Inspiring Videos 2015

Hi All,

Not blogged as much as usual. Work has been busy and so has my personal life. Been enjoying the great outdoors a litlte more; hiking, riding, camping, etc and preparing to be a dad early next year. I have still collected a few videos over the last few months that I knew I wanted to share. So here they are in no particular order:

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XYZ tracking, before the kinect.

Shameless I know but this is one of my early experiments I had forgotten about. I remember wanting to track something in a 3D space; I could do the X and Y in Isadora and basically used scale to control the Z. The bigger something is t the camera the closer it is right? And vice-versa. Watching this made me think that often the basics are the best.

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Interactive timeline/projection mapping for Education.

I love this. Simple playful and fun.

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Listening to colour – Neil Harbisson.

I love this type of stuff. I am secret futurist at heart. I’d love to become a cyborg actually. This guy, in my eyes, is almost a cyborg because of his experiments. If you want to freak yourself out, check this out. If that’s not crazy enough then google Stelarc and Kevin Warwick

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Watch all the videos at the end of this link. Amazing VFX! 

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/interactive-design/game-of-thrones-season-5-vfx-breakdowns-emmy-winner/

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David Gumbs – artist.

I have known of, but never me, David for a long time now. A polite, talented and friendly guy who is doing some incredible things with Isadora, motion tracking and more. He has inspire me recently in the video below. Working with children and interactive paintings. What is more rewarding than that? You should defiantly check out his work here:

https://www.facebook.com/DavidGumbsArtist

http://davidgumbs.tumblr.com/

https://vimeo.com/davidgumbs

I re-edited some of the dead links (sorry about that!) David also sent me to some more links on vimeo, etc.(see above).

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Joe Hunt – projection using isadora for a piece called:’The Only Jealousy of Emer’

Great work here Joe. The video speaks for itself. Give it a watch.

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Old and New. 

One of my favourite songs is Energy 52 – Cafe Del Mar. It’s an ibiza dance/trance classic. You will probably have heard it. I have always known that many classic trance/dance (and more) music takes chords, progressions and melodies from older classic music and the like. But this one really struck a chord when I hard the ‘original’ by Wim Mertnes. I just wanted to share this with you. Listen to the original and then the ‘remix’

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One for the DJ’s! STEMS.

“This morning Native Instruments is launching the Traktor 2.9 update, which is the first software on the market to use their new Stems audio file format.”

I am very excited about this!

Traktor 2.9 + Stem Decks Launch: Details + Videos

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Modulations. A full feature film about the evolution of Electronica music as one of the most profound artistic developments of the 20th century!

https://vimeo.com/87206606

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That’s it for now. Comments welcome below.

Enjoy.

IzzyMap – Copy and Paste Slices

A short screen recording of IzzyMap and how you can copy and paste slices with a few tips and hints along the way.

Thanks.

Graham

[A]ura Video

A nice 3 minute video from Aura here, it’s a bit late – i’ve been rather busy!

“[A]ura – WYSIWYG
What You See Is What You Get
A performance-gallery with open-source-choreography
One day the internet will be as sacred as a giant ancient cathedral. And everybody will sacrifice their details to pay tribute to the digital gods.
In the interactive performance (A)ura, the user is transformed from spectator, to creator: during the weeks before the premiere they can find a unique feature at ChoreoMixer, with which they can design and remix the choreography and contents of (A)ura, by using the browser.
Walter Benjamin says that in modern art the aura of the work of art withers because of mechanical reproduction, and inaccessibility, due to too close a proximity to the observer.
At the same time, a completely different aura of amazement will be created by new technologies. Every user can be a choreographer, an innovative remixer and in that way create his own virtual memorial which perhaps will follow its own unexpected ways. Closeness and distance will join crosswise in a new way.
But what about the situation when the digital medium refuses to cooperate with the user?
What you see is what you get.
choreography/dance: Elke Pichler
music/video: Alexander Nantschev
stagedesign/costumes: Monika Biegler
programming: Stefan Lechner
interactive technical support: Graham Thorne
legal consulting: Clemens Lahner
pr: Stefan Eigenthaler
camera: Philipp Aichinger
Kindly supported by:
MA7, Kosmostheater and Ars Electronica Center”

Glastonbury, The Temple iPhone Video.

