Audio/Visual Culture

Dubspot LA

2010-07-21T17:12:00.001-07:00

Visually speaking, it's rare that I get to do whatever I want these days. It seems the lighting companies have taken over the visual budgets and the larger festivals have their own ideas how the visuals are going to go down.
So this Friday July 23rd. I'm excited to do whatever I want.
You're all on the guest list. (with a small donation)

Dubspot LA: 2011 Showcase & Humane Society of the U.S. Benefit
King King
6555 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA

Super Hero Street Fair July 10th (It's going to be Riot like)

2010-06-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

-One big wall.
-3 VJ stations
-5 projectors
-Too many sound systems
-1 Super Hero Fair
1000's of spandex clad wannabe heros
The Wall

The VJ Station area
From Dusk to Midnight Super Hero Street Fair shed's it's Batman beacon directly on the VJ.
The command center will consist of 5-6 projectors and 3 VJ Hero stations. Bring your superhero mix and project extraordinary visuals. Super plasmatic power and radioactive video signals will be provided courtesy of Video Salon from dusk to midnight.

Where ordinary VJs project extraordinary visuals!

Contact vjsuperhero@gmail.com
To reserve your spot.

Facebook F8 Developers Conference

2010-05-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

April 21st 2010 SF CA

F8 Installation wall. Facebook Developers Conference 2010 from VJ Culture on Vimeo.

It took two months to pull this together. A team of 10. 5 from Facebook and 5 from my team. Full credits at the end of the video.
Facebook wanted to create a large scale projection that simulated the effect of the war room in War Games. (Notice the tic tax toe?). 12 picture in pictures, because that is all the Spyder system could handle. Actually, I had to create a few more Picture in Pictures and cheat it using Modul8.
The two outside windows were processing sketches created by Wayne Fan and Gleb Denisov. The far right window was a schedule and map of the conference. The arching lines were a visualization of the movement of attendees. The attendees were issued an RFID chip that they could register to their profile. Numerous RFID readers were placed around the venue. As the chips were scanned the data was sent to the processing app which then visualized the movement.
The chips could also be used to transmit photobooth pictures to attendees profile page as tags. All the attendee needed to do was touch the reader with their RFID chip and the photobooth did the rest. This portion of the project was headed by Facebook's Everett Katigbak and Ben Berry.
Additional windows included satellite tracking visualizer, tic tac toe, global facebook visualizer, 3d waveform visualizer by Mr. Doob, maps to the after party, realtime photo updates by a roaming photographer (Steve Maller) and the qualla bear which was intended to be a place holder but when CEO Mark Zuckerburg saw it, he suggested we keep it.
All the Spyder System control was handled by Creative Technologies Bruce Wheaton.
The full credits are listed here.
Credits In Alphabetical order
Ben Barry
Bruce Wheaton
Everett Katigbak
Gleb Denisov
Grant Davis
Julia Lam
John Taylor
Lee Byron
Mr. Doob
Raquel DiSabatino
Wayne Fan
Xarene Eskandar

Beatport Beach Party WMC Miami 2010

2010-04-07T15:42:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
One of my favorite parties of the year. Beatport brings out the sun, fun and stellar DJ line up from artists around the world.

Beatport Beach Party WMC Miami 2010 from VJ Culture on Vimeo.

At times I used Modul8 to split the screen between the front DJ booth and the screen behind the DJs.
Dealing with marketing peeps and brand management can sometimes be a challenge at sponsored events.
One particular brand wanted to see their 1 minute DVD loop up on the screen for the first 45 minutes of every DJs set. I had to inform this person that most of these DJs were only playing 45 minute sets. Additionally, this brand wasn't even the title sponsor.
Any marketing managers reading this blog... The best branding comes when the brand contributes not only financially to the event (that gets their foot in the door) but brings added value. Red Bull does this well with their branding infrastructure, i.e. DJ booths, tent structures, tables or, Heineken's 360 visual dome. Having a 1 minute DVD looping for 45 minutes does just the opposite. Guests are getting a negative brand experience at that point.
Needless to say, they didn't get the 45 minutes of Clockwork Orange, eye popping logo injections. Instead I worked it in on DJ change overs and track breakdowns.

