In case you hadn't noticed, our friends over at VideoPong.net have been hosting a remix competition, with a license for Resolume Avenue as the grand prize!

There's some impressive entries already, so grab your chance to get in on the fun: http://www.videopong.net/clip/detail/0dtj0lqgw6v?show=showlastuploaded

It's that time again! Resolume HQ will be opening the doors to host another series of workshops.

New this time is 'Live Performance with Resolume', focussing on how you actually structure a VJ performance. Also sessions for beginners and advanced users, and of course projection mapping. It's going to be a jam packed week this coming September!

Workshops booking and details over here.

We have some fresh visuals for you. Our Dutch friends Unit44 show us their excellent 3D skillz with LineRush and despite the cold weather here in Holland Space Monkeys reminds us it's actually SpringTime.

MNMLv2 and UltraForm by RebelOverlay are insanely popular and he now completes his hattrick with OptiCron. This guy is at the peak of his game! Can you tell we're getting in the mood for the European Soccer Championships? :-)


OptiCron VJ Loops by Rebel Overlay
Relive that feeling of blasting asteroids on your Vectrex or the moment when Zod is imprisoned in the Phantom Zone. Or just rock the party with high contrast abstract imagery that works on every screen. OptiCron has something for everybody. Not just for nerds stuck in the eighties.


LineRush VJ Loops by Unit44
Whether you're carving down a hill of fresh powder or you're about to beat your high score on Tetris, you can't beat the rush of laying down a good line.


SpringTime VJ Loops by Space Monkeys
Plant your feet firmly and get back to your roots with these flowery loops that give instant grassification. It'd be a shame if you missed out on these flower loops because you haven't botany.

A while back Ben Peoples from Trinculo’s Attic contacted us about a project he did, using Resolume as a playback device. The write-up offers a great insight into the actual real-world experience of creating physical installations. And it made us giggle. Maybe it will make you giggle too.

We were contacted about doing an “Elevator-controlled video switcher”. Here’s the initial inquiry: “we have an elevator at an event… we want to play one file when it’s going up and then a second when it’s going down…”

Of course, the first question is: Can someone push a button? No. Can we hook into the elevator controls? No. Not even a little? No. They had three ceiling-mounted video screens, and it was up to us to find a way to sense when the elevator was moving, and in which direction, and then trigger the appropriate video.
The end result looked like this:



We built a standalone video player that hooked into custom built position sensors to tell us where the elevator was. When the elevator went up, it played one video file, when it went down, it played another, and it had splash screens at each floor while idle. Our logic allowed us to tweak the configuration on-site, and we even added functionality on the fly.

The final effect was pretty magical: as the elevator started to move up, the first video played. 5 seconds after it arrived at the second floor, the video crossfaded to a splash screen. As soon as the elevator started its trip down, the second video played, and again 5 seconds after arrival, the video crossfaded to the splash screen. Nobody had to remember to do anything: the elevator’s own movement was triggering the video.

The Event

The event had folks sitting in one session, then being moved to a second session that was one floor up. This elevator was the way they got up and then back down for the main keynote in another room on the first floor. When you got in the elevator, there was a logo on the screens. As the elevator started to rise, the logo crossfaded to a video about “Up into the wild blue yonder.” A few seconds after arriving at the second floor, the screens switched back to the logo, flipped upside-down: the elevator was a “feed through” type, so people getting on at the second floor were coming from the opposite direction. While the screens were flat, we wanted the audience to have a similar experience in both directions. The ride down had a video of a ceiling fan (which worked nicely with the natural airflow through the elevator.) Overall, it was a nice effect, and made an otherwise boring 25-second elevator ride into a far more themed environment.

Making it Work

We walked into the event with two different plans fully implemented, as well as a few backup plans if parts of either of those failed.

The first plan (Plan A) was to use an accelerometer to measure the movement of the elevator directly, and then plot out our position as best we could. This worked! After several hours of testing and tweaking, it was doing pretty well. And then it missed. For no reason at all, it didn’t see us stop at the 2nd floor, decided it was a false trigger, and got lost until we went back to the first floor. End of the world? No. But we needed this to be 100%, or as close to that as we could get in the real world.