Better video to follow, but here is some footage from off my iPhone:

Glastonbury, The Temple arena, 2014.

Mud, sun, rain, more rain, great music and a kick-ass projection system. That was Glastonbury 2014, in The Common field, at the Temple arena. Wow – what an experience…. I don’t know where to even begin with this one!

Let’s start from the beginning. I got a really nice email via this very blog from a guy called Ryan asking if I was interested in a gig. He wanted something a little different and asked if we could talk more if I was interested. I won’t lie – I thought it may have been a small VJ gig or some kind of install using isadora – I get a lot of questions, emails and comments each week. I reply to them all but admit – I though this one was no different.

After the initial hello emails Ryan casually said it was a venue at Glastonbury. I had to read the message about nine times over to believe it. I had never been to Glastonbury, but like many reading this, knew it was an amazing opportunity. I knew this could not be done solo – this was a job for me and Dan and his place of work; guildhall school of music and drama. I work quite a lot with Dan, we get each others workflow and being a lecturer for many years he knows I am professional and reliable around students – not only this I love getting student involved in real world gigs. In my opinion it’s the best place to learn and experience things first hand. If I had the opportunity to work at Glastonbury it would have been amazing!

So you get the idea, we then had various emails, phone calls and Skype sessions, we bounced ideas around and got the ball rolling. We looked at lots of hardware and software options but decided that Isadora was the tool for us. The video mapping features that we had custom made for Lux, Helsinki had been developed to a very high standard and whilst still under a beta we were confident we could use it.

A year passed and the gig was just around the corner, we all contributed to the video content using After Effects, Cinema 4D and a really talented student called Neville built the main Isadora patch. We all helped map the structure in a variety of roles once on site. My main job was to keep an eye on isadora, make subtle tweaks, maintain performance and spot any crucial errors, make any last minute programming changes and be on stand by incase of any crashes or errors (there were none by the way!).

The pictures show the Temple and surrounding fields aesthetic, we wanted the Mayan/Aztec like structure to come alive with a nice blend of historical symbols, images and custom graphics. There was a hint of hi-tech alien like sci-fi VJ loops also. The lighting, pyro and music all worked really well. The mapping looked great despite a few set-backs; the main one was losing half a day due to extreme rain, wind and an electrical storm; so bad that the electrical company shut down all non-essential power. This was not cool – but al part of the experience.

It’s hard to describe the full set up so I am going to keep it simple.

• Two Mac Pro’s 9not the new black (‘dustbins’).
• Each Mac pro had two Touch Screens for triggering video. (one screen for DJ booth, the other for exterior)
• Two Lindy DVI switches
• Two Spark D-Fuser Video mixers
• Then into a Datapath X4
• DJ Booth had four Panasonic 16500 lumens projectors on it.
• Exterior had four Christie Roadsters 26000 lumens each.
• Everything was run over Cat5 once it left the Datapath.
• We used a custom beta of Isadora (the soon to be version 2.0)
• Modified APC20 from Akai for MIDI effects and control via Isadora.
• A few TFT monitors via splitters for monitors, etc.
• We also had Blackmagic capture cards running into one mac for CCTV feeds, etc.

We had a great experience, a few crashes when programming things and trying stuff out before shows (during the day) but no crashes during live sets. Because we had two Macs mixing between each other , both doing inside and outside, if one machine was to crash we had the other as a back-up, however we treated them both as live machines.

We got to VJ for some great artists, I can’t name them all here but it was a privilege to hear them, meet them and talk to them over the course of the three days. Likewise the whole team at the common were amazing. We were very well looked after and I can’t thank them enough. I can safely say we delivered what we said we would. We made it happen. The pictures and video are great – but it’s never as good as seeing it live. The arena felt alive. It felt like it had an energy oozing out the walls.