NAMM and the death of the VJ

2010-01-17T18:06:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
NAMM didn't kill the VJ but, it did leave flowers at its grave.
Wow, not a lot to see at NAMM this year. For the past 3 years there has been a decline in hardware/software directed towards the VJ/visualist or even video DJ.
Was video too complicated for musicians/DJs? Did the music industry not see quantifiable sales on video related products? Maybe they feel its better left to the LD to handle cuz the VJ isn't gettin the love.
One notable piece of hardware out there. Denon has released a new DJ mixer DN-X1700 It has vlink, Roland's fancy name for MIDI premapped for you. Connected to the Edirol V8 and you have full control over the mixer. Tap in the BPM on the X1700 and it adjusts the V8's BMP. All the DJ mixers in the past would slave the video mixer to the mapping on the DJ mixer. It would cross dissolve on the fader whether you liked it or not. Now, with the X-1700 you can create a MIDI layer that turns the DJ mixer into a MIDI controller only. Slap those faders around, twist those knobs and only control the visuals. Turn off the MIDI layer only feature and you are back to controlling the audio. This is great for DJ and VJ applications as well.

Denon didn't have much of a presence at NAMM. You had to go past a food counter, up a set of stairs that made you question whether you belong there or not and then into a small room that was probably the food court manager's office.
Only other note worthy NAMM showing was Serato's SL video plugin. To the DJ the side note that SL video now supports quartz composer files is no big deal, but to the VJ/visualist (whatever you want to call yourself these days) this is huge. Check out the specs here.
It also mentions support for using the matrox double or triplehead2go card.
Serato is offering a free app that bridges Serato to Ableton live called, "Bridge". For the A/V minded you know what to do with Ableton and MIDI control of visual applications.
Note: Every time I walked by the Serato booth it was packed. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

Gentleman's Gaze

2010-01-05T16:33:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
This was the installation for the 2nd exhibition for the Red Bull House of Art in Sao Paulo Brazil.

The Gentleman's Gaze from VJ Culture on Vimeo.

Artist Statement:
The Gentleman’s Gaze is a dual projection video installation exposing one of our most vulnerable human moments, sleeping. The audience joins in the voyeuristic activity as they observe a woman lying on the bed. All the while a gentleman gazes through the bedroom window.
Similarly, The Gentleman’s Gaze implies a male chauvinistic perception of the power structure between men and women through the gaze.
The gentlemen in the window suggests the sense of self-entitlement to stare at a woman. Curiosity draws the viewer into the room to take part in gazing without the woman's knowledge.
For this instillation I hacked a PS Eye camera with a visible light blocker. Mounted a projector and camera above the bed.
Using blob detection via MAX/Jitter the viewer can interact with the women being projected on the bed.
The gentleman in the window is specifically mapped to the window in this room.
I recreated the lighting to simulate the night lighting in downtown Sao Paulo.
There is a subtle sound of a mosquito buzzing around the room. This is realized by the women waving her hand around while she sleeps.

StarCulture Live @ Lovevolution 09

2009-12-22T20:05:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

David Starfire and VJ Culture perform as StarCulture @ Lovevolution 09 at the Civic Center. Main stage.

StarCulture Live @ Lovevolution 09 SF CA from VJ Culture on Vimeo.

Here are some photos from Mischief Photos.

Beam Drop Symphony

2009-12-21T20:40:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
Inhotim Brazil.
Hiraku and I play the beams.
The phaser effect coming off the beams was amazing.

Artistas interagem com Beam Drop, obra de Chris Burden from Red Bull House of Art on Vimeo.

Curator Talks about Red Bull House of Art installations.

2009-12-19T08:33:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

visita guiada segunda exposição 05 - red bull house of art from Red Bull House of Art on Vimeo.

Lucas, one of two curators at the Red Bull House of Art explains my installation, A Gentleman's Gaze".
It's in Portuguese.

Final wrap-up video from Red Bull House of Art

2009-12-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

More details on my installation for the 2nd exhibit to come.

