vdmo Kstati
For any visualist out there who is on the constant look out for new ideas and methods to approach his or her production, – coding tools offer an amazing supplement of options, interactivity and point of difference. Continue Reading
Processing is incredible platform for creating visual ideas and generating stunning Audio Visual multimedia pieces. To be frank with the whole thing, to the day I haven’t performed with Processing as a sole software option at any of the gigs that I have played, yet never the less I incorporate some of the processing sketches that I record and post-edit in my production.
Well, that’s until Mother came to the scene. -A program that allows VJing with Processing.org sketches.
The lead developer Ilias Bergstrom has been working through developing this invaluable tool which in my opinion can launch Processing as source of visual performance to another level.
The current development version (Mother 0.3 in Development) has been announced just under a month ago and what now seemingly its coming to a near launch stage with followed up post from Ilias on Onar3d- Maria Louiza.
I will take some time in next few days to give much more detailed review of my personal experience, yet in the mean time, check out provided links for more info on the subject.
Visualists Rejoice! While we may hold great deal of visual tools available to us through software and hardware, sometime you come across something that captures your imagination and gives you a new techniques based on the presented flexibility of freeform that those maybe are. Alchemy is exactly that!
The Alchemy Interface
Alchemy is an open drawing project aimed at exploring how we can sketch, draw, and create on computers in new ways. Alchemy isn’t software for creating finished artwork, but rather a sketching environment that focuses on the absolute initial stage of the creation process. Experimental in nature, Alchemy lets you brainstorm visually to explore an expanded range of ideas and possibilities in a serendipitous way.
Modules
Alchemy consists of a growing number of ‘modules’ that can be added or removed at will. Using a given module you can do things like:
- Shout at the computer. Use your voice to control the width of a line or the form of a shape.
- Draw ‘blind’. Turn off the canvas display and explore what shapes emerge from the ‘darkness’.
- Create random shapes. Generate shapes that can be used as a starting point for characters, spaceships, or whatever shape you see in the ‘clouds’.
- Mirror draw. Draw mirrored symmetrical forms in realtime.
- Capture real colour. Use your web camera as a live colour palette.
- Randomise. Mess up and distort shapes.
Global Features
Other global features place focus on the ‘process’ of drawing, letting you do things like:
- Record a drawing ’session’. Automatically save the contents of the canvas to a page in a PDF file at set intervals.
- Auto-clear the canvas. Start drawing on a clean slate at set intervals. Force yourself to start over fresh.
- Switch the canvas. Automatically open your sketch in a more ‘conventional’ drawing application, either as a bitmap or vector file.
- Avoid distraction. Alchemy has a very minimal interface, just a simple toolbar that dissapears magically, and a fullscreen mode to block everything else out.
Download
http://al.chemy.org/download/
Please watch the Videos:
Some good news. Processing has crawled out from its Beta state (mind you, very solid on many counts) and is finally is 1.0! Download Now!
Peter from Create Digital Motion has written a big post about the Launch and even broke the CDM policy not to publish press releases.:)
For those who not familiar with pure:dyne, perhaps its time to turn your attention to this ever growing Open Source project which encompasses all wonderful things Open Source and directly applicable to Audio and Video artists who seek and choose to produce they own works using FLOSS software. My personal experience with this Operating System goes back for couple of years as I would frequently boot into it via USB or CD and primarily experiment with Pure Data as my tool of choice and generally learn about Linux the knowledge which I gradually climb.
Few days ago Marc Garrett had invited two team members of the GOTO10 collective (People behind pure: dyne), Heather Corcoran and Aymeric Mansoux to discuss pure:dyne on the Netbehaviour.org list and share the light on its history, side projects and future.
This interview provides an interesting insight into development and history of pure:dyne,- FLOSS open source Linux distribution OS by artists for artists. The interview took place between October 16th – 23rd Oct 08. An open discussion was joined by other list members of Netbehaviour result of which can be found on the link below.
To read it, please click on the link below:
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=322
I had a good play around on Resolulme Avenue (mac) last night in live environment. One of the newly joined members for vjforums.com Gavan Bright was doing a gig in my town – and I took over his system couple of times during the Halloween night, Thanks Gav! It was a a massive Mac Tower, pretty fast.
Well my thoughts on Resolume Avenue so far.
For the performance to flow smoother, midi controller HAS to be used at all times, there are way too many parameters that could be adjusted throughout playtime, just due to the lack of time to set one up for this gig this wasn’t possible.
Strong Positives of the Software:
Very good manipulation parameters implemented to deal with positioning, scale, screw, movements and tilting of the video layer + more. I think this part is my most definite favourite from previous versions.
Few manipulation of the layer visibility in relation to other layers controls are improved as far as my own performing techniques are concerned. Very happy with those.
Shortfall of having on my own collection of (paid) Freeframes to the current default could be felt as I would normally have lots more. Now questions stands will any of my old frames work or will they all need to be re-purchased to be used as part of Avenue?
Overall I sense some massive potential and would have to practise a bit further on this system to figure out some of its ins and outs as there are a new new features and tricks of the trade.
Downsides:
No support of Flash (swf) files… At least for now. I have read that this will be added with 3.1, yet for those who use swf files on a regular basis this is strongly lacking. One of the reasons for me not to full switch to Avenue is primarily this at his point.
No recording functionality. Like it or lump it, this is something I have been doing fairly regularly, always love that feature as you can make up live play fields that can be re-worked and re-added back to the play selection. A bit sad that this feature has been completely dropped.
Program crashed few times through the night, the good thing that relaunching the program is almost instant and it reverts to the saved last specs within 2/3 seconds… Quite brilliant if you had to deal with it. I guess it has a lot to do with performance of the computer, but still impressive.
I sense this tool will gain some greater support from me with time, I’ll keep perusing to seek deeper knowledge and techniques about it with full midi support as its the only way to manage this efficiently and most likely pursue its audio capabilities also.