Performance multimedia

gesture control of music and visuals

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.

0 April 14, 2010

back at the Edison ...

stage lighting setupback-lighting setupcontrol stationcontrol 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

0 April 14, 2010

prototyping the new gesture tracking rig

rotation sensor prototype
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.

0 March 23, 2010

custom instrument development

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.

0 March 21, 2010

gesture recognition and MaxMSP/Jitter


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

0 January 15, 2010

film/video work 2001-2007


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. My reel from this era is here.

0 December 11, 2007

VS3: visual synthesizer rev. 3


vs3 touchscreen rig with Roland V4 mixervs3 touchscreen rig with Roland V4 mixerVS3: realtime visual synthesis - a visual instrument based on the architecture/approach of a music synthesizer: original images are created in a performance environment by selecting sources (as one would select waveforms on a synthesizer) and applying some sort of method (algorithm) to combine and/or modulate them. Unlike a typical post-production environment, the VS3 system is designed to allow creative decisions to be made on-the-fly in a live performance. This approach is also more advanced than the typical 'VJ' paradigm, as the system doesn't just mix existing sources but actually generates original footage in real-time.

0 April 01, 2007