Peter's blog

the ad hoc render farm
May 12 was the deadline for completing the edit for Moodorgan's track Remember the Truth [prv2 (9.9.9) mix]. The concept for the video involved a number of "videos-within-a-video" integrated into a futuristic urban environment; with a lot of architecture to render, we had to put a few additional render machines on line.

It was also necessary to integrate a bunch of greenscreen footage shot at our warehouse space downtown.

Most of the editing was executed in Final Cut Pro; Lightwave for the 3D elements, and most of the compositing in After Effects.

The final edit can be viewed here.

Also this week was the first test of the full-body gesture recognition and translation system, downtown at our warehouse space.
With the audio system, video projection, lighting and laptops to run the audio and video software set up, we strapped the sensor system on dancer Forest and ran a short improvised performance where her movements drove both the music and visual compositions.

back-lighting setupcontrol stationI was back at the Edison this week to work on lighting for a music video shoot. We broke out the LED PAR38s and 56s, a couple of scanners, the LED fresnels, strobe and the little red/green lasers; also used some of the house's ellipsoidals. Control was through a couple of DMX controllers plus a custom Max patch that I modified on-site as required

Over the last few weeks I've been prototyping the sensor rig for the upcoming gesture-driven performance system.

Rotation at each major arm and leg joint is tracked by simple 50k potentiometers. Dual-axis accelerometers are mounted on each hand.

Some descriptions of custom instruments recently developed for the Los Angeles band Moodorgan have been posted, here.
These are custom MIDI controllers and hardware designed for live performance.

There's still quite a bit of recent project work that hasn't been added to the site database - but I think there's enough here to give an idea of the range of recent activities. So we'll consider the new version of peterjohnson.net live and will be adding content as we go along.

Starting some experiments next week using live gesture recognition to control projected video sources. Stay tuned ...

While technically not holography, "holographic" panels such as the one shown here create a compelling, three-dimensional experience by combining rear-screen projection on a transparent surface with embedded touchscreen technology.

Many of my corporate/commercial projects over the years have involved video production of one sort or another, but the more interesting work that I've done - in my opinion - has been for screenings and performances in galleries and entertainment venues. A while back I posted a few examples, here.