Lucinda Dilworth, a digital artist following her Greek origins, is aiming to evolve as an artist to suit the modern and technological-driven world.
Her fusion of creativity, innovative thinking, and a deep understanding of the digital landscape sets Lucinda apart and drives her to push boundaries and explore the intricate relationship between art, technology, and artificial intelligence
Read MoreDerrick Belcham is a Canadian filmmaker based out of Brooklyn, NY whose internationally-recognized work in documentary and music video has led him to work with such artists as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, Paul Simon and hundreds of others in music, dance, theater and architecture. He has created works and lectured at such institutions as MoMA PS1, MoCA, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum Of American Art, Musee D'Art Contemporain, The Philip Johnson Glass House, Brooklyn Academy of Music and The Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati. His work regularly appears in publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Pitchfork, NPR and Rolling Stone as well as being screened at short, dance and experimental festivals and retrospectives around the world.
I’m a multi-disciplinary, collaborative artist that generally focuses on moving images of some kind or another. I’ve made hundreds of films in performance documentary and traditional “music video”, but I usually use VDMX for the fun stuff… experimental and live productions. Particularly, I love using VDMX for its audio-reactivity tools with video files and DMX lighting systems.
With it, I built the lighting and projection design of three of my large-scale immersive productions in the 60,000 sq ft behemoth of the Knockdown Center a few years back, the last with 300+ custom lighting heads all triggered to the sound of musicians and actors inputted into VDMX. It’s a really amazing environment to map out and deploy the technology of a piece, and allow for so many indeterminate, playful outcomes as you do.
I like a combination of analog and digital tools in my process, or else the feeling of “transience” gets a bit too prevalent for me… I like to start with a notebook and pen with most things, imagining then designing specifics of a system. Sometimes a very specific image will appear, and then the process would be working backwards through a set of problems that allow me to reach that vision.
I use Red digital cinema cameras and Leica R glass (digital + analog marriage made in heaven) along with a Fujifilm GFX 100S for stills on the digital side, and then a Braun Nizo 8mm and a number of weird/wild 35 and 120 cameras on the purely analog side. I have a lot of different filters, pre-made and homemade, for certain effects and really like to try and keep as much as possible “in-camera” before it makes its way onto the computer.
With VDMX, my essential is an ENTTEC DMX interface and various dimmers and controllers to create custom shapes alongside traditional lighting heads. I use projectors quite heavily as well along with even haze to conjure all those Anthony McCall-type ephemeral shapes…
Last year, I made two projects with Bing & Ruth for the release of their latest, Species. David is an old friend, and I wanted to design a system in VDMX that he could operate almost like an EMS Spectron or one of the super early oscilloscope visual synths… I set up two stacked projectors in my darkened studio, hazed it to Irish winter dawn levels and put David in front of a set of knobs and sliders that shifted the shape, opacity, color and speed of the outputs from VDMX. A camera faced these shifting, volumetric rays and then displayed them in an inverted monitor (also in VDMX) so that he could “play” along to his song in realtime. The final video is one, unedit sequence of David’s visual performance.
I’ve utilised VDMX as the driver/processor of the lighting and video-reactivity on videos with Dave Gahan, Julianna Barwick, Blonde Redhead, My Brightest Diamond, Simon Raymonde and so many more the last 10 years that I’ve been using the program.
You can see them all at derrickbelcham.com
This last June, I went to Iceland to collaborate on two new pieces with Bergrun Snaebjornsdottir and Þóranna Dögg Björnsdóttir which took me all over the island collecting visual samples from the natural environment. As I went, I took photos of instances of pareidolia any time they hit me (faces in the rocks, symbols in the clouds, etc) and came back with a large repository. For a new art-metal project with Brooklyn composer Brendon Randall-Myers, I decided to mix those with the movements of a fantastic dancer named Jacalyn Tatro using a new sound-reactive process in VDMX. (That comes out this month, so I’ll send the link when it’s public! Sneak peek images here…)
Beyond that, I’m in the process of designing a new theatre piece fully within the VDMX environment that will use the performers visual and auditory input as the source for a kind of large-scale looping playground… very excited to keep experimenting with that these next few months. I love the power that the program has, but also how invisible it can be within a live production… it is such a beautiful thing when the audience can be held in a space of unknowing when it comes to the mechanisms of the illusion.
