Audio/Visual Culture

StarCulture w/ iCatching July 17th LA

2009-07-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

David Starfire and I present our A/V performance, "StarCulture" July 17th @ Air Conditioned Lounge in Venice Beach CA.
Joining us is iCatching, she's a talented MC that David has produced.
Doors are at 9:00.
Map

POPSICLE

2009-06-30T19:17:00.001-07:00

POPSICLE
Originally uploaded by cudunko

Here is some video of POP 09.
Found this on flickr.

TTD 2009 by inflatabill

2009-06-22T21:55:00.001-07:00

TTD 2009 by inflatabill
Originally uploaded by mysticbeatlounge

Here's a clear shot of the shadow box screen's Inflatabill made for the Techno Tribal stage.

I found this on Flickr Launch party SF 6/20/09

2009-06-22T20:49:00.001-07:00

MVI_0596
Originally uploaded by JFithian

I was brought in to do visuals for the 92.7 FM Launch Party for Pride Week SF.
Turn off the audio and just watch the visuals.
It was a 7 hour set and I was mixing from preview monitors all night long. They had set up a curtain last minute blocking my view of the screens.

Harmony Fest. Techno Tribal Weekend

2009-06-16T22:59:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
More pics on my flickr page.
We (Lumens) were contracted to do Techno Tribal at Health and Harmony Fest in Santa Rosa.

The install began on Thursday afternoon for Sean Cooper and myself. I hit the road from LA at 5:30AM to head up to SF and load up the cars. From there we drove another hour and a half to Santa Rosa north of San Francisco. We started installing at 3:00PM and worked until 1:00AM. It was a very long day. 6 screens and 4 separate feeds.
Friday we came in the afternoon to finish off building the VJ suite. That in it's self was a big task.

On the VJ table
4 V4's
3 Korg Kaptivators
3 Macbook Pros
1 V8
1 8x8 Matrix router
4 DVD players
6 monitors
1 Edirol CG8
1 UC-33 midi controller
Plus, the live camera suite next to us from Toshi.

Why so much gear?
Well, we had 2 IMAG (Live camera screens) on the right and left of the stage. 2 shadow box screens (w/ a custom mask) see the upside down tear shaped inflatable screen, 1 circle screen, with a Om symbol alpha channeled on top of a circle mask and a panel screen up stage center. 4 streams from 6 mixers over two days.

Friday night was mostly live acts, Sat. was mostly DJs and dance performers, etc.
Sat. we arrived at 5PM to set up. Doors were at 8:30 and the party went until 3:00AM. We felt it was in our best interest to strike everything that night so it was 6:00AM before our heads hit the pillow. It's amazing how fast you work after an all night event when you want to get some sleep.

Credit to Bill Kennedy (Inflatabill) for all the inflatable screens and objects and Zack for the amazing event production. It was a great team of people.

Touring with Sharam from Deep Dish

2009-06-09T20:04:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
I've been touring with Sharam from Deep Dish this spring. I have so much to write about that I've postponed writing it. Pics and videos to come soon.

Red Bull MoonTower SXSW Austin Tx

2009-06-04T14:26:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
check the link for pics of Red Bull Moontower @ SXSW Austin TX 2009
It was a huge project that had been on the table since last fall.
LED in cubes are nothing new but Parts (John Taylor) worked out a new patch in Jitter to sync the color schemes of the LEDs inside the cubes with the averaging of the colors from the Live VJ mix. Meaning the LEDs inside the cubes were video addressable and matching (at times) the vj mix on the screens. (That is new, and to my knowledge) had not been done before.
We used Element Labs versa-rays for our lighting element. Jitter snarfed out the colors of the VJ mix and sent the average color to the animations coloring the Versa-Rays. 52 cubes in all. Sustainable Waves provided the cubes and LEDs. (In addition to the property the event was held on).
We also had 6 screens and projectors surrounding the property. The event was live for 4 nights.

Video shoot by Parts

Skills POP 09 @ Cow Palace SF CA

2009-06-04T12:16:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

Epic installation for Skills POP. The Skills crew always wants to out do the last production with even a bigger or more complicated production.
This year, a 40+ft 360 rotating stage in the middle of the arena.