So we went to Plan B. Plan B’s first incarnation used line-follower IR reflectance sensors to see targets attached to the wall. On the first floor, we placed targets on the wall where one sensor saw white and the other saw black. On the second floor we did the same, but we flipped the targets so the sensors would see the opposite colors. Quite happily, this worked. The only time we saw a failure was when the elevator operator stopped the elevator after it started moving and then restarted it; the elevator moved much more slowly, and it caused a false trigger. This wouldn’t happen during the event, so we felt we were safe.

To actually playback the video, we used a program called Resolume. Resolume is Video Jockey (VJ) software, and we chose it because it could handle cross fading between streams at random, and it could operate blind: full screen on the primary display, using a keyboard input to switch video.

We set up Resolume to accept keys 1 through 6 as switching between streams 1 through 6 (which is its default mode), and used a Pololu Wixel in HID Keyboard mode. We could have used the ATmega16u2 on the Arduino to do this, but we needed to be able to load code through the 16u2, and we already had the libraries to make the Wixel an HID device. The Wixel accepted digital high/low signals on 6 of its pins to trigger 1 through 6. So when pin 0 went high, the Wixel pressed 1 on the keyboard. Releasing the pin or driving it low caused the Wixel to release the key. We also used an onboard LED to indicate that it was pressing keys, to aid in debugging.

Trinculo’s Attic founder and book author Ben Peoples has worked with Disney Creative Entertainment, Cirque du Soleil, Paramount Theme Parks and Busch Gardens Williamsburg.

For more mathy geekness, data diagrams, production haphazards and full source code, check out the original blog post on the Trinculo's Attic website: http://www.trinculosattic.com/2012/05/show-business-has-its-ups-and-downs/

Using the unique features of Resolume, FFGL plugins, and the three-dimensional input capability of the Kinect, Tim Thompson has created the Space Palette. It's an instrument that lets you perform visuals and music controlled directly from the motion of your hands, using no pre-recorded media.

In the current Space Palette, each of four large holes lets you play four different sounds and draw four different types of graphics, all simultaneously using any number of hands or objects. The smaller holes act as buttons that let you change sounds and colors, turn on looping, control musical keys and scales, etc. Although originally and still primarily designed as a "casual instrument" installation for events like Burning Man, Tim occasionally does performances - here are some recent ones:



The software behind the Space Palette has two parts. The first part is a standalone program (called MultiMultiTouchTouch or MMTT) that lets you use the Kinect to define any number of three-dimensional multitouch surfaces in mid-air; it can be trained within a minute on any flat frame with holes. Each hole essentially becomes a multitouch mousepad with depth, in which any number of hands (or objects) can be used simultaneously.

The output of MMTT is TUIO, a standard for conveying multitouch information over OSC. TUIO fortunately includes a way of describing three-dimensional cursors, and MMTT and the Space Palette make good use of it. The source code for MMTT has been made freely available to the Kinect hacker community.

The second part of the Space Palette is an FFGL plugin that Tim wrote called Space Manifold, which runs inside Resolume. This plugin takes the TUIO output of MMTT, and directly generates both visuals and music. Both types of output are controlled directly by your hands; there are no pre-recorded clips. The visuals are generated using OpenGL, and musical notes are generated by sending MIDI over to soft synthesizers.

Tim currently uses Plogue Bidule as a VST host, and Alchemy for most of the sounds. The visuals done by the Space Manifold plugin are further enhanced by a chain of 13 other FFGL plugins that are provided with Resolume. These effects are selectively enabled and disabled under the control of the Manifold plugin (more details below).

Both MMTT and the Space Manifold plugin use browser-based interfaces for control. This means that any browser (including one on a different computer or tablet) can be used to control them.

One of the more interesting aspects of the Space Manifold FFGL plugin is that it makes excellent use of Resolume's ability to be controlled by OSC. When Manifold decides it wants to enable or disable some of the other effects (due to gestures detected within the Space Palette), it sends OSC messages to Resolume to do so. This demonstrates that an FFGL plugin can actually control its own host, in ways not anticipated by the FFGL standard. Resolume itself doesn't even realize that the OSC it is receiving is coming from one of the FFGL plugins that it is hosting!

