Holiday gift for your gear?

Monome protective bag (open)
Come the holidays we all get something. Maybe your sweetheart buys you a Korg Nano? Dad gets you a Monome? Why not right? I got mine for myself, travel and use them constantly. But I was always worried about scratches or even just dropping them by accident and having them get scratched. Yes, I am picky about stuff like that.

Monome protective bag (closed)
I had seen some of the options out there for protective gear for my favorite devices and I was not really happy with what I found. Also, I prefer to have unique things so that when I pull them out of the bag people kind of raise their eyebrows and go ‘where did you get that?’ and then I have a story to tell.

Korg Nano Kontrol bag
A friend of mine, who’s Mom (or Mum as she is referred to) lives in Sweden, makes lovely crafts work. She collects lots of different textiles to make all sorts of things. She also knits and I have several pairs of socks that I wear over my regular socks when the Berlin chill starts nipping at my toes. She also makes hand made books! Seeing all this talent the (LED?) light turned on in my head and I asked her to make me some bags for my gear.

Korg Nano Kontrol + Key protective bags
The results were highly satisfying. Each bag has its unique look and feel. They are extremely well made, very sturdy, each having its own personality as she selected a unique fabric for each one. I so prefer this over some plastic thing made by a machine.

If you are looking for something nice to protect your NanoKey, NanoKontrol, Monome then feel free to contact Eija Elmgren at Artifex. She already has the measurements for the above mentioned controllers, but I am sure it will not be too much of a problem if you have a different device. Its easy to find out the measurements of your device by downloading its PDF specs from the makers website, copy it and send it via email. For a reasonable price plus shipping I am sure she will be more then delighted to sew something nice for you.

posted by modul8.us @ 21 December, 2010 0 comments »

Mapping, beauty and the quick and easy

Mille – Crysteena from Upper First on Vimeo.

In my last post I went on about the overwhelming amount of mapping projects out there. This time, I will go back to the subject of mapping, and mapping tools, of which at the moment there are far and few that are accessible and easy to use.

Until we have the Mad Mapper that is fully featured (and it is far from that for the moment) the old tried and true technique is using a combination of traditional graphics tools such as Photoshop and After Effects, or other graphics applications, to get really decent, customized results.

The above video was sent to me via Facebook message from Roland Linder, of the UK based Decollage TV and at the bottom is a thesis work of Visualicious (aka Chika Iijima). I worked with Chika for one day to teach her the the basic technique that produced the results of her work. I like the way she combined augmentation with the objects she built along with just allowing non-context elements to interact with the contextual ones.

The process is really not that difficult. Setup your projector in the space and position it, making sure that your projection covers all the areas that you will want to map features onto it. I use Photoshop.

- Open a new file set to the pixel size of what my output will be
- Name my file ‘petes play house’ or something else relevant
- Select from the main menu ‘Window > Arrange > New Window for Petes Play House’ , move the new window (that is identical to the new file I have created).
- Move the new view to the output of the projector
- Enable full screen by hitting the ‘F’ key

You may have to zoom in and then out of the document in order for the window to be perfectly positioned.

It helps a lot to quickly replace the background color of the file to black if you have not done so already when creating the file and then I will add a 3 or 4 pixel stroke to edges of the borders of the file so I can see the borders of my projection.

Once you have done this DO NOT MOVE THE VIEW of the duplicated window. Work in the original window.

I use the vector tools in Photoshop to create my outlines of all the features I want and then import that file into After Effects to make the animations. The famous ‘stroke the edge with light’ technique is done by creating a mask and making an outline of one of your features and then using the built in ‘stroke’ filter, offsetting the values of the draw on keyframes so that only a portion of the line is visible and animating along the curve.

Screen shot 2010-12-16 at 10.08.33

Render your materials, drop them into Modul8, setup your Midi bindings, etc.

In a bit of a deadline crunch at the moment to deliver some ideas towards a module for a monome like device called the Octint.


I have been using the Monome for some time now along with the Monomal module from Iduun. Being able to get real feedback from the device has allowed me to almost never touch the laptop while I am performing. I am excited to have even more visual references in that the Octint uses color.

*** Update ***
At the request of David Harrow via facebook I have created a small example of using the stroke plug-in.

posted by modul8.us @ 16 December, 2010 4 comments »

Monomal v.3.7 released, 100 downloads!

Monomal v.3.7

Philippe of Iduun has released the latest version of the Monomal module for using the Monome with Modul8.

The release includes the following updates:
- The ability to use the Monome with Modul8 without having to launch MonomeSerial.
- Change media sets 1 through 8 in both A and B under ‘page’ 3 of the Monomal layout.
- Use the BPM button to set the playback speed of all layers simultaneously.

I believe I have already posted the video below, and while it does not include the features noted above it is a very useful and clear demonstration on how one could use Monomal for their performances. While this video does not include the new features mentioned above, if you already have a Monome it is easy to browse through the Monomal module and see the changes, especially if you are familiar with them.

From the list of additions my favorite is probably not having to launch the MonomSerial. For me less is always more when creating a setup for a VJ set or performance. Why? 1) the only thing I want running when I am using Modul8 is Modul8. 2) if there is a problem I usually find that it’s much easier to have to trouble shoot 1 piece of software and 1 piece of hardware. Start adding more and the level of frustration I get starts to increase as does my energy and enthusiasm for what I am doing.

For my immediate future use of the Monome and the Monomal, I am probably going to try using it to change media sets and then use the trusty M-audio Trigger Finger to change media in the layers. While this does add a layer of complexity being that I will have two hardware devices to deal with the feedback from Monome that will show me what media set I am in should be quite handy.

Philippe also mentioned that they had approximately 100 downloads of the Monomal module since it has been updated. Impressive considering how rare an item the Monome is and it being primarily used by the audio community.

You can continue to keep up to date with changes to the Monomal on the Iduun/Monomal blog and more importantly provide them feedback on how they can make it even better.

posted by modul8.us @ 17 June, 2010 0 comments »