Rio's largest paper covers the House of Art

2009-12-08T16:53:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

interview w/ AntiVJ, me and VJ Spetto (Brazil)

2009-11-24T05:29:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
This was shoot at the Red Bull House of Art just before the AntiVJ workshop.

AntiVJ, Grant Davis e VJ Spetto - Red Bull House of Art from Red Bull House of Art on Vimeo.

"Culture" in Brazil

2009-11-14T15:54:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

I'm getting familiar with this place. The production team and curators have kept us very busy with events, parties, gallery shows, artist talks, etc. I've been looking forward to getting busy with the next project. Until then I'll share a little Culture.
We went to the 2nd tallest building in Sao Paulo the other day. It's close to the House of Art. You can see in this pic the house down below.
The building was inspired by the Empire State building.
"Paulino's" as they call themselves still use public pay phones. This is one of the nicer phone booths next to the banking district.

As a group we went to the Pipilotti Rist Exhibit . There were some inspiring pieces and then there were some that had no justification to be shown in a gallery of this caliber. If a well know video artist can't get the color balance correct on her camera, why bother. I have a problem with Video Art and poor camera calibrations. These should be the basics before you call yourself an artists. (and no, it was not intentional).

Red Bull House of Art

2009-11-12T05:18:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

I was invited by Red Bull USA to House of Art in Sao Paulo Brazil. The objective is to have 10 artists from around the world converge on a building for one month. Each artist comes from different mediums and different countries.
The first gallery show on Nov. 10th is an exhibit of past work. I showed my "Circles of Light" 2002 installation.

Most of the artist arrived Nov 5th. Coming from the US I had visa problems and could arrive until Nov. 10th day of the gallery show. The local production team built a new Circles installation for me. 12 bicycle rims with fabric stretched across. They did an amazing job. All I needed to do when I arrived was map and mask the video to the circles. Easier said than done. I've mapped this numerous times but this time I created a new 8 minute piece.

Assuming I could create the resolution at 640x480 not 720x480 I created the templates in After Effects. Once on site I realized After Effects doesn't support a video out option for real-time monitoring at 640x480. So I had to export single frames, launch them in QT and see how close my video was masked and mapped to the circles. I had to do this with 20 still frames throughout the video to make sure it was properly positioned on the circles.

I finished the installation a couple of hours before the doors opened at 8:00PM. No time to go back to the hotel and clean up after being up for 48 hours.
The 10 other artists are all amazing and each of us are excited to see what we can come up with together for our Dec. 6th show.
The gallery opening turned into a party after 10PM. At Midnight the power went out across 2/3rds of Brazil. Fortunately for us we were on generator power. We were the only building in the city that was illuminated. Sao Paulo can be dangerous at night. We no street lights, no metro, traffics, nothing. No one wanted to leave so the party went on until 3:30AM when the power came back on.

In this photo it looks like there is only one building on the block during the blackout. In fact we are in the middle of the city in the middle of the block.

Halloween SF CA Paul Oakenfold show @ Regency Ballroom

2009-11-01T13:57:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

Sean and I started a technical install for the Martel and Nabiel show @ Regency Ballroom in San Francisco. We know this building well and have the confidence of the ballroom management. We started install Thursday afternoon. We had to rig an "X" shape over the dance floor. From the X we suspended 12 4x9' strips of mesh fabric. We originally had a 6 point star configured with more opaque material in the center but it blocked the view of the stage.

5 projectors were placed around the X. Hundreds of feet of VGA/RGBHV cable was strung around the balcony. All of this was connected to two matrox cards to two laptops.
Using Modul8 I was able to move the images around the 4 legs of the X with screen sizes 3072x768.
We had to use high contrast images with bright colors. Even oranges and reds were lost in the mesh material.

That is, if the lighting guy wasn't blowing us out.

In addition to all this was a the main 15x20 screen on stage.
From all angles of the room you saw multiple layers of the images.
The dancers in the photo are just for scale :-)

2009-10-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

Sat. Oct. 3rd. San Francisco's version of Love Parade, "LovEvolution" Floats, Parade, booty shaking good time.
StarCulture (David Starfire & VJ Culture) will play the main stage with a massive LED screen and 4 corner sound system be...tween 4-5PM
Dubstep, electro breaks, mashups. Joining us is drummer (Sunevel), sitar player (Raj), belly dancer (Aradia), MC's (iCatching) and Suze Q.
BTW, the parade is free. The festival costs $10.00

Fall is always the craziest time of year for me.

