Join us Friday, January 22nd at Second Story in Portland for demos, hands-on fun and audiovisual chit-chat. We’ll start at 7pm.

Presentations will include:

Second Story Installations

Subcycle Multi-Touch Audio Cutups

Christian Bannister will demonstrate his multitouch audio cutup system.

Middleman - AV One Man Band

Click here to view the embedded video.
Brandon Thompson aka Middleman wil play us a song and take questions on building and running a one-man show.

Join us Wednesday, Wednesday, December 2, 2009 from 7pm to 11pm for the next meeting of the Northwest Audiovisualists.

• Bob Bonniol presents his advanced visuals and lighting production for concerts and large corporate productions.
• Momo the Monster exhibits hit techniques for live visual looping to follow audio performers in a classic improvisational VJ setup.

This is a free event with no hosts or sponsors, thus please bring nibbles and drinks. Space is limited to 20 guests. RSVP on Tweetvite.

The event is hosted at ModeStudios.com by Bob Bonniol.
Mode Studios
9703 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle, WA 98115

Bob’s Recent credits include Production, Direction, and Production Design for Journey’s 30th Anniversary Live DVD ; Production Design (Set, Video, and Lighting) for Handel’s Messiah Rocks for PBS with the Boston Pops; Projection Design for the World Premiere of the opera, Frobisher at Calgary Opera; Video Content Design for R. Kelly’s Double Up World Tour 2007/2008, Production Design and Direction for LeAnn Rimes’ 2007 tour in support of her new album, Family; Video and Production designs for Nickelback’s All The Right Reasons World Tour with Puddle of Mud, Daughtry, and Staind, in Arena and Stadiums; Multimedia Design for Sinatra Live at the London Palladium; Scenic Video Design for Grammy Winning rockers 3 Doors Down’s 2005/2006 World Tour; Video Content Design for Barry Manilow’s Emmy Award winning show, Music & Passion, at the Las Vegas Hilton; Production/Video/Lighting Design for the new breakout band, Cartel, in their Live DVD release. His design of the 10 minute spectacular, Power Up, served as the premiere piece for the epic new LED roof screen at The Place in Beijing for the Olympics.

The next meeting of the Northwest Audiovisualists will take place on Saturday, May 16th 2009 from 3pm to 6pm at TechShop Portland (in Beaverton, technically).

The event is free and open to everyone interested in video performance, especially as it relates and integrates with music.

Itinerary:

• It Came From the Internet: Fun AV Pieces Found Online
• Live AV Performances from Middleman
• Momo the Monster explains his Felix Da Housecat visual setup
• Screening of new work from Dwayne Erickson

Also, hit up the rideshare on the forums if you’ll need a ride or can bring people from Portland or Seattle.

More info as we get it!

Join us in Seattle on Wednesday, February 25 2009 for demos, gabbing and playtime.

Hosted by: Surya Buchwald, T.J. Davis, Tim Reha

GUEST SHOW AND TELL:

SURYA BUCHWALD - AV Cutups with a Monome

Surya Buchwald (aka Momo the Monster) Founder of NWAV will be visiting from Portland to demo the AV cutup system he’s been working on:

T.J. DAVIS - Mapping with Modul8

JACOB STONE - Edirol P-10 Demonstration

No cover charge, open bar.

Location:
Porchlight Loft
114 Alaskan Way S
Seattle, WA 98104

Fresh from my render queue, I’m proud to present the next installment in the hastily-edited-during-the-festival series, featuring Deadmau5 and Scott Pagano from their performance at Neumos last night.

You can find coverage of Thursday at the festival here: Decibel Festival 2008 Thursday Quickie

I’m exhausted, and I haven’t even really been out tonight. I started organizing footage this afternoon (after getting a full night’s sleep from last night’s 4am arrival) and then went straight to the Optical Showcase to shoot footage tonight. I’m hoping to make Deadmau5 + Scott Pagano at Neumos tonight, if nothing else, but it all depends on how quickly the encoding + uploading process goes.

On a side note, it’s pretty crazy that I can fit an HD acquisition/editing rig in a (large) shoulder bag. Though I’ll need another Hard Drive soon - my HF100 files become HUGE when I transcode them to Apple ProRes. As another note, I forgot to mention in the credits that the opening music is ‘Con Los Pies’ by Balún. Finally, I’d like to mention that I will be replacing this video with an HD version tomorrow if I’ve got enough upload credit left in my Vimeo account this week.