From the past to the present, Paul Kendall has a career innovating music and sound. We caught up with him to get his story and talk about his evolution into the visual frontier with VDMX.
I come from a free jazz/ musique concrète beginning to a sound engineer/ mixer middle, culminating in a deafish composer/ visual artist attempting the final writes!
Between 85-97 I helped set up a series of studios for Daniel Miller’s Mute Records in London. I worked as the in-house engineer contributing in varying degrees to artists: Depeche Mode, Wire, Nick Cave, Nitzer Ebb, Barry Adamson, Renegade Soundwave etc.
Also during my time at Mute I established a sadly short-lived label devoted to experimental electro-acoustic music, The Parallel Series.
Basement demo studio in Covent Garden, London, 1979. Technology too expensive so with 2 friends we used a couple of Revox 2 track tape-machines, a basic console and a WEM Copicat our only outboard effect.
Home demo studio London 1984. Technology relatively affordable, 16 track Fostex Tape Machine, Allen & Heath 16 input console, DX7 synthesiser, Drumtraks Drum Machine, unseen but there Great British Spring Reverb, Time Matrix 8 tap digital delay. Soon I added BBC Micro Computer running UMI midi sequencing software.
My first musical/ hardware love was the tape recorder; around 1960 when I heard the simple slow down/ speed up possibility of an early 3 speed reel to reel, so it was sound more than music which fascinated me, but a total pipe dream as was most of the interesting technology in the 60’s and 70’s. I settled with a tenor saxophone and making noise was finally between my lips. A brief stay at University of York allowed me to learn the Revox tape machine/ tape loops/ VCS3 synthesiser but once again on return to London access to technology was limited. I had a job for 9 years in a bank so I was able to fund setting up a small studio with 2 friends to learn basic band demo recording using two 2 track machines and bouncing between them.
In 1984 following the sudden death of my mother I decided to leave the bank and with a small inheritance bought the new very affordable Fostex B16 16 track analogue tape machine, Allen and Heath mixing console, a BBC Micro Computer based sequencer UMI, a Yamaha DX7 synthesiser, Drumtraks drum machine, and most importantly an 8 tap digital delay unit called Time Matrix (almost an instrument in itself, a dub persons dream) and finally a Great British Spring Reverb.
I locked myself away to learn and experiment and as good fortune happened Daniel Miller knew of my endeavours and asked me to help setting up a similar facility for the Mute artists to demo and the lesser known artists to record masters.
The studio developed over the next 20 years or so into a fully functioning 24 track facility. At the end of 1990 I became aware of a significant new development from America the arrival of computer based digital audio. It was the moment where I fully embraced the binary world, bought a MacIIcI computer with Sound Tools/ Digidesign software for the first time enabling audio to be edited/ copied/ reversed/ EQ’d/ processed all within the digital domain. This may seem facile in the face of the acceleration of technology available today but back then the affect was considerable.
Mute Main Studio London 1988. Named, Worldwide International. Studio Design by Recording Architecture, Photo by Neil Waving. This was the 2nd studio for Mute which I was involved in and was my home for the next 9 years. The first was based on my home studio, image 2, and was on the top floor of Rough Trade in Kings Cross, London.
Mute Programming Suite London 1988. Named, The Means of Production. Studio Design by Recording Architecture, Photo by Neil Waving. A second studio at Mute used initially for artists wishing to experiment and prepare their work before using the main studio.
One of the areas which benefited from digital audio and which liberated my approach was remixing. It was possible to perform lots of dub mixes on the console bouncing to DAT (previously the costs involved with analogue tape would have been prohibitive). These mixes could then be loaded into the computer and edited, this was a perfect example of performance/ dub being integrated into a final mix.
Since this period and until very recently my work was almost exclusively based on a Mac and Pro Tools or Logic software. However due to severe hearing/ frequency loss over the last 10 years I have been unable to pursue sound work creation on computer as with many digital processes it is possible that spurious ‘noise’ could be generated and I would be oblivious to it.
Refocusing I decided to revert to my earlier love of musique concrète so just using mechanically generated sound, springs, bits of metal etc. and using guitar pedals to process, so no computer involved. In addition to this I started experimenting with visuals, whilst my eyes still function!