The DJ makes a full 360 every 7 minutes. This required 360 sound, lighting and visual.
For visual we had 4 15x20' screens in each corner, 6 DL1 projectors seamlessly projecting on the upper chandelier with the ability to project onto the crowd and outer walls of the arena. We needed two separate mixes to feed both the 15x20's screens and the chandelier.
Noah and I feed the screens for the night but we also had two other rooms at the festival.

In one room a 6x20ft LED screen and two flanking screens to the stage. Kevlar held down the visuals in that room while Sean mixed the other room with wide array of screens behind the whole stage.

Installing such a huge event is always a challenge. We had Friday and Sat. to install. 1000's of feet of BNC and RGBHV cable. I think the cable is what took up most of the room in the vehicles.
It was full on Raver Fest. Most people thought this had died out.
Hardly,

This was a tough weekend. Thursday night Sean and I had a gig for Red Bull at the Academy of Science in SF Golden Gate Park. Early Friday morning we were installing at the Cow palace. We were there a good 14 hours. Then Sat. back to finish install and then went straight into the event. At. 5AM I laid down for an hour and then headed to the airport to head to Detroit for DEMF and two more days of madness.
See next post.
You can see more of my photos on flickr.

New Interview on Chinashopmag.com

2009-06-04T11:30:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

Like the ghetto fab shade covers for my macs. Daytime VJing directly under the sun.
The interview was conducted in Detroit during DEMF (Movement). This interview was after doing an all night event in SF the night before, going straight to the airport to catch a plane to Detroit and going straight to the stage for another 2 days.

Feb, 28th Sour Crew-Dakota Lounge- Santa Monica

2009-02-24T10:23:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

The closest gig I'll ever do to home.
Come out Sat. Feb. 28th. I'll be remixing and mashing, "SOUR: 4 Peace in the Middle East"
Sour Crew Productions hosts the Hashemite Zion Alchemy LA event at Dakota Lounge. Musical Alchemy includes live performances of multicultural Middle Eastern Hip Hop dynamically combined with the first peace summit hosted by Arab and Jewish skateboarders caught on tape and cut into the documentary, 'SOUR: 4 Peace in the Middle East.'

HZA Artists: HZA combines a unique lineup of Middle Eastern Hip Hop artists with distinct and unique messages of peacemaking and community advocacy even during conflict.
Omar Offendum – Syrian-American LA area MC
Resonant Sun - Bay area MC with track "Oshe Shalom" featured on SOUR soundtrack
Ashkon - Persian American Bay area MC
Special Appearance By - Voice of God (…)
DJ Set By - Step 1

EDT Love Skills Feb. 14th show

2009-02-19T14:21:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
Regency Ballroom SF CA

Yet another full house Skills event.
Sean had the brilliant idea to mount 4 projectors at the base of the long strips of fabric on stage. The projectors were shooting up the fabric from a couple of feet away.

It was our saving grace for the night. The fog machine was kicking out so much fog most of the night that it was knocking out our other 3 projectors mounted down stage.
I took these photos when there was the least amount of fog.
It certainly captured the attention of the audience.

We were able to run separate images to the various screens on stage by using two V4's and one Vixid mixer.
During the coarse of the evening one of the lasers shot directly into the projector lens and fried the motherboard. Same thing happened last year but in a different room with a different laser. We warned them... They did deliver a beautiful beam though.

Fairey use?

2009-02-12T10:39:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
Interesting article about Shepard Fairey and the use of copyrighted material. Shepard took the preemptive suit against AP on the photo used for Barak's Hope design. The Judge sided with Fairey that the image was transformed into an abstract piece.
What does this mean for artist re-purposing material? It's a gray area and will become more gray under the Orphan Works bill (Or, maybe not)
Those who will suffer most from this bill are the artists whose work is professional quality but are not tied to a corporate entity.
By default an artist's work is no longer copyrighted. The artist has to register each piece or it could get registered by someone else.
Which leads me back to Shepard Fairey. Has anyone heard of Mannie Garcia?
He's the photographer that took the picture.

Respect your VJ

2009-02-09T13:28:00.001-08:00

www.vjculture.com
What a great site.
Simple and makes the point.

http://www.respectyourvj.net/

Modul8 blog

2009-02-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

http://www.modul8.us/
Yours truly is on the front page of Modul8 (VJ Software) blog.
I met Ilan from Modul8 while attending Cimatics Brussels back in Nov.
Which, btw, I still need to tell ya all about.

