ZEAL

… 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.

bob.