#52

i just posted some excerpts from the visuals i made for kaitlyn aurelia smith’s live tour of the “the kid”

it was all practical special fx photography with video processing. no computer animation.

the visuals ran from a second computer - projected onto a big screen behind kaitlyn - and were synchronized with her performance via midi.

i had a lot of fun making these. most of my film work is very premeditated with lots of planning and intense focus on the execution. this was a nice break from all that. i went into the studio every day not really knowing what was going to happen. so many surprises!

i think visuals are a wonderful opportunity to enhance and extend a live performance. in the case of this project there was no stage lighting and kaitlyn was more of a silhouette (when we could get the venue to provide good projection, or even better a video wall).

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#53

These are great. I imagine that they were very immersive. Love that they contain no computer animation too.

Hope I get to see Kaitlyn and you perform one day. (psst …pass through Pittsburgh next east coast tour!)

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#54

Some amazing ideas here! Inspired!

I’ve been using minimalist, slow documentary footage of nature that I’ve shot around the world. Not the most exciting idea, but I’ve been to some incredible and photogenic places that make it much more interesting, such as Iceland, Tasmania and Antarctica.

Here’s an example of some Southern Ocean footage that I’ve been performing with, also used in this music video:

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#55

I’d like to share here a video of one of my gigs, during the last tour.
I’ve been reluctant, for years, to introduce video in my live shows, because I always thought that the musicians are the show. I mean, when you go see a classical orchestra, there’s no light show, and it’s by no means boring. To me, the importance of the light show is usually meaning : “I admit my show is boring, let’s distract people with flashy lights and trippy videos”.
For this tour (the Muance Tour), I finally decided that it would make sense, with a few conditions :

  • the scenography should visually echo the album
  • musicians should have a way to interact with the lights and video, at least sometimes
  • synchronicity is quite important but improvisation in song structures should also be possible

So, given that the album is structured around a six-note pattern (opening the first track “Philémon”), we build ourself four “sculptures” inspired by Sol Lewitt, filled with 6 led stripes, so we can underline the six-note pattern (that I called the “Philémotif”), which comes either as loops or as one-shots “jingles” depending on the context.
Also, I was sending OSC data to the video/light guy, synchronized with Ableton Live’s MIDI clips, or linked with drum pads (for one shots, played live), or MIDI faders/knobs info when it made sense (see “Temps Utile” for instance at 19’35’’).
Lastly, the sound of acoustic instruments is analyzed at the mixing desk (with a dedicated computer and soundcard) and generates data to control video parameters.

VIDEO :

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#56

really great set design! in general i’m impressed and love how clean you’ve kept the rest of the stage elements as well, not just the live visuals and infrastructure design. all your instrument tables and cables look so good… the whole stage really supports your music and performance. so hard to do, keeping clutter out, and having a simple image. respect!!!

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#57

Thanks,
it’s all hand-made and we had quite a long thinking with the whole crew. Yeah, the furniture itself would be a long story to tell as well. We designed it so (when preparing stuff backstage) we could setup in something like 15 minutes.

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#58

Man I love this whole video and music and visuals and arte recording. Big up!

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#59

I am really impressed by what I have seen in this thread. From my experience as mostly solo player it helps me a lot when I don’t need to sequence visuals separately so most of the time I try to send to the visualizations the same midi data that I send to instruments. Mostly I have been writing simple stuff in processing.org that reacts to midi using midibus(http://www.smallbutdigital.com/projects/themidibus/) but after some testing I had really great experience with Lumen (https://lumen-app.com) I think that especially for solo musician it is important not to try to develop everything ourselves and having a tool that already synthesizes video helps a lot and a big plus is that Lumen reacts to midi.
Here is one of my test videos where I used octatrack to create audio and used midi tracks from octatrack to drive visuals. I think that for such small setup (octatrack + computer running only Lumen) the effects are really good (sorry for the horrible video compression of youtube which does not make the visualizations a justice)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHdEDX-WxUQ
I know that I stress this a lot but having one place (octatrack) to sequence music and visualizations helped me not to change “contexts” while playing song and also allowed to improvise a little with visualizations by changing triggers etc.

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#61

Hi!

I’m looking for an HD projector to use it in my live performances to show live visuals created with Touchdesigner when playing my modular rig, and also to do outdoors experiments with video mapping and things like this. I would like to have one to use it on my experiments, and only rent bigger ones in bigger live shows when needed. My target price will be 3.000$.