Additional design intent and technical details can be found in these slides from a talk, Tim Thompson's Home Page and the Space Palette page. Tim has plans for providing a Python-based interface for FFGL plugins, making it easier to create and change behaviours (both musical and visual) on the fly, without restarting the FFGL host. Anyone interested in that avenue of exploration is encouraged to contact Tim via me@timthompson.com

The following info arrived on our virtual doorstep a while back, and our hearts simply melted:

Cyber-Hermits, Guilt, & How We Built Our New Live Show:
Musicians, programmers, mappers, visual artists, and all of you other wonderful creative people of the internet, I have a confession to make. Over the last few years I have been silently climbing in your forums and snatching your knowledge up, trying to collect and hoard all of the pieces we needed to make our new live projection mapped show possible.

[fold][/fold]
Fortunately, we were able to make it happen with the power of the almighty internet, the passionate communities of creative/supportive people that it connects, and your free web-wisdom.

Here’s the thing that has been bugging me though: I visit a bunch of sites on a daily basis (I owe a lot especially to the forums/blogs at Resolume, Create Digital Music & Motion, Kineme, and 1024 Architecture) but I hardly ever leave a comment, ask a question, or share anything in return. Shame on me.

In an attempt to shed some of the guilt that comes with being a thieving, greedy, info hoarding, good-for-nothin’ cyber-hermit, I decided to give a little back and put together a geek-tasticly detailed overview of how we ended up connecting and operating our new show.

Here’s a picture of our video pipeline to give you a taste:


And you can read the original Google Doc in it’s full glory here.

Though we love playing with technology, the most important part of this project from the beginning was to create a show that visually enhanced the music in a way that created a seamless and intensified emotional experience for our audience without feeling forced (i.e., projection mapped visuals for the sake of projection mapped visuals). We wanted to make something really unique, impactful, and interesting to experience. I think we've done a pretty good job so far, but it'll get better as we continue to learn and create.

Okay, so now that I’ve fully confessed and made a small payment on my debt… I beg you, please have mercy on me and don’t take my internet connection away. I promise to be a contributing member of the interweb from here on out!

Forever yours,
Brett

Check out Brett and Courtney's website for soothing tunes and great videos. And a cat. And a robot. http://www.kidmeetscougar.com/

We're so chuffed with these 3, each very different footage releases. Rebel Overlay follows up on his popular MNMLv2 set with UltraForm. AnalogMutation by Unit44 is so dark & dirty it creates a craving for human flesh among some of us. FingerPaint by Moederschip is a very inspiring example that reminds us that we need to keep reinventing our style and experiment with different techniques.


UltraForm VJ Loops by Rebel Overlay
Look, up in the sky! Is it a particle system? Is it a line pattern? No, it's the UltraForm loop pack! Born as Kal-El on the planet Krypton, this loop pack has the super human ability to wow audiences everywhere.


AnalogMutation VJ Loops by Unit44
Warning! The AX-23 virus is considered highly contagious. Symptoms include itching, nausea and a craving for human flesh. To minimize risk of infection, avoid contact with the mouth, nose and eyes.


FingerPaint VJ Loops by Moederschip
Simple yet innovative, Moederschip have done it again. FingerPaint reinvents digital glitch with a dash of Van Dyck brown.

When our friends from Moederschip mentioned that their new footage pack FingerPaint was inspired by the artist Len Lye, we started talking about the pioneers of our field. You cannot help but be amazed by what some of these boys and girls were doing over half a century ago. With all the amazing technology we have at our fingertips these days, some of the work they did still blows ours out of the water. Moederschip was so kind to enlighten us on a few classics, so read on and get edumacated.

Early abstract film

Throughout history, many artists have been aiming for a synergy between visuals and sound. Abstract film and music visualisation are closely related and their history often overlaps. Early projection techniques like the Magic lantern (around 1650) were often accompanied by music and storytelling, though those were not abstract works.

The Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo came up with a system to connect music and luminosity around 1590. This was only a concept, instruments to play it followed. Around 1730, the french monk Louis Bertrand Castel developed a more direct connection between both media: the Ocular Harpsichord (Color organ), an instrument that played notes and colours with the touch of a key. In a way the Ocular Harpsichord was much alike the lcd-projectors we use today: (60) small coloured glass panes (pixels) were covered by tiny curtains and opened briefly with the touch of the organ keys. A later version projected the colours with 500 candles in front of a small audience. The idea of visualising music (colour music) was developed further in the years and many translations of musical pieces were made. These pure visualisations of music found their way into our modern DMX controlled lights.

The invention of the motion picture film camera in 1888 and the film projector changed the landscape of music visualisation dramatically. The first abstract movies were directly painted on film by the Italian Futurists Bruno Corra and Arnaldo Ginna between 1911 and 1912. Unfortunately, these works are all lost, just like the abstract work made by the German Hans Stoltenberg in the same period. Through a series of prominent artists and their works we show you an impression of the first abstract experiments up to the first computer animations in art.

A very important film in the history of abstract film, called “Rhythmus 21”, was made in 1921 by the German dadaist painter and self proclaimed “first abstract film maker” Hans Richter:

Although the film was created without music, it has been accompanied by many soundtracks.

Around the same time the German film director Walther Ruttmann created his first of many abstract films “Lichtspiel Opus I”:

Lichtspiel Opus I was accompanied by a soundtrack written for the film and sometimes by a live cello performance done by Ruttmann himself. The film was created using “classic” animation techniques.

Two other interesting works in this period we have to mention are Symphonie Diagonale by Viking Eggeling (1921) and (though not truly abstract) Anemic Cinema by Marcel Duchamp (1926).

Mary Ellen Bute started creating abstract film around 1933. The following video was created in 1938 and shows a great example of the elegant music visualisation in her work:


The work of the New Zealand-born artist Len Lye is truly dynamic and rhythmic, matching the music with fluid motion and vivid colours. Len Lye used mixed techniques directly on film rolls, a beautiful example is “A Colour Box” (1935):


Norman McLaren,a Scottish-born Canadian animator created many abstract experimental film in the same period, a good and minimal example is “Dots” (around 1940):


The introduction of computer animations changed the field of abstract film for good. A great piece (in fact a showreel, not a single work) is “Catalog” (1960) by the American animator John Whitney:


In additon to these works listed, the contribution of many other artists have made the field of abstract film and visual music what it is today and still creative people and technology expand it further.

So who, what and why is Lucan Visuals?

Lucan Visuals is a 3d Projection mapping collective based in Cape Town, South Africa. It was founded by three like minded friends, all of whom have a background in the animation and VFX industry. We have always found projection mapping to be an exciting and intriguing medium with infinite possibilities and we wanted to explore it further. After many hours of researching the possibilities and brainstorming our ideas we started piecing together what is now Lucan Visuals.
By utilizing what we have learned as VFX artists, we aim to add something unique and innovative to our work.

How did you approach your projection mapping project? What software did you use to create the visuals, and how did you go about it?

It started with some initial concept set sketches which were then modeled in Autodesk Maya, after some refinement and tweaking we decided on the final set. Through a process of trial and error, our mock up set was then cut from polystyrene according to our measurements. We used a combination of Maya and After Effects to create the visuals.


Any major stupid mistakes that you can laugh about now, but made you feel like an idiot then?

We patiently awaited our order of 30 sheets of 4.5 x 4.5 meter cardboard, for the building of our set. After it having to be airlifted onto our driveway we quickly realised our weekend job turned into a, well, not a weekend job. We traced our set blueprints onto the sheets and then carefully started cutting and folding the cardboard. After what felt like 4 years of building, our cardboard set was finally complete. We were overly excited and rushed into painting the set. The next day we applied our first layer of white paint, being a water based paint our glorious set warped, buckled and collapsed in on itself. Needless to say, we were no artisans of set building.

What about the tech? What sort of gear do yo have in that basement?