2009-09-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
Just wrapped up Red Star Soul @ the Ghost Bar (Dallas) and 2 weeks in the Big Apple.
Coming up.
Sept. 24th Red Star Soul Philly
Sept. 25th-26th Tiesto NYC
Oct. 3rd LovEvolution in San Francisco. (SF's Love Parade) Daytime huge LED screen on the main stage. StarCulture performance.
The Skills After Party at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium that night. Massive visual installation.
Oct. 5th Sharam's She Came Along release party in LA. I'll be doing a Steve Aoki visual remix.
Oct. 6th-7th Back in NYC for Artisty with The Roots and Common
Oct. 8-9th Red Star Soul New Orleans Really looking forward to this one.
Oct. 10th VJ gig in LA.
Oct. 15th Back in NYC for Red Star Soul
Oct. 27th a private StarCulture gig in SF
Oct. 30th Paul Oakenfold @ The Regency in SF (This will be a dope visual installation)
Much more on the horizon but not yet confirmed.

Starculture @ AC Lounge video

2009-08-24T16:59:00.001-07:00

www.vjculture.com

StarCulture live @ AC Lounge Venice Beach CA. July 16th 2009 from VJ Culture on Vimeo.

Here's a quick edit of the David Starfire and VJ Culture (StarCulture) show at AC lounge on July 17th. Yeah, it took me a month to find the time to do the edit.
Special thanks to:
iCatching
Suze Q
Raj Rpl

Camera:
Parts
Xarene
Allen Prampin
And of coarse:
16Bit & Beyond for having us.
Here's some press in the LA weekly.

Love Fest Los Angeles w/ Sharam (Get Wild Tour)

2009-08-21T14:33:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
That was one bright LED screen.
Here is video from the official site.

and more at the end of the show.

I could go on about how Celeb lighting designers don't follow your stage drawings and do whatever they want. Sabotaging your design and the general performance of the dancers and visuals but, I'll save that for another post.

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

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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

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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

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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.

Create Fixate

2008-10-20T16:14:00.000-07:00

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I was invited to do visuals on Sept 20th for Create Fixates AMP show here in Los Angeles.
One of the few times I actually perform in LA.
The show featured politically themed art with 3 rooms. One of which was a outdoor area with t-shirt printing, DJ's, installations and myself.
It was a difficult set for creating a 3 screen installation. There weren't any good mounting points for the projectors where all 3 projectors could create a seamless image.

I opted to separate them but still do 3 screens.
I used modul8 a triplehead2go card, a DFG converter and ran the V4 mix into Modul8 as a single channel (or layer) in modul8.

Facebook @ Advertising Week NYC (Nokia Theater)

2008-10-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

Facebook hosted the closing party with Ziggy Marley at the Nokia Theater in Time Sq.
We brought in two photoboof designs and rerouted them through the Nokia's video display system.
One design was the standard photoboof where the guest walk in and have their pictures taken. The photos are published online, on print and also broadcast throughout the venue.
The second design by Justin of Photoboof was a, "Step and Repeat" style. Meaning the guest stepped in front of a media wall. (See photos), pushed a button and the video screen gave them a countdown and 3 pictures were taken. This design allowed everyone to see the process of the photos getting taken. It also allowed more people to be in the photos and it branded each photo. The photos are available on facebook for users profiles and blogs.
We used two LCD displays back to back so guest could see the process on both sides.

Hennessy Tour

2008-10-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

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Xarene and I were asked to create content and VJ the Hennessey Art of Mixing Tour.
The dates.
September 17 -Los Angeles Ne-Yo L.L. Cool J
September 25 -Chicago ft Ashanti
September 27 -Detroit ft Eve
October 1- Miami ft Ne-Yo
October 4 - New Orleans ft Musiq SoulChild

We plugged into a 18mm LED screen and plasma displays for each city.
Pretty much a walk on gig. We used the Edirol V4, PR-80 as a media server and a laptop running modul8. Since the LED screen was a different size at each venue, I was able to shape and size the content running it through Modul8 with real time control.

