I (like many) have always wanted to guest program rage. In order to do that though, I’d first need to become famous. And that requires a lot of time and effort that I could instead be putting towards jumping up and down in front of my laptop making strange noises (true story). Happily, I’ve been invited by ACMI to come and talk about animation, music videos, tech hackery and all the things I do when instead I should be going out there getting famous. I’m gonna screen some of my work as well as some music videos that have pressed the OMG button in my brain. Like these ones:
It’s happening Tuesday, April 3rd, 6PM @ Studio 1, ACMI (Federation Square, Melbourne). It’s a free event but you do need to book here. come! say hello and ask me things!
… and we’re back. while I was blog-absent some fun things have happened. VIZZable was the 10th most read story on CDM last year. It’s exciting news for a little set of plugins in the relatively obscure Max for Live video scene and encouraging that others are as interested in using Ableton as an audio-visual environment as I am. Big shout out to the great folk on the Jitter in Max for Live group!
Sound 2 Light
Some documentation of last years Sound 2 Light has arisen. Sound 2 Light was a tech/media arts event held in Hobart where artists are partnered up and given a small period of time to come up with an installation or performance. I was partnered up with venerable techno producer Sam Gregory and we created a 20 minute AV piece revolving around strange hybrid animals all mapped onto four, large rectangular panels. I also put together two smaller installations: “Homunculus II” a teleoperated robot visible at the start of the video and a colourful, kaleidoscopic, audio-reactive projected piece that evolved throughout the night. Watch the video below and see if you can spot such things. You can also listen to the live broadcast that went out on the night.
Stereosonic
Last year I was also lucky enough to VJ the Bass Arena at Melbourne’s Stereosonic. It was the longest set I’ve played so far – about 9 hours – I used the opportunity to try out some new masking and feedback techniques as well as the usual fare of Live camera feeds, glitches, datamoshing and rainbow meltiness. Whilst playing for Danish electropop singstress Lucy Love, her manager approached me and asked if there was anything wrong with the video signal. I gestured to my PS3 controller as if to say, nope, it’s OK, It’s supposed to be like that and before I could launch into a deep discussion of how visuals, when tightly synced, can reenforce sound and give it more impact he said “Don’t do that”. I quickly pigeon holed him as a square whom I usually enjoy confusing but to keep him happy I kept the rest of the set less interesting/confusing. Anyhoo, some videos of the day have popped up on youtube. Datsik was particularly awesome.
Next…
A few Zeal shows are popping up in Radelaide in the coming weeks as well as some remix projects to get back into the music side of things. I’m building another controller similar to Archaeopteryx but this time for feet:
I’m also exploring Augmented Reality with a view to put together an immersive AR installation at some stage in the future. I hope I’m not alienating all you normal people as this is possibly the geekiest video I’ve uploaded to date:
Alrighty, you’re up to date. I’m back to blogging and tweeting so sit tight, there’s more soon.
Another gig! I’ll be playing the first official zeal gig of the year next wednesdayThursday the 24th at 303 supporting Sydney’s Karoshi. The new audio visual set’s really coming together after last weeks trial run and it should be even better by next wednesday. I’m also scheming some evil live streaming schemes so all of you in internet land can check out the shiny new moving pictures and sounds… more gigs coming. and videos and things. oh, the unbearable intrigue.
i’m playing this saturday night at the empress with JUNK! and the time shield – and this time not as zeal but as my VJing alter ego lazy laser. i’ll be trailing some new AV material (using VIZZable) and it will be under rehearsed but hopefully interesting. it should be a taste of the future zeal live show. the inimitable junk will be doing some stripped down acoustic or ambient or jazzy versions of their songs and time shield will be there to shield us from the horrors of time (and also make pretty pictures and sounds). back to getting my shit together!
My good friend Subsketch has started a podcast and this week it features me talking about all things Zeal thusfar. He’s done some tricky editing to make me say things i never really said… check it out Y’all! Oh yeah! Give me that podcast!
While you’re at it, check out all things Subsketch. He makes tremendous stuff. It is worthy of your attention.
i’ve been wanting to run video plugins since before Max for Live came into existence and Max/MSPs VIZZIE VJ modules seemed perfect as Ableton plugins. so i swapped out all the non-MIDI automatable parts and shoehorned some plugins together.
These plugins are completely compatible with the amazing V-module suite by Fabrizio Poce. These two projects have now merged to provide a comprehensive suite of video, effects and real-time graphics tools for Live. If you’d like to become involved in testing and developing these plugins please join us in this google group.
Change list
6/12/2011
V 0.9.3
Updated auto-connect v 1.0
Syphon output added to the viewr module
new midigrid device – receives midi notes and outputs white squares. originally made for the novation launchpad but will work with any midi input
new 2switchr device to toggle video between two different outputs
17/4/2011
V 0.9.2
All modules can now auto-connect (thanks to Chris Gough from the Jitter in Live google group)
All module’s preview windows can be disabled by clicking
Viewr GL optimized
Viewr can now toggle menubar in fullscreen mode
Viewr acts as a central hub to all other VIZZable modules allowing toggling of module preview windows and setting global resolution for all modules
New Previewr device, similar to viewr but without global controls or fullscreen
New Zamplr effect module
Playr has several performance improvements
Playr now properly saves loaded movie folders with live set
Clicking the Playrs name below the preview window activates a FPS meter and unique frame toggle for performance monitoring
VIZZIE preset code removed – presets can be saved in Live browser
7/4/2011
Effect modules are now bypassed when device is deactivated.
6/4/2011
All parameters can now be automated with clip envelopes
Code cleaned up
Scribbler bugs fixed
3/4/2011
All devices now connect using the same drop down system as V-module
Player now has selectable resolution
25/1/2011
all devices frozen and outputs plugged with “.” to prevent stack overflow errors
there goes 2010. zeal relocated to melbourne and good things happened! starting with what’s happening right now and working back… i’m currently in adelaide where i’m set up in a bunker, recording new songs for some sort of ep early in the new year.
My album is ranked third on a whothehell.net ”list”. It’s the second time i’ve ever been on a list and it’s still fun.
Last week my song “clouds” made a top songs of 2010 podcast on polaroids of androids. it was the first time i’d ever been on a list and it was fun.
i played alot of shows this year, all of which had secret words, many of which i can’t remember. some were:
it’s the first time i’ve played either of these venues. also, i might whip out a VJ set at the toff gig…
there’ll be one more show in Radelaide before the year is up but i’ll post about that later. until then, enjoy a preview of colourful things in the works…
Zeal is 27 year-old Melbournite, Robert Jarvis. He makes anticon-esque indie-pop-tronica, animated music videos about cats in space and software that enables you to do all sorts of stuff.
Elsewhere...