VJing (and related AV geekery)

Just a place for myself and other VJs to throw ideas around, post links etc.

ooOOOOooo i likes that stuff

ravehead posted a link to a very interesting video over in internet videos that make you......... of a table where you place objects on it that represent the parts of a synthesizer, and the table lights up to give feedback.

The website for the project is at http://www.mtg.upf.edu/reactable/, and there are two other videos in the series(reactable: basic demo #1, reactable: basic demo #2, reactable: improvisation demo).

Parts of the software are open source, but the parts needed for the audio synthesis and graphic display aren't fully developed yet, so some programming knowledge is needed to make a working table. The group have said they'll release all the software when it's in a more finalised form.



So far I've downloaded the reactivision core program, that recognises the symbols on the bottom of objects placed on the table in the videos, and a 'graphical audio programming environment' called pure data, that can take the data provided by the objects (placement on/removal from table, position and rotation) as input. I just need to learn how to use pure data, and put a lot more work into learning Flash, so I can get visual feedback, and I may be able to have something similar working.

Alternatively a table could be used as a midi controller for VJing programs, as the reactivision core can provide midi data too.

I'll be steering Kyle McLean this way... he is doing extremely sweet work with live mix visuals of spinners and players.. run through various hardwares and fancifiying softwares which I shall not attempt to explain except all put together they are called HUGO and he/it rocks...

Yep Kyle rocks,

Polarity, you strike me a pretty crazy coder bloke, so the program you gotta learn how to use is GEM.

I've not used it but it sounds crazy. Take any input, any function, any output of your computer and link them together using a flowchart. Perfect for all this craziness.

m

Cheers for the link polarity!

I don't have time to be playing just now, I'm supposed to be grant writing. But...

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I just downloaded the reac core, got it working in midi mode, and sending via Midi Yoke to Live (sounds) and Arkoas (visuals).
That was just with an el cheapo webcam looking at the screen with a pdf of the (very trippy) sigils open, so I'd be curious to see how well it works with a decent camera and real things with the sigils plastered on them.
It be awesome to have a bunch of labeled objects people can just play with to alter the mix. I also have a white spacesuit that would look nice covered in them.
</bludge>

I should get back to work.

Love to share ideas and stuff more though!

That retractable is the coolest thing ive ever seen! I play with a bit of VJing too, wonder how much one of those will cost when they are finnished

Hardware is build it yourself, software is open source. So the cost of camera, projector and a computer, and a bunch of optical stuff to get the focal lengths right to pack it in under a table.

Kyle, You should mention your Hulk hands

Man i was excited bout my studio being upgraded to 5.1 and the enw computer system there called i-desks one bit of advice they say they can do music pc's for education/bussiness but they really cant.

mmmmm hulk hands...

hmm, i *very* briefly saw some of kyles stuff at common ground and thought it looked pretty nifty.

shall hopefully give it a go in the next feww days / week / weeks

Spent the afternoon playing with Pure Data. Got it to change the frequency of an oscillator when a reactivision object was rotated.

Couldn't get it to mute the sound when the object was removed from the screen though. The reactivision people are right. All the logic side should be done in a real programming language as pd can't handle normal programming concepts very well. Good job I've got xcode, although it's something else to learn on top of everything else. At least it's got better documentation than pd.

PD is really hard to get to grips with. Max/MSP has much better docs, and there is a "reasonable" amount of similarity with PD, so you could try getting the demo of max to learn on, and develop in pd. (Both of these can be quite powerful when you get your head round them, but if you come to them in a traditional imperative style, it'll just be painful...)

Quite enjoying "processing" at the moment - easy to use, and links out to hardware stuff nicely (check out wiring and arduino!) (www.processing.org)

Of course, the important bit is using OSC, as then you can send anything to anything...

well, its starting to look like i *may* create a (basic) version of the reactable, for my music industry course at school. i showed my teacher the vid and he really got into it

looks like ill be working with a fairly powerful mac, sony handicam and logic pro v7, aiming to have a basic table, hopefully with some very basic video being projected from beneath... but we'll have to see how that goes

cheers, petey