It really helps when the brand has clear guidelines for content creation. In Hennessy's case they did. We were able to execute with very little back and forth with the client.

VMA's after party w/ San Disk and Flavorgroup @ House of Hype

2008-10-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

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San Disk hosted a VMA pre and after party over the weekend of the VMAs.
Saturday night, the pre-party was rockin. The location was a mansion in the Hollywood Hills over looking Sunset Blvd.

Flavorgroup asked me to create an immersive environment around and on the house.
In addition to the projections we incorporated a photoboof and Octamasher.
Around 1:00AM the police arrived with helicopters and billy-clubs. No one got clubbed but it was a show of force for LA.
I thought for sure Sunday night would be shutdown. I arrived in the afternoon thinking I was just going to go through the motions. Just the opposite, the party rocked all night long. Breakfast was served around 5:30AM
In these photos I used 3 projectors to seamlessly stitch the images together. In Modul8 I used masks to mask out the balcony so that I wasn't projecting on the people. Essentially, my screen became a 4ft by 60ft image.

Here is a day/night of my VJ booth location looking out over the city

Skills Carnival -Regency Ballroon SF CA

2008-09-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

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There was something different about San Francisco this Labor Day. There were more locals in town. I'd like to hear what kind of attendance they got at Burning Man this year. A number of die-hard burners told me they weren't going this year. As I drove around San Francisco I noticed it was just as hard to find parking as any other weekend. Normally San Francisco on Labor Day feels like a much more comfortable. Call it,"Staycation". Either way I decided not to go to The Burn this year and opted to make money instead of spend it.

Skills and Spundae's hosted party at the Regency, Sean Cooper and I worked our magic on 10 large screen displays. Mixing two signals separately across the 10 LCD's.

Sat. was a long day but a short trip. I picked up the rental car at 8:00AM, arrived in SF by 2:30. Setup the show by 7:00 and was back for the start of the event by 9:30. The party was over by 4:00, we wrapped until 5:00AM.
The next day I was packing by 1:00PM and on the road back to LA by 2:30. Home by 8:00PM.
Maybe it was the trip, the long haul up and down hwy 5, either way it triggered my brain and the creative tea pot is whistling.

New Lightrhythm Visuals Remix

2008-08-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
I just finished a remix of Joana Lopes nervous discharge single on the Notions 2 DVD. I really like Joana's aesthetic, checkout her site linked above.

Here is a small sample.
In my version of the remix I took stills from the video loaded them into the Edirol CG8 and use it as a live input into Modul8. I recorded the output uncompressed and then edited the footage in FCP and AE.

MMA Scion Battleground

2008-08-17T12:45:00.001-07:00

www.vjculture.com
Aug. 2nd San Francisco CA
Flavorgroup asked me to create a multi-screen environment for a Scion sponsored event at Fort Mason.
The Festival Pavilion at Fort Mason is a very large pier converted to an event space.
Cable runs, are always hundreds and hundreds of feet. Sean and I spent a full day running cable and hanging screens.

Here is Flavorgroup's verbiage.
On Saturday August 2nd, 2008 over 2000 party people descended on the transformed Fort Mason Festival Pavilion for Scion Battleground. An event originally focused on a fight component, was recreated featuring Hip-Hop heavy hitter Talib Kweli and the surprises didn't stop there. Adding to the frenzy was a high flying ariel antics from the San Francisco based Vau De Vire Society, legendary B Boy Machine and the Renegade Dance crew and a pillow fight from the infamous Suicide Girls. The event proved to be a TKO.

Produced by Flavor Group, Ankh Marketing and Manly Media.

Photos courtesy of Mischief Photos

Facebook F8 Developers Conference SF CA

2008-08-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
I was asked by Facebook to implement interactive elements for Facebook's annual F8 Developers Conference held in San Francisco. July 23rd.