In the basement we have a leaking kayak, a finless surfboard and some old wine.
For the tech we used a SIM2 ProC4 4500lm projector and an Asus i5 notebook.


How does Resolume fit into all this?

We needed something that would allow us to focus on the creative side of things rather than going back and forth with tricky software. After doing extensive research on which software would best serve our needs, it became clear that Resolume 4 was exactly what we needed. It is user friendly and has a large community and support base, which appealed to us and any technical difficulties we experienced were swiftly dealt with.

And what about the future? Where is Lucan Visuals headed?

We set our sights on raising the bar with each project we take on. Generating quality designs and innovative solutions that explore the potential and push the boundaries of projection mapping. Seeing other people getting excited about this as much as we are is a great reward in itself.

Hopefully we make enough money along the way to fix our leaking kayak...

http://www.facebook.com/events/270702536353979/



365mag & Unis Academy have teamed up with Ableton, Resolume and EKKO to present to you a very special workshop demonstrating today’s Ultimate Combination in Audio - Visual Performances.
The event is focussed on the latest in Music & Media Technology combined with a local and international artist Patrice Bäumel along side Trial & Error - the Utrecht based animation/VJ collective.
This special edition features the combination of the latest Ableton Live edition and Resolume's Avenue 4 as well as it's amazing 3D mapping possibilities.

PART 1. SYNTHESIS AND LIVE PRODUCTION with Cenk Unis and Alex Thomson
The evening will start off with Ableton Certified Unis-Academy lecturer’s Cenk Unis and Alex Thomson building a track live on stage in 45 minutes. For this purpose they will make use of synthesis along with a variety of production techniques and a couple of Ableton’s “hidden features” to show you how everything, including basic drum sounds, can be done from scratch. This means no samples whatsoever!

Unis Academy will be starting its next Ableton Master Course Program on the 24th of April 2012.
For more info just ask Alex or Cenk on the night or e-mail: info@unis-academy.com

PART 2. RESOLUME AVENUE 4 with Joris de Jong
The second part of the evening will focus on the newest in VJ-ing and live visual productions using Resolume's Avenue 4. Avenue 4 is an instrument for VJs, AV performers and video artists which puts all your media and effects right at your fingertips so you can quickly improvise with all your live visuals.

Joris de Jong, one of the main brains behind Resolume will be on stage explaining exactly how Resolume works, and how to custom make your own visuals in an easy to use and intuitive manner. Resolume has enabled VJs, A/V artists and Live visual productions to reach new levels of expertise.

Unis Academy in association with Resolume will begin its next Visual Course on the 25th April. It will be taught by Joris de Jong himself at Unis Studio in Amsterdam.
For more info please e-mail: info@unis-academy.com

PART 3. AUDIO/VISUAL PERFORMANCE USING ABLETON AND RESOLUME with special guest Patrice Bäumel
For the third part of the evening internationally renowned DJ and producer Patrice Bäumel will explain and demonstrate how he used Ableton in conjunction with Resolume to create his amazing, upcoming audio/visual performance.
About Patrice:
Patrice Bäumel is a German electronic musician who has been living in Amsterdam for the last 14 years. Before fully committing his life to making music, he had a career in teaching, computer programming and design, which makes him the perfect person for this event.

PART 4. MAPPING WITH RESOLUME ARENA 4 with VJ Collective: Trial & Error
Trial & Error will demonstrate the mapping possibilities of Resolume's Arena 4. To do this they will use everyday materials such as a piece of cardboard and a simple roll of duct tape along with Arena 4 they will demonstrate just how easily you can leave the flat world behind you and immerse yourself into a 3D wonderland. While using the same interface as Avenue, Arena opens up a new perspective and gives you the ability to create amazing results with minimal efforts and investments.

OVERALL INFORMATION
Date: 11. 5. 2012
Time: 19.00 – 22.30
Location: EKKO
Address: Bemuurde Weerd WZ 3. Utrecht
Price: € 12,50
Ticket link: https://v1.paylogic.nl/frontoffice/?command=paymentMenu&merchantModuleID=54449