We came, we talked, we sat in couches.
My first Avit experience and it took place in Berlin. One of my favorite cities in the world. While it was not the full blown avit experience that I have heard many things about and that I will be a part of in less then two days it was definitely a tasty preview. In fact almost every person who came to speak or give a workshop will be at the LPM in Rome.
As DMY is mainly about design and the Arena played host to industrial designers presenting chairs and other strange approaches to everything in the realm of ‘one day you will want to buy this from a catalog’ the Visual Berlin crew were provided with a corner that served as part presentation of the VJ medium and part visual entertainment in the couch/chill complete with DJ’s on rotation and a rather large refreshment counter.
A few photos from synesthete (aka Todd Thille) whom I met for the first time in another micro step of ‘here is another link in this network of visualists trotting around the globe.’ More on Todd shortly.
Some more familiar faces were around. Toby *Spark was in to do a demonstration/workshop of Quartz Composer. Admittedly I did not stick around for the whole thing but it was fun to see Toby deliver a very friendly introduction to the node based environment that was my first venture into the VJ laptop software world. As mentioned in my opening statement in this blog Quartz Composer was once Pixel Shox. As a note to those who don’t know you can use .qtz files (files created in Quartz Composer) in modul8.
Not immediately afterward I was situated in the same sofa unit as Toby for a modul8 user meeting. While there were only three official users in the crowd chief amongst them being cyper there were a good number of people just curious about what I was talking about and demonstrating on the screen above me. After the end of the meeting I was approached by Torge of Novamob who have been using modul8 for some time now with much satisfaction.
After witnessing all of the modul8 demo discs and stickers I brought and placed on the Visual Berlin table evaporate within two or three hours I was invited by Toby to join Todd and him in contributing to a ‘State of the A/V’ session. Todd had created a Keynote based presentation that just happened to contain almost every A/V act that I am inspired by. The highlight being The Big Art Group. Also talked about were modul8 sponsored Berlin based collective Transforma who’s ‘Synken’ is an esthetic and narrative step in the encouraging direction.
Finally we were all given a heavy dose of Live Cinema or Narrative Session or ‘How to make live video performance engaging by making some sort of story out of the mishmash of material that is being projected on many screens.’ This was provided by fALk Gärtner who created a very extensive and informative presentation on the history of synesthesia and some real concrete mechanics of how one could possibly build a narrative within the bump grind limitations of the VJ medium. While at first there was much eye rolling on my part in terms of outlining and defining something that is by its very nature is somewhat very open to interpretation I was pleased with fALk admitting how difficult a task it is to mount such a project. He himself admits that it is an extremely difficult task.
Need be mentioned that fALk added modul8 as one of the potential tools out there for doing this?
Later over beer at the nearby Heinz Minki all of us sat around the table pondering the many obstacles in regards to our expectation of the content we want to see in the medium. Beer may not solve these problmes but it definitely brings the good folks together who are intent on doing so.