Artists - use the contact form if you want some of the HD footage - I have a lot more than I cut into this piece and would be happy to send it over.

I’ll be doing visuals for Balún at the Deconstructing Pop showcase at the Decibel Festival on September 25. This is me trying out one of my new Quartz Composer patches while listening to one of their songs.

This section was designed to give a brief introduction to audiovisual performance, with the understanding that many people attending were hearing about it for the first time. While it does provide some historical background, it heavily features my own works and favorites, as those are the pieces I can best explain.

Youtube Playlist :: Skip to any Video
Click here to view the embedded video.

Full listing of screened works:

War Photographer

Music video by Joel Trussel

Rock This Base

AV Cutup by EBN

Timber

AV Cutup by Coldcut + Hexstatic

Century Gothic

Instrumental Video by Beeple

Live Excerpts from WDCH

Cornelius playing w/DVD + lights

Come on My Selector

Music video by Chris Cunningham

Argon

AV Performance by Chiral + Momo the Monster

SwoopSwiffer

AV Cutup by TV Sheriff

Playsonic

AV Instrument by Momo the Monster

On the Cross-Stick

AV Remix by NorthernMonkey

Mac vs PC

AV Remix by Momo the Monster

Magnetic Ink

Audioreactive Processing by Flight404

Stranger

AV Performance Tech by Eboman

Interstellar Sugar

AV Piece by Suryummy (not included in above YouTube playlist)

Amateur

AV Piece by Lasse Gjertsen

Ho-lee-Cow

AV Work-In-Progress by Momo the Monster

Shatner Woo

AV Remix by Josh Pearson or Greg Deocampo of EBN

 

 

Please let me know if you have better title or creator information for the above videos.

After the screenings, we took a ten minute break for some personal q&a, socializing, and hands-on time with the Crop Circles AV Instrument (article and source code forthcoming).

A brief and overly-simplified look at what people use to control live video.

There are basically two kinds of VJ Software. There are what I’ll call ‘Ready-Made Mixers’, like the following programs:

Screenshots of VDMX, Modul8, Resolume, Union, Grand VJ, Flowmotion, AVMixer Lite and Onyx.

They share a very similar paradigm at heart, even though their feature sets and styles vary wildly. The underlying standards are a media library whose contents you can play on multiple layers, manipulating and blending them live. Most programs provide effects you can add to layers, and external control via MIDI devices. Finally, they allow you to see the interface, including previews of your layers, while displaying your final output through to a second video output - connected to a projector, television, monitor, etc. They range in price from free to hundreds of dollars, and they’re all put out by very small software companies serving a (currently) niche market.

The other sort of VJ Program is what I’ll call the Roll-Your-Own. Some program in this category are:

Screenshots of Quartz Composer, vvvv, Isadora and Max/MSP.

These programs are geared towards creating realtime video projections, as the others are, but you decide just how you want it all to function. They’re easier than programming your own native VJ application, but their initial learning curve can be quite steep.

So what to do if you’re just a beginner VJ and you want to know what software to pick? As I mentioned, it’s much more complicated than just ready-made or roll-your own. Modul8 users create their own ‘Modules’ and share them online, VDMX allows you to build your own interface, Quartz Composer can actually be used inside other programs, etc. My recommendation is to download demos for every available program, and spend some quality time with each - go through the ‘getting started’ guides, and try mixing videos to your favorite music.

Jumping head-first into Quartz Composer to make cool things happen, plus a 5 minute Q+A. Basically a live version of this Quartz Composer Tutorial at VJ Kung Fu.

An example of using Isadora and Ableton Live to sample and cutup live video, plus a 5 minute Q+A. Full article forthcoming - here’s a home test for now:

An Overview of the NuVJ bundle for beginners, plus a 3 minute Q+A. Similar to the NuVJ Crash Course Tutorial at VJ Kung Fu.

A very quick intro to this advanced VJ Software, which was used to mix and present all the videos in Part I. No video, sorry - you’ll have to wait for the in-depth article.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the meeting, see you next time!

Here it is - the launch of the new NWAV site! We’re now running Wordpress, which will allow for postings by a variety of artists.