Oh so pragmatic. Quick glimpses.

This past week was Bread & Butter here in Berlin , the international fashion fair. And what is a fashion fair without after parties and visuals to decorate these events where new trends are concocted and consumed simultaneously? A series of photos by Kriszta Turna provide a glimpse of a setup by David Szauder for a Custo after party at CHB in Berlin. David (aka Pixel Noizz) works a lot with Quartz Composer and Flash and was able to integrate these elements together quickly in order to have control over the atmosphere in the entire room. Color plays an important part in mood and this series of photos demonstrate Davids understanding of what is necessary in order to acheive this. David says "I was able to bring together my material quickly, QC compositions, .swf files, still images. No MIDI controller, mouse or any other external device. Amazing how quick and simple it was to put everything together. On top of that the client was really happy with the results."


I recently modified my keyboard. Look closely. I don't need to look at the keys anymore when I type, but when I am using my keyboard to control modul8 I like to have an alternate way of changing layer sets and for this I use the 1 through 8 keys. Fine for the numbered keys that control group A. But what about group B? The solution? Grab the 1 through 8 keys from my older, backup laptop and swap them out.


Our recent move gave us access to more space and finally ready is the production space for t-shirt printing and box assembly.


Installation, created by Fred from the Le Zoo crew in the Kab club for last weekends 4th edition of the Drum & Bass + Hardtek party. It was a 4 output setup with a Mac Pro. Connected the MacBook Pro in FireWire transfer mode so I could use my own system. Most charming. The tech was pretty much the last minute and setups were scrambled for at the last minute yielded the following setup:


After creating compositions with all of the layer sets using the library of foreground material at my disposal it was just a matter of re-arranging layer sets over time for variety sake.

If anyone has their own Korg NanoKontrol that they want to share please let me know. Would be fun to see what other people are doing with the same controller and I would gladly test them out and then post them here.


Finally would like to give a big thanks to Visual Berlin and fh.Meppen as well as all who attended the workshop this past Saturday. It was a small but very friendly group of people. Not only did they have a lot of good questions that kept things rolling along, they also communicated with each other giving the whole thing a sort of communal affair. There have been a few requests to do another. Likely in August. So if you are interested in a workshop, live in Berlin or happen to be coming to Berlin this summer please be sure to communicate so we can all get together.

VMX VJ v2

VMX VJ CODANOVA
Originally uploaded by codanova

Our friends over at Codanova have unleashed extensive photographs of the refreshed VMX VJ controller. Thinner and with some small graphical alterations this controller is a collaboration between French VJ and tenacious blogger Le Collagiste who had modul8 very much in mind when advising on the layout of the controls.

Its good to see this controller slim down a bit as one my only qualms with it was its size and weight. Ever the traveling digital bards that we are know that every once counts in making that gig back lighter.

One of the sweet spots for me on the VMX VJ is the grid of square buttons that allow for switching media with a visual reference to the media set window with LED lights that act as a visual reference to which media set you are in. By looking down at the led lights I did not have to look at my laptop screen and could therefore determine what media bin I am in. The playback controls at the top can be mapped to the logical record functions for easy access to this feature without having to fiddle around with your mouse cursor.