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.

The Empires troops use Modul8

Community man at Vimeo, Blake Whitman got his hands on time with Modul8 and a Trigger Finger. Supposedly he was mixing Star Wars and Indiana Jones. I don't see a whip here. At least we know that he got the Star Wars part going. Hopefully he was whipping it up with Modul8 and the Trigger Finger instead.

Legoman strikes again!

I first met Legoman at the first edition of the Mapping Festival back in 2005. Even back then he already demonstrated a dissatisfaction with the screen and 'simply being a vj.' He knew there could be more to it.

After he finished his studies he left Geneva and by the time I returned for the 2007 edition of the Mapping he was living in Brussels, slicing up materials and creating unique installations where the emphasis on 'image' was more focused on the images created by the eye in comprehending the transformation of space.



His installation at Mapping 2007 was called 3destruct. It featured a room filled with thin strips of the famous gauze like material with 3 projectors and an audio system. The images of the video hinted at some kind of claustrophobic, techno armageddon. It was an illuminated forrest of metal, clicks and glitches.

Since then he has been collaborating heavily with the Anti-VJ collective. And just the other day, thanks to facebook (see, its useful for something) he posted some really nice images of a collaboration with a music group called the Stray Dogs.



It is REALLY, really important for me stress several things. Firstly, we receive a lot of questions regarding mapping projections based on photos and videos. If by the work of Anti-VJ, Exyzt or a host of other artists working in this area. What I need to stress is that the technique is really very simple. Put a projector in front of an object, map it using your favorite graphics editing software, make video with this as a template and drop it into modul8.

This is really simple. Even simpler with this installation is the usage of rather inexpensive materials. It appears that there was not even a need to hang anything with a drill and screws. What is hard is getting the content and documentation right. DSLR cameras are pretty cheap these days and a few extra for a decent wide angle lens and the return on the investment is self evident. I don't even really need to see video. Would be nice though.

Would like to see more of this. Keep up the good work Legoman.