I was searching for a method to work with visuals as I worked with sound. I began using a macro lens on my camera zooming in on small details of an object which is an equivalent of taking an existing sound and microscopically messing with it. I looked around for suitable software which could process the visuals and add a degree of performance too. This is when I discovered VDMX. I could slow down/ speed up/ reverse/ superimpose/ manipulate/ texturalyl shift visual material exactly the way with audio, and with the addition of a Korg NanoControl I could perform dubs on the visuals, great result. This set up has served me well for a couple of years and will continue to do so. Obviously I am a novice in the visual field which is in some ways liberating as I have never learnt the ‘rules’. The adage with sound; if it sounds right it probably is right can be applied to visuals/ light or so I maintain!
Home studio London 1990. Fully embracing the just available digital workstation from Digidesign. Originally called Sound Tools before evolving into Pro Tools. My set up was on a Mac IIcI, DAT machine, Atari 1040 running Creator midi software.
Home studio West Sussex 2021. In some ways this is the most powerful and tiniest set up of all. Mac Book Pro running Logic Pro, Final Cut and of course VDMX! Peripheral equipment: Shure SM7B, 8 channel mixer, Korg Nano Control studio, Zoom H6 6 track digital recorder.
Back last May after isolating since the beginning of March (my partner had Covid very early on) I was searching for some creative inspiration and got hold of a couple of iPad apps which process sound. I spent 3 intense days experimenting and improvising using springs and things and voice as source. These improvisation morphed through editing to a series of coherent pieces of music/ noise. An album, Boundary Macro, from these will be released on vinyl later on in the year on Downwards Records and published through a return to Mute Song. So far I have finished 3 videos to accompany the album all made with VDMX.
You can see more visual work from Paul on Vimeo or follow his Instagram. And if you’re curious to learn more about VDMX, visit our tutorials page to get started.
In a previous very awesome blog post we interviewed Sam Wiehl and collaborator Luciana Haill about PZYK SKAN, an amazingly cool EEG Controlled Sound and Visuals project. This week we are extra excited to have Sam back to tell us about more about his background as a live visual performance and show off his latest work for the infamous band Ladytron!
Read MoreAs many of you know, a few years ago we released the https://www.interactiveshaderformat.com/ as a place where people could share their custom GLSL based generators and effects to use with VDMX and other software for live visuals. Today we are excited to announce the first major revision to the website, with a redesign to make it easier to find and create shaders.
Read MoreOnce again we'll be running our special sale on VDMX for students and teachers heading back to school over the next couple of weeks with an extra 100 USD off; and we're even more excited to extend this same discount to ALL customers!
This means that from January 13th through January 20th, everyone can get a license of VDMX for just 249 USD, and students / starving artists pay only 99 USD.
Along with making great software for VJs and our related open source projects, one of the areas we have tried to focus on is creating educational materials to help visual artists at all levels help improve their craft. Over the last few years our website tutorials section has served as the main outlet for our various lessons, demonstrations and conversations of the various techniques used for all aspects of live visual performance. We also recently launched VV Edu, a set of lesson plans for teachers to use as a starting point for teaching live visuals and VJing in the classroom.
Read MorePLASTIKMAN live Guggenheim NY 2013. Photo Igor Ribnik.
Once again we are fortunate to have an interview with one of the visualists who has been working in this field even longer than us. Ali M. Demirel originally studied nuclear engineering and architecture, lectured at GISAM (Audio-Visual Research Center) of METU, and began creating experimental videos in 1993. Since then he has worked with some of the legends of electronic music, performed at some of the worlds most impressive venues, and continues to make mind blowing work.
Read MoreToday we are extra excited to announce an open source collaboration with the team over at Cycling74, creators of Max. Now all of the amazing ISF shaders that come with VDMX and on interactiveshaderformat.com can be used right alongside your other Jitter code using the jit.gl.isf object, available on Mac and Windows!
You can install jit.gl.isf directly from the Max package manager panel, accessible from the File menu. If you don’t already have any ISF shaders installed, also grab the free ISF Editor app for your appropriate platform. The free editor tool comes with the same standard set of 300+ generators, effects, and transitions we bundle with VDMX to get started with.
With this release Max joins the over a dozen apps and frameworks that support ISF as a standard for GLSL shaders. With ISF, there is no need to convert or translate code when moving between software. Write your generators and effects once, then use in Max, Motion, Final Cut Pro X, VDMX, on the web, and other video platforms. The specification includes conventions for working with multi-pass shaders with persistent frame buffers, allowing for the creation of complex compositions in a single easy to share file. The ISF documentation pages include detailed walkthroughs of the specification along with useful reference notes and a quick start for learning the basics of GLSL.