Workin the Intel booth at CES

2009-01-15T20:44:00.001-08:00

www.vjculture.com
DJ Tabu and I working for Intel at CES.
More info to come when I get a chance to catch up.

StarCulture at DiggNation

2009-01-15T17:21:00.001-08:00

www.vjculture.com
Here's a link to some press about the event.
David StarFire and I w/ iCatching set an 1 hour and a half set on fire.

The place was packed with young DiggHeads. Who would have thought two guys behind a laptop sitting on a coach would sell out the Knitting Factory.

Video to come soon.

StarCulture @ Knitting Factory w/ iCatching Jan. 14th 09

2009-01-13T13:27:00.001-08:00

Join StarCulture Jan. 14th at Knitting Factory Hollywood CA
For Digg.com / Diggnation meetup.
Live Audio/visual performance with MC iCatching
StarCulture is David Starfire and VJ Culture.
The media is a mashup of classic rock a/v remixes, electro-breaks and David's signature world rhythm sounds.
This is Digg.com's LA meetup.
The event is free but it will reach capacity early.
Doors are at 7:00. We go on at 10:00.
Please come out and have a drink with us.

www.vjculture.com

I have so much to tell you all about

2009-01-13T13:24:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
-Trip to Cimatics in Brussels
-NYE in San Francisco at City Hall
-content development for Sharam from Deep Dish
-A week at CES in Vegas for Intel
and much mush more. I just don't have the time to upload it.
Please check back soon.

Roof Top Photo Shoot downtown LA

2008-11-20T15:46:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
It's Nov. in LA and it was 90+ degrees on Sat. Fires were burning all over So. Cal. and we were hauling projectors, screens, sandbags, c-stands, high rollers and every piece of production equipment you see in these photos up a ladder.
The plus side of 90 degree temps. is that the evening was warm and pleasant. No jacket, and the models could wear whatever they wanted. Its rarely this warm in July let alone Nov.

David Starfire DJ'd I VJ'd, so I guess it was a posed StarCulture set.
The client (who I won't name until after the campaign releases) gave me full creative control. One of the best clients and production teams I've worked with. Thanks Jessica at Pulse Production.
We had some grand ideas for the projection environment but the rooftop was limited in space so we kept it simple.
I used a triplehead2gocard for the 2 screens and the brick wall projection. The circle screen was running of a single 5k projector.
Big ups to the Parts Dept. (Arcane Solutions) for helping with the install and strike.

Election night Party Castro St. SF CA

2008-11-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
John Wood from Lovefest SF asked me if I wanted to participate in a Election Night party on Castro Street. He said if Obama wins its going to be epic. If Prop. 8 fails and Obama win its going to be out of control mayhem.

We all know the outcome by now. These street parties are my favorite party. 1000's of people filling the streets. Rocking out to David Harness and Liam Shy.
We ran a video cable out the window of one of the residents and streamed local news stations on the big screen.
Once we knew Obama had won and 8 was looking to pass I was free to do more of the visual thing.

Skill's Fright Night Nov. 1st w/ Paul van Dyke, Junkie XL

2008-11-09T17:35:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

The day began at 8:30AM, Sean and I had been breaking down a Halloween show until 4:00.
Now we had another 20 hours ahead of us. It started with a serious down pour. San Francisco doesn't normally see rain like this.

Our setup was in the beautifully restored Craneway building on the shore of the SF Bay.
This old building once brought cargo in off the ships. Now it hosts events and the craziest aspect to all of this is their floor. Highly polished concrete, it's beautiful but they also require us to lay 4x8 sheets of particle board every time we want to roll a case or scissor-lift across it. We had to wrap the wheels of the scissor-lift with a saran wrap. Seriously, if you are going to have an event space, you can't be so protective of your floors.
For this show we broke out the basic geometric shapes for our screens. A 22ft triangle in the center of the stage, two 10' circle screens and long strips of fabric aligned to make a traditional rectangle screen on the outside. Any of the geometric shaped screens could have their own mix.

