)

@ElectricKingDan: Spectacular Real-time Visualization of Music from Abstract Birds #Partitura

@themidithief: RT @modul8_team: druul tool for res junkies?

@themidithief: Via @_vade: Visual platform of the future? Damn.

@themidithief: New stand alone sound to MIDI Clock application for OSX, the first of it’s kind for this platform, http://wavesum.net/

@themidithief: Via @h3xl3r TouchOSC v1.7.1 is fixing custom OSC addresses. LiveControl, The Missing Link, Twisted Tools, etc all fine again. Update!

@themidithief: Swedish VJ Union gathering on saturday 18:00 at Studio 3, Kulturhuset. #tagtool demo by @ilan_katin. FB-event: http://on.fb.me/kSZ83B

@ElectricKingDan: Update! TouchOSC V1.7 Supports coreMIDI & Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer ways of communicating with hard/software #VJ #MIDI

@ElectricKingDan: Startsladd have made vids for Volvo Concept Universe. Mapping part are in collaboration with @themidithief

Automatic Duck plug-ins for free

QUACK!

Some of the plug-ins from Automatic Duck is now free. One of the cofounders, Wes Plate, has left the company to join Adobe and bring the functionality into Premiere. The Pro Importer AE 5.0 allows you to export your sequence as a XML from either Avid or Final Cut Pro, and then very easily import them into your After Effects project. I’ve been drooling over this plug-in for a couple of years, but never felt that I had the $500 that it used to cost. So hurry and download them!

http://www.autoduckinc.com/

The image below shows an example of my sequence in Final Cut Pro, exported and then imported into After Effects.

EXAMPLE

 

 

 

Apply for Vision’r 2012

After Vision’R 2011 success, focused on nomadic hybridations and local minorities cultures international resistances, for 2012 up to you to express your singularities and alterities, reactive or not to the geo-strategic actual contexts. Resistances and relative autonomies are both singularization sources.

Next Vision’R will take place around month of May 2012, with Paris days at the Mercoeur Center based on the May, 12 weekend.

Proposals reception period is open until December 5, 2011.

Read more on the VJ France Forum (English & French)

CALL FOR ENTRIES – MAPPING FESTIVAL 2012

As ElectricKingDan pointed out earlier this week, it’s about time to apply for the 2012 edition of the Mapping Festival. This is what you need to know:

Your imagination is full of audiovisual projects? You have performances, installations, workshops or other audiovisual multidisciplinary projects to discover?

Submit your project to the Mapping Festival!
As every year our curatorial committee develops the Mapping Festival program through an open call for submissions.

For it, you have to submit a COMPLETE file and register on line on: www.mappingfestival.com

BEWARE: Mapping Festival 2012 call for entries start OCTOBER 18h TUESDAY until NOVEMBER 18th FRIDAY included.

Different categories:
– Clubbing: VJing / scenography / Set AV
– Audiovisual performance
– Installation / Exhibition
– Outdoor projection
– Workshop / Lecture / Software demonstration

Mad Mapper Workshop in Brussels

So it’s been now one week since I participated in the Mad Mapper workshop that was held by 1024 Architecture‘s François Wunschel and Modul8‘s founder Boris Edelstein. I can’t stop coming up with new ideas for future projects after this so I felt I should enlighten those who don’t know about the software or the new features it packs.

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/27253954[/vimeo]

First of all these guys are funny as hell, especially Boris, and also very friendly and helpful. After a presentation of the both companies and their thoughts about mapping we got to see a presentation about Mad Mapper. This software let you output video/images from any Syphon supported application. The idea is very simple but yet very effective. It works in 2D layers that let you adjust the images to basically any form or angle. The program also has a very clever function that let’s you use your projector together with a SLR-camera as a scanner to get a perfect pixel per pixel mask of your projection area. This also let’s you work from home instead of staying for hours on location and setup your show, if you don’t move your projector that is. In the past this kind of setup would take hours if not days to get right. Now it just takes a few pictures and some photoshopping to get a good mask. We did it in less than 15 min. This program is really simple to use!