ISF for Jitter can be used out of the box with over 300 generators, effects, and transitions. Install the free ISF Editor to get the standard collection of shaders.
jit.gl.isf includes an extensive help patch, examples, and complete reference.
Use the Max package manager to download the jit.gl.isf object and access the launcher patch. Available on Mac and Windows.
Visit the ISF sharing website to find new generators and effects that can be used directly in with jit.gl.isf without any additional conversion. GLSL shaders written in other formats are often easily translatable to the ISF specification. See the ISF Documentation for useful tips and examples.
The ISF specification helps standardize techniques for creating advanced compositions like audio visualizers. See the include example patches and ISF Documentation for more information.
Want to learn more? Read more about it on the ISF for Jitter website, watch an introduction video tutorial, and visit the Max forums for more details from the Cycling74 crew. Developers curious to take a look under the hood can find the open source codebase in the jit.gl.isf repository. For the latest in ISF news, follow the @ISFVideo account on Twitter.
And don’t forget to check out some of our other tutorials describing techniques for using Max and VDMX together, such as using the OSCQuery Helper tool for simplifying OSC sync and sharing video streams via Syphon.
Once again we are getting in the spirit of capitalism with the yearly Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale!
The sale runs from Friday, November 28 through the morning of Tuesday, December 3rd!
During this time we’ll be taking 100 USD off every purchase from our online store!!!
And this sale stacks with our regular educational, just send us an email with a picture of your photo ID (or other similar proof of enrollment) to get your coupon code to double down your discounts and get VDMX for only 99 USD!!!
Or if you are not a student, we also offer a “starving artist discount” – do a small community giveback project, such as sharing videos loops or making a tutorial to get an extra discount.
Over the years we been lucky to have some amazing pioneers in the field of live visuals join us for artist interviews to share their experiences – now added to that list is Stuart Warren-Hill, who has been working at pushing the boundaries of what is possible and continues to do so with his latest projects. Today we will find out a bit about his infamous history and get a glimpse into where he is taking things next.
Read MoreAnother year, another view! VDMX running in macOS 10.15 Catalina.
Hi everyone!
As usual we have a yearly update guide for people using VDMX who are looking to install the latest version of macOS on their computers.
You can read more about the specific details of the most recent release, including the list of new features and effects in the release announcement on the forums and discussion thread on upgrading to Catalina for more tips: https://discourse.vidvox.net/t/vdmx-macos-x-10-15-catalina-update-guide/942
The most noteworthy change for developers in 10.15 is the requirement for notarizing applications that are distributed outside the Mac App Store – if you are running version b8.7.1.6 or later, your copy of VDMX should be properly notarized.
If you run into any problems with updating VDMX to macOS 10.15, or just want to let us know about your experiences with Catalina, please send us feedback using the Report Bug option from the Help menu in VDMX, or send an email to support@vidvox.net.
With ISF for Motion, published variables from GLSL shaders can be animated using value key-frames, adjustable directly from the Motion timeline editor. Iterate over different visual possibilities from your shader creations using bezier curve tools instead of writing complex code.
GLSL shaders written as FX can be applied to layers, including movies files and other generative assets, and re-exported, adding a new range of possibilities for using code to create and process video. With ISF for Motion you can easily experiment with different ways of combining your code creations to take them to the next level.
Compositions containing GLSL shaders can be exported from Motion and FCP X as movie files, at super high resolutions and frame rates. A great way to showcase code that is too complex to be rendered in real-time, even at 8K Ultra HD and larger.
ISF for Motion can automatically create template files for loading shaders in Final Cut Pro X. Generators, filters and transitions show up in their appropriate categories along with their published input parameters.
With ISF for Motion, published variables from GLSL shaders can be animated using value key-frames, adjustable directly from the Motion timeline editor. Iterate over different visual possibilities from your shader creations using bezier curve tools instead of writing complex code.
Beyond the standard set of included assets, ISF for Motion makes it possible for you to write your own GLSL code and watch it live update in the Motion preview. Works with any standard text editor, as well as our free ISF Editor tools.
