A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of getting to go to Splice Festival for the first time. Along with getting to participate in workshops and check out great live A/V performances, the inspiring artists talks were a big highlight of the trip. In particular we finally got to meet Lucy Benson and hear about the creative process behind her amazing work. Videos from each of the talks from Splice will be online at some point in the future, and we recommend checking them out, but in the meantime we've got a little advanced interview with Lucy!
Read MoreCtrl-Z Music and Visuals
My name is Charles-Zoltan (better known as Zoltan or CZ), my path is quite eclectic, I started by studying at the conservatory of music in piano. Subsequently I played and formed rock / dub groups as bassist and guitarist. At the same time I discovered 3DS Max and photoshop and video editing self-educated.
I completed my career by studying sound engineering where I discovered electronic music and its methods of creation. I had the opportunity to collaborate with contemporary artists and other musicians as technical director which led me to discover VDMX as a solution to manage live visuals in 2013. I am quite curious and have a great pleasure learning new things and experimenting with anything.
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vjZaniZ, Audio Reactive Visuals In Brazil
One of our favorite things is getting to see videos of people from around the world posted online. Last week we caught some visuals from vjZaniZ in the VDMX Facebook Group and had to reach out for more details.
Read MoreRocking Visuals From Mike St Jean
Catching bits of action from people using VDMX via Twitter is always great for us and one of the best parts is that we get to connect with people like Mike St. Jean who share with us photos and videos from their latest gigs with amazing musicians... along with the behind the scenes details of how it is all put together that we crave.
Read MoreTesseract at EMPAC (photo Mike Bello)
Charles Atlas: Tesseract (and way more)
For this artist feature we had a chance to talk with someone who has been doing this way longer than we have – by a few decades. It's always a particular pleasure for us to know that the tools used today connect back to a rich history of analog film and video that still have a fingerprint on the modern visual arts. With that experience Charles Atlas is one of those artists who has the special talent of bridging different genres of performance and production into a single cohesive piece.
When asked to send over some videos and images to include with this post Charlie put together an amazing collection for us that goes back 15 years, so strap yourself in for a bit of time travel through video.
Read MoreFunken: Particular
To be filed under artist features that have been too long in the waiting is the work of Funken, who have been on our radar of visual artists for a few years and now are excited to finally follow up with for some behind the scenes info.
Read MoreJanuary 2018, Back To School Sale!!!
To celebrate the start of 2018 we're running our annual back to school sale on VDMX through January 31st for the special price of only $249 and $99 for students!
Read MoreFree Halloween VJ Loops!
Just in time for your favorite holiday of the year is this set of free video clips to load into VDMX (or other VJ software...) and start getting spooky.
Pick the resolution and format that works best for your needs:
Download in h.264 1080p / Download in h.264 4k
Download in Hap 1080p / Download in Hap 4k
And then just load the movie files into your favorite VDMX template or the media bin in any of your own projects to get started!
Tip: On slower connections you can download the h.264 versions and transcode them locally to Hap to use with VDMX using our free movie batch exporter app.
And if you are looking for even more video tricks to treat your audience this Halloween, try using these free video loops along with our new tutorial on how to stylize your visuals like a retro 80's horror movie like in the above demo reel.
And once again a big special thanks to Starrunner for providing the eerie and chilling track "Welcome" for the demo reel and Colin Evoy Sebestyen for producing this clip pack.
Chris Speed Visuals – ERROR 404
Last month while browsing along on the blogosphere (is that still a word?) we ran into this article about Chris Speed Visuals on ShareSynth and of course had to follow up for our own interview to find out more about these glitch-tastic creations. For people who remember the days of dragging around lots of old analog gear to gigs, as well as those who missed the chance, will have a lot to enjoy in this one.
Read MoreKalma's VJ and 3D Mapping Workshops
One our favorite questions for people who have been using VDMX is to ask them how they would show it to someone who has never used it before and we are especially excited to see how teachers are introducing the software in classrooms and workshops. Everyone learns best in a different way and it is always helpful for us to see new approaches to VJ techniques. Last week we were joined for a guest tutorial by Kalma who showed off an example of how to get started with VDMX and for this post we are excited to get more information about the artist behind the workshops.