The concept was user generated content, much like the site itself.
We brought on board the photoboof guys for streaming photos from the boof! to the large screen in the center of the room. The feed was also sent wirelessly to the VJ station where we mixed the photoboof! stream with a roaming photographer who was also sending me wireless streams of photos from around the venue. Added to that was a Processing app built by Wayne (www.cardboardcubicles.com). The app was capable of taking text messages, twitter-like text updates and displaying them with a sound reactive component that went live to all the screens in the Hackathon area. This project was called, f8 Feed" and it was a great way for guest to announce the projects they were working on, shout outs to friends and general announcements. The app was could be controlled by key commands or the Griffin Powermate.
On the audio side we integrated Moldover's Octamaher
This allowed guest to collectively create their own mashups on 8 customized midi keyboards.
In addition to interactive elements I installed a signature VJ Culture piece and VJ'd live before Thievery Corp performed.
Special thanks to Sean Cooper for install and VJing.

Skills Edt. POP 08 @ The Cow Palace Video

2008-08-06T10:10:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
I'll post more about this event but, for now here is the video

Goldie 3 @ Glow Santa Monica July 19th

2008-07-15T20:40:00.001-07:00

www.vjculture.com
I will be streaming live coverage of the Goldie installation at Glow July 19th from 8:00PM to 6:00AM PST. Tune in here to see the event.
Here is a sample of how Goldie will work. This video will be spread across two screens.

Glow

2008-07-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
July 19th 2008
Santa Monica's Cultural Affairs in a very forward move has organized an all night festival called, "Glow" Based off of Paris's Nuit Blanche city wide events. Torino Italy hosted a few while I was there for the Olympics, Miami, Toronto have also host these all night cultural events. I'd like to call it an all night party sanctioned by the city.
Glow, has commissioned me to create an installation for the festival. The festival is called Glow based off the Grunion fish that mate on the beach and cast an iridescent glow.
Working with the Glow theme I am installing a video installation based on the movements of a gold fish.

(Goldie) Two cameras are placed on the fish tank, The cameras are processed through MAX/Jitter using blob detection and projected on the store front windows of Tengu Sushi Restaurant on Ocean Ave. in Santa Monica. As Goldie swims through various quadrants of the video frame she will trigger visual effects to span across the two screens in the window.

Goldie becomes the VJ and I get to hang out and have fun.
Very, very special thanks to John Taylor for his Jitter programming. John also did the programming on my Futbal de Calle pentagon installation I did a couple year ago for Red Bull's Soccer team.
Come down and join us July 19th 2008 for Glow. It's free and there are numerous installations and performance all night long. Really, all night, from dusk to dawn.
Special thanks to the folks at Tengu, besides great food they have been wonderful to work with and I couldn't have done this without their support.

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DVJ X1 For Sale $1600.00 with case (Local only)

2008-07-01T18:35:00.001-07:00

www.vjculture.com

So before I put this up on ebay I wanted to offer it to the community first.

The DVJ X1 is the first release model of the Pioneer DVJ models. It is the more expensive model due to the Component out on the back.
Specs can be found here.

It is in very good condition and has only been used at gigs maybe 10 times.
It has all the updates.

I prefer to sell it locally, cash only. You can come by and try it out before purchasing.
It comes with this nice hard case that cost me around $250.00

Eventually, I'll be posting in on Ebay. Maybe in a week if it doesn't sell locally.
You can email me at vjculture at gmail dot com

Skills edt. POP 08 May 24th

2008-05-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
It's been a month of production. Now, this weekend May 24th we will create environments for 4 rooms at Skill's POP 08. Tiesto again is headlining.
You can find out who all the DJ's are here.
It's the VJ's that are going to rock this party
Simplistiks WI in the DnB room
Brotherhood of Light SF in the Breaks Room
Opticus LA in the House room
VJ Culture in the main room
Plus, we will all be mixing it up in each of the various rooms.
Here are pics from last year.
This year's show is at the Cow Palace in S. San Francisco
18,000 capacity.
Our largest screen yet. 30x40ft + a LED wall for the main stage.