Today we are excited to announce ISF for Motion, a new way to use the same suite of real-time video generators and effects that we include with VDMX inside of Motion and Final Cut Pro X!
The ISF for Motion FxPlug enables usage of GLSL shaders written in the ISF specification within Apple Motion and FCP X alongside their standard generators, effects and transitions, opening up a world of new possibilities where creative code meets your traditional motion graphics and editing workflows.
Download and install ISF for Motion from the Mac App Store
Read MoreThursday Night Music & Light
Along with getting to talk to VJs and visual creators about their own amazing work, we sometimes find out about all kinds of cool events happening all over the world. Today California based artist Andrew Juris is here to tell us about a weekly Thursday Night Music & Light in Berkley that you’ll want to check out next time you are in the area!
Read MoreI’m Cornelius Henke III, also known as ProjectileObjects.
Most of the projects I work on are in the realm of film/video, but over the last decade, my interests have spread. (Projection mapping masks, VJing, LED light sculptures, etc.) I think most of the work I do fits somewhere in the category of a creative technologist. The natural progression of my work was from Music Video Creator/Director -> VFX & Motion Graphics -> VJing/ Projection Mapping -> “Creative Technologist” / Video Producer/ Editor.
Read MoreImage from Meta-7 by John Sully, XIX Collective and MojoVideoTech
We’ve been emailing with MojoVideoTech for about 15 years now, and his career goes back well before that… a full in depth interview is long overdue, but today we’ll have to settle for a quick behind the scenes of his latest project Meta-7, which is playing through May 18th, 2019, and you can still get tickets.
International Sound Artist John Sully teams up with XIX Collective and MojoVideoTech to present, META-7 (an alchemic opera). Audience members lay on a sub-bass vibrating floor surrounded by a 7.1 sound system inside a 360° video mapped dome. The story is about all of us. Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where do we go after? Very much inspired by Sully’s album listening parties when he was a kid in the 70s, META-7 is a gesture towards the sacred and mysterious through a deep immersion of sound, light and architectural design. There will be 4 shows per night at 7,8,9 and 10pm. Please join us at 10-16 Studios, 10-16 46 Ave Long Island City NY.
MojoVideoTech has also provided us with a description of how the setup works… if you plan to go, maybe wait until afterwards to read the rest of this to avoid any sensory spoilers.
Read MoreVj Zef & Santo. Photo Credit: Bruno Destombes
Starting a few years ago, shortly after adding support for GLSL shaders in VDMX, we were especially excited to start seeing artists using it as a jumping off point for learning how to write their own shaders. Among the projects that we would hear about there was one in particular that we have been trying to get for a guest interview since it first landed on our radar – VJ Zef’s Saturday Shaders. It popped up in our timeline places like this, this and this… wonderful weekend treats of inspiration. Now finally we have Joseph here for a talk about these videos (and shaders!) that we have seen online.
Read MoreFrom Plato’s Cave
As software developers, one of the things that gets us really excited is seeing people using new kinds of display technologies in creative ways. A few weeks ago we saw some photos online from Julia Maria Morf that involved using transparent screens for installations and live performances, and of course we had to find out more about her stunning work!
Read MoreJoining us in this post is Madrid based artist Magmovies, another world traveling VJ who truly loves getting to push pixels around the globe. It is always inspiring for us to see people who enjoy this craft so much and for this reason we have been following Laura on social media for a little while now – and we figured it out was about time we had her for an interview so you can enjoy her work as well!
Read MoreThis week we were fortunate to get a chance to interview Switzon S. Wigfall, who along with being both an amazing musician and visual artist to keep an eye on, is one of those people who should be on your radar for being a prolific creator of creative commons VJ loops ;)
SSWIII’s free clip packs have popped up on our radar a few times in recent years, but when we caught wind of his new project for 2019, daily A/V practice sets that are producing great results, we knew it was time to finally get some more info about his work…
Read MoreA/V setup with The Suicide Of Western Cutlure - Primavera Sound 2018
In recent years one of the biggest contributors to the online and offline VJ communities has been Juanjo Fernández Rivero. Along with his work with VJ Spain and other organizations, teaching workshops and organizing meet ups, he is also known as Gnomalab, a prolific VJ who has been creating live visuals going on 20 years. We finally caught up with him for an interview looking back at his career and to find out about his latest projects!
Read More