Read MorePZYK SKAN – EEG Controlled Sound and Visuals
One of the best parts of being a new media artist is having the ability to connect so many different ideas and tools together, both literally and figuratively. Recently we've been in touch with Luciana Haill and Sam Wiehl who shared with us some of the details behind their latest collaboration PZYK SKAN which brings together so many amazing things into a single project that we had to share it with all of you. The initial description was “I use PandoraStar strobe lights as precursors for EEG brainwave projects, where signals from the brain of the audience are triggers to live events via Max Msp, Ableton, OSC and recently VDMX when we collaborated” and you can read all about it below!
Read MoreRodrigo Carvalho of Boris Chimp 504 talks about new works “Multiverse” and “Light Portals”
My name is Rodrigo Carvalho. I am from Porto/Portugal. I work with live visuals, code and interactive art from screen based work, to interactive installations, audiovisual live acts, or interactive visuals for stage performance...
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Pixel Spirit Deck Table with guest Colin Evoy Sebestyen
A few weeks ago Patricio Gonzalez Vivo (creator of the infamous Book of Shaders, one of the best online resources for learning GLSL) released a new project known as the Pixel Spirit Deck, a set of tarot cards where each image includes includes code that can be used to draw the shape...
Read MoreDan Tombs live with Gold Panda
To be filed under artist profiles that have been a long time coming is Dan Tombs who has in his time as a visual artist worked with more musicians and bands than I have fingers and then some. One of the things that we love about his setups are the usage of analog equipment as part of the setup and we've asked him to fill us in on everything from how he got started with video, what gear he's collected over the years and all about his most recent collaboration with Gold Panda.
Read MoreMusic Video Feature: Uncle Skeleton's “Jeux” by MKAV
This past week in our inbox was a link to an amazingly beautiful abstract music video for the song Jeux off Uncle Skeleton's new album Cocoa Beach.
The visual artist who collaborated on this project was Mike Kluge (MKAV), an audio/visual artist living in Nashville, TN who works on freelance projects such as music videos, live visuals, art installations, interactivity, and content for tours told us a bit about how it all came together.
Read MoreWould you like to take a survey?
Hey everyone!
We've been working on VDMX for several years now and we'd love to get to know some more about the people who are performing with it and how it is being used in the real world.
There are currently two very short surveys that you can take.
The first is for general VDMX related topics: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/vdmx_survey1
The second is for specifically for the Hap video codecs: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/hapcodecs_survey1
While these surveys won't tell you which character from your favorite TV series you are (Willow) or what your favorite color is (probably blue?) but it will give us some useful information that'll help us decide what to focus our efforts on in the coming months.
Thanks very much for your time!
VDMX and Ableton Link integration
Today we are extremely excited to announce that VDMX now has native support for Ableton Link, a new technology developed by Ableton that synchronizes musical beat, tempo, and phase across multiple applications running on multiple devices. By using Ableton Link musicians and visual artists who perform together can easily keep all elements of a show in sync.
Read MoreGraffmapping in NYC
Every week we receive emails from people who want to share their work with us (keep it coming!) and a few days ago Graffmapping sent us a link to this video showing off their recent exploration into merging the ideas from video mapping and graffiti to project visuals in public spaces.
Read MoreJanuary 2017 Back to School Sale
Once again we're excited to be running a sale on VDMX for students heading back to school over the next few weeks with an extra 100 USD off; and we're also excited to extend this same discount to all customers!
But hurry, sale ends January 30th, 2017.
Read MoreThe Fantastic Work of Wiley Wiggins
Today we're joined by the fantastic Wiley Wiggins who in addition to working as an actor and animator for film (of Dazed and Confused, Waking Life, Computer Chess fame) AND as an interactive designer (currently working on an adventure game called Thunderbeam), is also an amazing visualist. For this post Wiley has written up his history of getting into performing live visuals and how things have changed in just the last few years as technology rapidly changes.
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