Video installations outside the Getty

2008-05-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

May 9th-10th at the Getty Los Angeles Freewaves curated 18 video art pieces in conjunction with The Getty's California Video exhibit. The videos were projected around the gardens of the Getty center.
The execution of the installations was done very well. Massive 10k projectors on truss sticks strapped down in creative ways, a program guide with maps of the Getty complex with locations of each installation, a theme of dualities, culture and nature.
I found myself walking the Getty gardens thinking to myself, "This is so square" (or at least 4:3 maybe 16:9) I was hoping to see a more conscious placement of the videos on the projected surface. Maybe taking the video outside of its rectangle box and projecting the pieces as temporary art pieces specifically designed for that surface.
Instead it was just the novelty of viewing video outside in the gardens. Mind you this is still more interesting than 80% of the video art pieces exhibited inside the Getty for the main exhibit.

Video art, as exhibited by some of the leading world museums today raises the question. "Is everyone who posts a video on user generated content sites a video artist? The quality of production, performance and narrative exhibited at these museums is not that different from what you see everyday on these sites. Granted, most of these pieces are a historical reference to the work produced two and three decades ago. But if the museums continue to focus on the historical video artist, viewers may well believe that there isn't much difference from what they see on youtube and what exists in the museum. The difference of video art vs painting is the level of technology involved. It's arguable to say that a strong video art piece is not about the technology, it can stand the tests of time. This is true, as a video artists myself I battle with the ideas that I could never produce the same level of production the movie studios are knocking out everyday. Yet this is what the viewers have come to expect.
Fortunately the current trend in design is not slick, well produced videos. It leans more on clever ideas and storytelling than technical production. Much like the strong video art pieces. This is great for video artists right now, but it is a trend and to the general viewer indistinguishable between what is online and what deserves to be placed in a museum.
For video art to continue evolving I believe the video pieces need to have a stronger focus on site specific installation. At "California Video" I was really moved by two pieces, Jennifer Steinkamp and Bill Viola's The Sleepers. Jennifer worked her installation into the architecture the museum and created an environment. (Or maybe it was the other way around). Either way her piece encompassed sculpture, architecture, painting and movement.
Video art today needs to stand out from all the viral videos, user generated content and random video captured in black and white with the shaky hand labeled, "Art". It needs intention with where it will be viewed and thinking outside of the 4:3 or 16:9 box.

Beatport Stage at Remix Hotel during WMC ०८

2008-05-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

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During Winter Music 08 Remix Hotel and Beatport hosted a stage at the National Hotel.
Edirol and I curated 12 VJs to perform over the 4 days.

Big Screen Images of San Francisco provided us with a 13x9ft LED screen for day and nighttime visuals. Everyday from 2:00PM to 9:00PM VJs and DJs rotated through the stage.
Heavy hitters like Ritchie Hawtin, M.A.N.D.Y., Bad Boy Bill, performed on the stage.
Edirol provided us with the unreleased P-10 Presenter and V8 video mixer, in addition to the CG-8 and PR-80. They were also kind enough to pay the VJs for their performance.
The video is a highlight of the 4 days. Most of it was shot on my little digital still camera. Thanks to VJ demencia for the extra footage.
The VJs that performed were:
Benton-C NYC
DVJ Optikal South Beach
Justin Kent Miami
United Vision NYC
VJ Culture SF/LA
VJ Demencia NYC
VJ Dubassy London/Marseille
VJ Omni Orlando
VJ Psyberpixie Miami
VJ Shakinda Ireland
VJ Tek LA
VJ V2 LA

Here is a link to the interviews from Remix Hotel. In this video I'm talking about the curating process.
Out of the 4 days, this was my favorite track.

Red Bull Art of Can 360 green screen shoot

2008-05-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
Currently working on Red Bull's Art of Can for Houston TX. The gallery opens July 12th and Larry and I are working on the 360 rotations of the artist's work. We shot the 360's in Houston at VT2 studios. Some pieces were too big to do 360 rotations.
checkout the final pieces at
In this picture we had to use all the green screen material we could just to create enough coverage for this piece.

This shot provided by Larry shows our setup. Some of these pieces required elaborate lighting and masking because of the highly reflective material of the can. Green screen spill and reflection can create huge headaches in post. Some of the shots required shooting through glass and still getting a clean key. The final product was rendered to flv as a alpha channel.