A few highlights for me:

1. Seeing a huge que of people wanting to come in at 5:45 in the morning even though we closed at 6:00. Not that I liked people not being able to come in but it was great to see the demand.
2. Seeing people walk up and touch the wooden lock gates when they were being projected onto. Granted some people were ‘out of it’ but that magical element you can see in peoples faces is amazing – you can see the cogs working in their heads going ‘how is that moving’, ‘where is he light coming from?’.
3. Watching the sun come up (and down) multiple times whilst working, with a nice breeze in your face, time flew by and was just an experience I will never forget.
4. Seeing the DJ Booth mapped for the first time was a true OMG moment. It wasn’t even fully Dark yet and it was so so bright! Seeing the visuals you had been working on for months and months finally on the structure was amazing.
5. Waking up at 3 in the afternoon and dancing to old school jungle before going for breakfast – which was actually tea… strange, but amazing.
6. I went to see DJ’s Above & Beyond play at the Sonic tent – incredible! This was my only 2 hours off I had the whole week and it was well worth it.
7. Last but not least – just being n Glastonbury was a highlight. It’s so hard to explain. It’s not just another music event. It’s like a mini city. A fantasy world were anything goes. It was so cool.

 

So. It was quite an experience. There is some video being made which I will add soon. But for now… a few pictures (click to open gallery):

 

Barbican Video Mapping (Isadora Mapping)

I managed to get some footage of a project I was helping with a few weeks back.

This was held at the Barbican Theatre/Performance Venue in London, UK. My friend Dan Shorten (from Anomic) who works as Guild Hall School of Drama had students help out and we helped the Barbican promote the spaces and areas they have for potential clients.

I helped with some of the mapping and made sure Isadora ran smoothly. Which it did… of course!

Basic: Mapping a cube in Isadora tutorial [FREE DOWNLOAD]

I decided to put together a little demo of how I would map a basic cube in Isadora using standard Isadora actors. No IsadoraCore upgrade or third party installers required. This should work on Mac and PC also.

I have to stress this is very basic but for some it could be very interesting and extremely useful. I decided to zip the files and media so you can open it and follow it as you go along.

You need the latest version of Isadora. (I actually used the latest beta but this will be fine)

[DOWNLOAD TUTORIAL & ZIP FILE HERE]

Don’t forget I always welcome a beer if you found this useful 😉

Any questions or comments then please add them below.

Cheers. Enjoy!

Skulpture

Some of my work [video]

https://vimeo.com/59077007

A good friend Dan Shorten from Anomic (Multi-Media Theatre) hired me for various projects in 2012 and January 2013. You can see a trail of these events in my past posts.

Basically I worked in all of the development stages and then worked in the background as a sort of’ technical supervision’ role for all three of the projects in the video. If Isadora had any hick-ups I could jump in and solve and problems; especially in Helsinki were the conditions were so extreme.

This professional video from Polymath films did a fantastic job as they followed Dan and the various projects from start to finish.  I was lucky enough to be interviewed at the Heslinki Event at LUX too; you can find my section from 7:10 (but watch it all its well worth it!)

Future TV?

I have been keeping an eye on a few things lately that I do not normally blog about.

It all started about three weeks ago by randomly finding this video:

As I imagine it did for some of you, it blew me away. What an amazing project.

I then spoke to a friend called Gavin from the Digital Fun Fair who said he had developed something quite similar and we had a good talk about it.

Then I found this on kickstarter…

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/woodenshark/lightpack-ambient-backlight-for-your-displays

There are lots of demo’s on YouTube but this seems to be the best i’ve found:

Now this is seriously cool stuff. Plug and play functionality, affordable, multi platform, etc.

Then I found this….

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22315685

This idea has been looming in my head for a while now after I had seen this from Sony;

All this stuff is amazing and right up my street. There are obviously huge technological costs for this kinda stuff, never mind logistics – who has space for projector behind the sofa? Not me.

I can imagine playing an xbox game with practically every wall being projected onto. Combine that with a xbox Kinect and the room would spin and rotate based on your head position… scary! A truly immersive, reactive and spacial aware experience could be created with this technology.

I think this stuff will happen in one way or another.

What are your thoughts?

Projection Mapping in Isadora

This post is to help people understand and get started with Projection Mapping in Isadora. It is not an complete walk through or advanced post (you are best asking on the Isadora forum for advanced topics) but hopefully this will shed some light for new users, or those new to the idea of mapping.

What is mapping?

Mapping has been around for quite some time but my opinion is that it is the art of cutting up images and video to line up with complex shapes that are not the usual method for of display pictures and/or video. It allows artists to project onto buildings, cars, sculptures and custom built sets or similar. Basically anything that a light source (a projector) can hit!

Why Isadora?

Obviously you don’t have to use Isadora but one thing Isadora has that none of the other softwares has in the Interactive angle; motion tracking via Eyes and Eyes++ combined with the easy work flow and ever growing community.