Here is a short video from the same workshop during the Mapping Festival this year.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/24324217[/vimeo]

Check out the videos of 1024 Architecture on Vimeo to get some inspiration.

Mad Mapper is still coming out with updates that adds new features, their philosophy is that they rather release new things a soon as they come instead of letting their users wait until they got everything sorted. Hence the Madlab which is a bunch of separate programs that adds a few tricks to Mad Mapper.

Modul8‘s new update added the Syphon support which lets you output via Mad Mapper.

Syphon also supports a bunch of other cool software like OpenEmu, see why I can’t stop thinking of ideas…

Behind the scenes of the Trailerpark Festival

This weekend I got an email from Lasse Andersen a.k.a. Same Same, a fellow visualist from the Dark Matters collective in Copenhagen. He was pushing their last video from the Trailerpark Festival 2011 but since it was so freaking nice I asked him a bit about how it was made and about the people involved in the project.

Throughout the video you see visuals created by Dark Matters and Hvass & Hannibal using VDMX and Modul8. Two visual styles that comes together very nicely.

[00:00 – 00:51] This is a good display of the interaction created by Yoke. The box with the two circular holes contains a Kinect that tracks hand movements. These movements are used for controlling 10 interactive compositions that could put on top of other visuals. The hands controls the worms, the big bouncing balls, etc. If you look later at [01:34] you’ll see a nice bulge effect applied as well. OpenFrameworks and OpenNI was used to process the tracking data from the Kinect and Unity 3D was used to create the interactive scenes.

[01:48 – 02:06] I really like how the different sections of the set are made to look like they are moving. It looks great with the abstract patterns but it really gets uncanny at [01:58] where you can’t even spot the lines of the set anymore. I was discussing with Lasse whether it was a just a lucky coincidence due to the way it was filmed but he pointed out that it’s also because the anatomy imagery is so bright and busy that it fools they eye.

Here’s a video of the rehearsal showing the bulge effect.

The set was constructed by Bo Benzon at Arkitektur Ministeriet. It’s made out of 50 plywood pieces (122×244 cm) and was designed in 3D and cut on an CNC router machine. The one ton set was assembled on the floor and it took 20 people to erect it.

The group spent about 750 hours putting this together including the four days of live projection at the festival.

CoGe 1.0 (OSX) goes commercial

http://vimeo.com/27909129
CoGe v 1.0 (OSX) has been released and is no longer free. The creator made the decision to go commercial to be able to keep the project going. The software costs only $99 and is right on sale for $79 which is good bang for the buck.

The software has been reworked an now features arbitrary layers, effects, the mixer chain, native Syphon support and even a beat detector. CoGe supports Quicktime, Quartz Composer comps, Flash files and Collada 3D meshes and Core Image effects which makes it pretty damn powerful software. Go to the CoGe site to download the demo and purchase the program.

The most popular visual software

Last week the result from Create Digital Motion’s survey of the most popular visual software finally got published.

Modul8 tops with 28,5% of the votes. OSX is the by far the most popular platform (71,8%) and the majority of people taking part of the survey came from the US (23.8%). Read the whole article to see some the full rankings and learn some interesting facts. I’m sad (but not surprised) to see that Sweden didn’t make a dent in this survey at all.

Updates and releases from Garagecube

Garagecube has announced a bunch of minor updates and releases: Modul8 2.8.3, a new printed manual for Modul8, an on-line Modul8 module manual, Mad Mapper 1.0.3 and MadLabs, a series of small apps for MadMapper.

http://www.modul8.us/?p=812
http://www.modul8.ch/documentation/modules_manual/
http://www.madmapper.com/2011/08/08/mad_lab-and-more/

My first reaction: The MadLabs apps seems like a fun playful addition. I noticed that MadMapper’s slightly awkward masking tool didn’t get updated and there is still no (official) Syphon input in Modul8.