Any recommendations here from people using them in live installations or performances?

Thanks a lot!

#62

Here’s what I’ve used regularly for day-to-day installations and experimentations:

The optoma’s are great if you don’t mind a bit of extra bulk. super cheap, great image and a good brightness for the cost.

Things to watch out for when buying a projector:

  • lux is not the same as lumens
  • lumens are measured differently by manufacturer and by light source (lots of low output LED cheapos falsely advertising that they are really bright)
  • 3000 (or more) lumens from a reputable manufacture is going to likely be bright enough if it’s in a dark room with the lights off. The brighter the better, get as high as you can afford. if you’ve got 3k to spend, you can likely get something much brighter than 3000-3500 lumens.
  • Resolution is decoupled from brightness but they both have an impact on image quality.
  • you might not need HD or 4k, it depends on how far folks are going to be viewing the projection from, think of this like the difference between a HiDPI / Retina Screen and a typical monitor, it’s basically the same. if you’re very close, you’ll see pixelation. but do you need to spend the money on the resolution since people will be close, or on the brightness since the projection will be huge?
  • throw distance is really important – how far back can the projector be placed. It might be worth looking at a short throw – check https://www.projectorcentral.com/projection-calculator-pro.cfm 's throw calculator to see how far back the projector will need to be. This may really factor into a performance setup if you’re setting up the projector yourself every time.

Let me know if you’ve got other questions, I’ve done A LOT of projection work interior, on custom screens and exterior onto buildings.

edit – this forum is a great place to look for projection related issues & questions: https://www.avsforum.com/forum/index.php

9 Likes
#63

Hi! Thanks for your response! I’ve been reading recently a lot about projectors, and always there is something missing from my ideal setup. When it’s not the lumens it’s the throw distance or resolution. The Sony VPL-PHZ10 seems to have a good balance between all those options and the price is bellow 3000$. Have you tried any laser projector in your installations?

#64

Seconding bmoren re throw distance.
Zoom lenses and lens shift range are important when you will be using the projector in multiple settings with little control.
Outdoor projection mapping really needs a bright projector. Even 3000 lumens was too weak for a test run I did last year outdoors in San Francisco - though this was in an area (near the freeway, lower potrero hill) that had a fair amount of light at night.

#65

I would like to start doing projection mappings using Touchdesigner, but just for testing indoors in controlled environment. So in case we do a show outdoors using projection mapping we will rent a bigger one.

#66

I’ve started playing out live with my eurorack setup, and started wondering about visualizations. I guess it’s best with a laptop, but not sure of software and how you would integrate this with my rack (for sync, and some control)

Just looking for any advice on this? Software to use? Modules for integrating? Any advice welcomed :slight_smile:

#67

Lumen is good software, and can take midi control.
For more processing of video material, try the Signal Culture apps..
The Vidiot from LZX is good and euro compatible but needs a camera and a monitor to be really exciting.

#68

Vizzie in Max is very easy and quick to get pretty awesome results. The workflow is very similar to modular.

#69

These are cool! Gonna keep an eye on this thread for more ideas :slight_smile:

#70

I got good results sending MIDI sequences from my octatrack to VDMX a few years ago.

I think if I was going for more custom stuff now, I’d probably look into some of the audio analysis in Processing or openFrameworks, but MIDI always gave me better results than audio on that front. Could do some cool logic routing/analysis in Max and send data out to p5/oF over osc.

#71

I’m guessing for most of these software suggestions, I’d need a CV to midi module, to send midi out to the computer?

Is this more usual than using audio to be analysed?

#72

I’ve seen both approaches used successfully separately and in tandem. Software such as VDMX, Resolume Arena, and TouchDesigner have capabilities both for realtime audio analysis as well as responding to MIDI/OSC input. What I would say from experience is that audio analysis techniques can be effective for more abstract, global changes/effects and MIDI input (based on CV or otherwise) is useful in creating very purposeful, targeted parameter changes in the system. This of course can get as complex and muddy as you have the time and energy for, but the main hurdle with audio analysis is calibration and dealing with very saturated sound input with a huge array of frequencies going on. It can get tricky to get specific audio events to do specific things, beyond targeting and filtering frequency bands.