Can Isadora do projection mapping already?

Isadora has had features that have allowed basic to fairly complex mapping for quite some time. It’s just the way in which you use them. Granted; it could be better but with a few 3rd part Quartz plugins 99% of things can be done easily.

Here are some basic actor that you should be taking a look at…

Isadora’s Existing Actors…. 

BASIC PROJECTOR

*SOMETIMES* the basic projector can be used. In particular look at the perspective, aspect mod and zoom.

HINT: Hold SHIFT when clicking and dragging values for smaller increments and fine tuning!

PRO’s:

• Great for projecting on very basic shapes.
• Helps you understand and learn about perspective and basic 3D perception.
• Ideal for beginners and not too complex.
• You can layer up multiple projectors

CON’s:

• Limited mapping functionality.
• Won’t do complex mapping (isn’t designed for mapping)

3D QUAD DISTORT

I use this one a lot. It’s really great for mapping and has enough features to explore new mapping skills but won’t overpower you with scary numbers or names.

HINT: Hold SHIFT when clicking and dragging values for smaller increments and fine tuning!

PRO’s:

• You can pick each corner of the image/video and move it in an X and Y position.
• The Z translate (default -2.5) moves the image back and forth in 3D (3 dimensional) space.
• You can rotate the X, Y and Z axis.
• Has all the normal features of a the standard Projector actor.
• Not too overpowering. A nice step up from the Projector actor.

CON’s:

• You cant add corners or ‘break’ the image up into a grid.
• It can be tricky at first. Using Shift helps but depending on what you are mapping it can be a bit tedious.
• It can get complicated when you have a lot of these on your screen. You are best renaming the actor so you can see what’s what; such as “Top Right Window” or “DJ Booth – Left Side”.

Matthew Haber’s Mapping Tools.

Some of you knew this was coming! Pro user Mathew Haber has created a bunch of user actors that make mapping a lot easier. Based on the _1024 Quartz Composer

Matthew has created a topic just for support for the plugins on the Isadora Forum so please ask and discuss them HERE

The Cornerpin Mask user actor is in my eyes one of the best tools ever!

“This actors offers click-and-drag cornerpinning functionality for masking video. This has built in facilities for rectangular and oval masks and it also accepts a user Image input for any black and white image mask.”

PRO’s:

• It’s just amazing! it works and makes life easier.
• The red circles that pop up when you turn Edit on allows you to click and drag the corner to where you want them. Not only this you can do it on the stage output… meaning you can map directly onto objects whilst looking at it. So yes, you literally move your mouse onto the output screen. NOTE: Check in isadora Stage preferences that your mouse is visible on stage output otherwise you won’t see it.
• Because this is a Mask; you can mask objects. Send in a black and white mask and it will block out areas you don’t want.
• Easily flick between the type of masks.
• it’s free – kind of…. Needs Core upgrade of Isadora.

CON’s:

• There are non really. Who can complain at this? Mathew has spent hours upon hours putting it together and creating it. If there was one negative it is simply that you need the Core Upgrade for Isadora and you have to instal a few bits and pieces; but once its done its done and you never need to do it again.

Syphon it out to somewhere else…

There are lots of other softwares that just do video mapping. And with apple you can send it out via Syphon to another software that can do it all with very advanced features. There is nothing wrong with doing this. Here are a few suggestions….

MadMapper. It’s been around for a while now and appears on all the main forums when you are talking about mapping. They where one of the first to create an external/stand alone mapping application and its developed along the way. It’s not free but it does a great job.

Visution Mapio is a powerful FreeFrameGL plugin for creating projection shows. Now you can work not only with the standard screen, but also with any inclines, including cylindrical and spherical and various shapes.

Shaped by Ixagon SHAPED is a user-friendly projection mapping software. It enables the user to easily map many different surfaces and attach content to them. The content is managed in a sophisticated sequencer similar to those found in video-editing and music-production software.

MeshWarpServer Quite a complex application. Ideal if you have a mesh/3D CAD designs of a building or object. A steep learning curve but it does have Syphon so you can send media in from isadora. Worth a look for those of you with time, patience and advanced 3D knowledge.

There are LOTS more; VVVV, Resolume Arena, Max, MSP, etc.

Hope this helps some of you.

Graham (Skulpture)