Halloween in SF

2008-11-08T15:12:00.000-08:00

I participated in this year's Halloween SF put on by the City of San Francisco and the Entertainment Commission.
I provided a inflatable screen and projector for running Halloweenish movies.
The inflatable screen is rated up to 25mph winds. That's what we had.
The screen was whipping and bouncing around. I had my finger on the switch ready to kill the blowers at any minute. The screen surface itself is a 4 way stretch material fastened to the frame. It was stretching/billowing 7ft out in front of the frame. Very trippy for watch movies. Talk about true 3D.
It was a cold and windy night by the bay. It was the first time the city has tried to hold a civic halloween party in the ATT Ball Park parking lot.

Red Bull Soapbox Race SF building Projection

2008-10-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

Pixel Bombing SF!!!
Red Bull asked me to do a building projection campaign around San Francisco for it's upcoming Soapbox Derby race on Oct. 18th For 4 nights I bombed the city's Castro, Mission, downtown and Hayes Valley with footage of previous Soapbox events.
I used my spanking new Sanyo 6.5k projector and Modul8 to do the job.
I can't tell you how excited I am about this projector. It's easy to throw on top of the van and hit a building. Combined with Modul8, I can be up and running on a building in less than 3 minutes.
Basically, I use Modul8 to scale, rotate and fit the image into the perfect spots on a building. I can even mask out a window so I'm not blowing light into someone's living room.
In one particular spot, all the people coming up to me weren't inquiring about the race, they were asking me about the projector. Every single person!
I've bombed a lot of cities, San Francisco numerous times.. However, this one was the most fun. The weather at night was perfect, people were in a mood and everyone was excited about the Soapbox race.
On Sat. Red Bull held an after party at club 1015. I was given footage of the day's races and remixed it during the after party.
At the same time I had the van parked outside the club and we were projecting the highlight reel on the side of the club.

TED Wish James Nachtwey Projections

2008-10-20T17:27:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
Oct. 12th

Last year, acclaimed war photographer James Nachtwey was honored with the 2007 Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Prize for his work documenting images of war, disease and political unrest across the globe for over 25 years.
James' wish was to share an under-reported worldwide story, prove the power of news photography in the digital age and raise awareness about a global health issue that has the potential to become a worldwide pandemic — Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR TB).

Through Phantom Galleries I was asked to help spread the word with building projections in downtown Los Angeles during the monthly Art Walk.
I purchased for this occasion a new Sanyo 6.5k projector. Wow, I was blown away by the brightness of this small form factor projector. I was under a street light and the projector cut right through it.
The following night with Phantom Galleries we setup two screens in the window of a store front in Pasadena. It was Pasadena's art walk.
Special thanks to TED Conference, Liza from Phantom Galleries and of course James Nachtwey.
The video I was projecting can be viewed here.

San Francisco LoveFest 08

2008-10-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

Well for the past 4 years I've been at LoveFest but I've never been outside to experience it.
The schedule goes like this.
9:00AM Load in
9AM-8PM install screens, run cable, setup cameras, projectors and video suite.
Do this in 2 to 3 rooms and don't stop until doors open at 8:00PM
8:00PM VJ the show.
4:00AM strike the video suite
5:00 Leave
10:00AM Strike until 2:00PM
3:00PM Drive back to LA.

This year we used a waterfall screen behind the DJ. Two 6.5k projectors mirrored on the 20x40ft water screen. photo by mischief photo.
Above the water screen was a 15x60ft screen offset in 5ftx12ft strips (built by inflatabill) Hitting those strips were 3 DL1 projectors that were run off my laptop and triplehead2go card. Modul8 was controlling the content and the lighting designer was controlling the movements of the DL1s. Panning, the stage and crowd a 4th DL1 panned the crowd.
We also had 2 15x20ft screens flanking the stage. Each set of screens could have interchanging images. (meaning what went on the water screens could be swapped with what was on the flanking stage screens).
The DJ line up included Armin Van Buren, ABT, Deep Voices, and others.
I animated the Lovefest flyer by breaking the fyler's layers into separate files that could be animated in modul8 and after effects.
In the side room Sean Cooper held down the fort with 5 screens, one of which was a circular screen.
Like every year, it was bust yer butt getting everything setup just before the doors open.