Live Feeding

How far things have come since OnePlusTwo!

Since the last post, a group of us have started an audiovisual collective called stream. We have been putting our efforts towards our first event, which we pulled off on Wednesday night. Its hard at the moment to describe the evening meaningfully but know that it went well. Whether or not it was the free food we may never know but, as one of my lecturers observed 'they came and stayed for the art'.


It looks like a good start for us. The program for the year (at this stage) includes a screening curated by OtherFilm, our friends in Qld, a live score at a yet to be announced location (the film will be "Night of the living Dead from 1968) and a Live AV workshop day or series. For more info or if your interested in getting involved go here.

The photo above here were taken by the omnipresent Dan Murphy - to see more of his LiveFeeding photos (and photography generally) click here. For other photos, video, music as it comesand also

OnePlusTwo

These are images taken from a recent performance at OnePlusTwo, Tue 13th Nov, at Horse Bazaar.

As third years at RMIT are preparing to showcase their final works, Marcia Jane and I decided to fill the gaping void occupied by kids in first and second years who still wanted to show their work(s).

Thankfully, the night went relatively smoothly and all that. I don't think anybody noticed the bumps... But what I'm really excited about is the public debut of my video sampler, built for Live AudioVision.

It takes live video and stores it into a buffer from where it can be called back to the screen. This means that it is possible to have four separate videos (or indeed 4 x the same video), playing back at the same time, over the top of each other. The effect, not quite shown terrifically here, is quite strange. The experience is repetitive and mesmerising. There are structures within the loops, both sound and image, but the reference points to eachother are constantly changing.

The most exciting thing about this performance is that, i think, it is moving towards a truly improvised collaboration between sound and image. All the ingredients of a "traditional" improvised performance are present, but at the same time so is the video camera, which is recording the performance and reporforming elements...

So there is potential. I still need to iron out a few bugs from the patch. Its not quite as reliable as i would like. At the beginning of the performance there was a 10 minute silent patch were i couldn't get any sound (I'm blaming digidesign) and recording sound and image does not have a high success rate yet, about it comes of about 60%-70% of the time. It really needs to improve before I will be completely happy with it. Especially since with video, the best moments seem to happen spontaneously without warning. You don't want to miss them.

Big thanks to Rosalind Hall for being such a willing collaborator, and to Marcia Jane for being such an instigator.



The patch in use!

Firefly

Screen shots from firefly






































Firefly was the second assignment due this semester for Live Audio Vision. Its built on a random access sampler which you feed by dropping a folder onto a drop zone. I wanted it to be easily to use and relatively rewarding, even if you don't know much about whats happening.

On its "automatic" mode, Firefly will randomly choose files, loop points, playback speeds and the rate at which it chooses samples. On its not automatic mode, you can do it all yourself, including scrubbing audio and re sizing loop points.

The output of this is then sent to an oscilloscope type thing, which is then mapped onto openGl shapes.

Hopefully some video to follow soon (I'm having some trouble getting the final window to render to a video matrix that jitter will be able to understand - any suggestions?)

long time...

It's not that nothing is happening, more that there is too much going on. Currently researching/looking into AV practice with some interesting videos to be posted soon. Having a ball learning max/msp/jitter with Robin Fox!

Reynold Simons...

Interesting article by Reynold Simons about many many things, hip hop, rockism, post-punk, things at the moment etc...

http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/da/53579

On Avril

So what exactly has happened to Avril Lavigne? Only yesterday she was an angsty outsider type and now she's crossed over into something terrible. I didn't really like her much before, but i could respect her for what she was. She was still pop, but she was pop's alternative side. She was a rebel and, relatively, a flag flying against the wind of pop's usual tastes. Now, in her latest video 'Girlfriend', Avril plays herself stealing a boy off another uncool girl (also played be Avril). It seems she's slayed her old, alternative self and graduated to a proper hoe-bagged-pop-tart. So sad. I'm sure its no mistake either, which is the worst thing.

Melbourne

So I’ve been in Melbourne almost two months now and haven’t posted anything. I’ve tried to publish a number of times and I’m beginning to see a trend: Things have been up and down, but seem to be getting better. Kate and I are living in Brunswick in a house that costs too much, but was all we could get at the time. We kind of panicked and were happy to take anything. Luckily, and despite the price, the house and location are growing on us quickly.

On the music front I saw an awesome band called Front of Van, there’s no point in describing them. It was at a party and I’m keen to see more. I even asked them if they needed a bass player but got no real response. The drummer was really creative, but not in the Tony Buck way, whom I also got to see recently, along with the Pateras, Baxter, Brown Trio at the Empress Hotel a couple of Sundays ago. Tony Buck was excellent, I’m not sure I need to see the PBB trio again too soon (maybe a different venue would bring something better out of them).

Last night I went to see a performance at Conical Gallery called the Glass Percussion Project. It was… nice. Sorry, just didn’t engage. It tried to be a performance and exhibition at the same time and the result was a forced tinkly affair. It’s a great medium and can make interesting sounds, unfortunately, when the bulk of said interesting sounds come from computer processing, the spell was kind of broken for me. Anyway, I hear it’s an ongoing project so I expect things will change. Personally, I’d like to see more people playing. Instead of one person playing cumulatively to the performances of the night before, I’d would have liked to an ensemble of players.

Some final thoughts before I leave. Synesthesia is closing down, where are we going to get music now? Good luck to Mark, who, even though I didn’t know very well, was a portal for some of the best music I’ve heard. Finally, I miss everyone in Adelaide. I hope you're well.