NWAV :: Northwest Audiovisualists | NWAV Meeting 0001 Recap

Search

:: article

Meetings

NWAV Meeting 0001 Recap

By Momo the Monster ⋅ September 21, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

The first meeting of NWAV took place on Tuesday, September 2nd in the MacForce theater in SE Portland. The meeting had two main parts: Screening of Works and Demonstrations.

PART I: SCREENING OF WORKS

A variety of classic and modern audiovisual performances and experiments.

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
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B5322CF66A6290CF

Full listing of screened works:

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).

PART II: DEMONSTRATIONS

Software Demos and Works-in-progress with your host Momo the Monster

Demo 1: VJ Software Overview

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.

Demo 2: Building a Visualizer in Quartz Composer

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.

http://www.vimeo.com/416956

Demo 3: Instant Video Remix

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:

http://www.vimeo.com/1733438

NuVJ Demo

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.

VDMX Demo

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!

Tags: meeting, Portland

Discussion

2 comments for “NWAV Meeting 0001 Recap”

[...] is also spearheading a new community for the A/V artists: NWAV (North West Audio Visualists); their first meeting was a hit with lots of A/V goodies to [...]

Posted by Create Digital Motion » Decibel Festival Night One: VJing Seattle’s Electronic Music Fest | September 27, 2008, 4:43 pm
[...] from their first meeting this month. This is just a portion of material available on the event summary: The first meeting of NWAV took place on Tuesday, September 2nd in the MacForce theater in SE [...]

Posted by NWAV Meeting (Portland) | vj.tv | September 30, 2008, 4:41 am