VJ Workshop April 29th Los Angeles CA

2008-04-15T16:52:00.000-07:00

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The VJ coarse has an official date.
Date: Tuesday, April 29 from 7-10pm
Location: TELIC Arts Exchange
975 Chung King Road
Los Angeles, CA 90012
213-344-6137
Teacher: Grant Davis. (VJ Culture)
Limit: 18 people
Fee: $35.

The Public School www.publicschool.org is offering a new format for learning. Anyone can teach and anyone can sign up for a classs. Once enough people sign up, the class is offered.
As a visual artist with a decade of experience I'll be offering classes taught on two of the popular VJ software on the market t today, Arkaos and Modul8.
This is a beginner course that will teach users compression formats, midi control for video, composition, cabling for installation.
The course will cover the fundamentals of Arkaos VJ and Modul8.
Students will get hands on experience with some of today VJ hardware (DVJ's, V4, CG-8, Kaptivator, Entrancer, motion.dive.tokyo, NuVJ and numerous midi controllers.
sign up at www.thepublicschool.org (Search, "VJ")
Bring your laptop and plug in.

Lunatic Fringe!!

2008-04-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
This is a video I created with Igor Len from Roland. We were commissioned to do an A/V set at NAMM in 06 to promote motion.dive.tokyo. This is one of the tracks.
The audio is Igor Len.
Most of the graphics are from the motion.dive.tokyo sample library. The live action is from various Red Bull Ascension parties.
Good ole Ronald!

Facebook Party during SXSW

2008-03-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

Facebook hired Lumens to create a branded environment for a series of parties during SXSW in Austin TX.
Our challenge was to use the existing space and brand it tastefully. The challenging part was the space itself.

I used Modul8 software to create the masks and replicate the logos on the sails. Then I rendered it to disk and made DVD's for the 4 projectors. The sails flanked the sides of the room and we used blue LED color washes to tint the room blue.

Amsterdam and the rise of the VJ

2008-03-21T10:17:00.001-07:00

www.vjculture.com
In my free time during my travels I like to photograph street art and examine club flyers. One, for their design but two, to see if they list the VJs on the flyer. From my experience, Tokyo and Amsterdam seem to have the highest number of VJ listings on the flyers.

David Starfire and I took some time to explore Amsterdam after Musikmesse.
We met some incredible people and enjoyed exploring the city.

Cat in a store front window.
Cats are all over Amsterdam due to a rodent problem. (better than pesticides

StarCulture rocks Musikmesse 08

2008-03-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

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Pictures from StarCulture set at Musikmesse Frankfurt Germany

David Starfire and I performed 3 times a day at the Edirol booth.
Using the Edirol V8 and P-10 (Just released this week), along with the CG-8 and motion.dive.tokyo.
David was using Ableton Live, Roland Hansonic, PCR-300 and a bass guitar.
MIDI was sent back and forth controlling and syncing the visuals and audio.
Ableton acted as the main backbone for MIDI.
In the near future I'll release a youtube video of mapping Ableton midi patterns to the CG-8. It's opened a whole new world for me.
David and I met some wonderful people at Musikmesse, now we are off to Amsterdam.

new Edirol products

2008-03-12T06:10:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
I'm working the show right now. I'll give a review later.
P-10 SD card visual presenter

The V8, the big brother to the V4

The back of the V8
The VGA acts as a scan converter.

Back of the P-10

Spring Schedule and it's looking Great!!

2008-03-06T16:07:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
March 9th-11th
SXSW, 2 events for Facebook at Pangea in Austin TX.
Lumens will provide visual support for 2 days of Facebook events.
Then, on the 12th we move it all to the Red Bull Moontower until the 15th.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/SXSW-Festival/7826953993
http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=8686384634&ref=pb
At the same time
I head to Frankfurt Germany
March 11th-15th
Musikmesse Frankfurt
It's like NAMM but bigger, smokeier, louder.
David Starfire and I will be unveiling new Roland/Edriol products for the VJ community.
(I'll have photos and reviews on the day of the release).
David and I will be presenting, "StarCulture" our A/V collaboration
March 26th-30th
WMC Miami Beach
Remix Hotel is hosting another 4 days of conferences, demos, classes and best of all....Beatport's poolside parties. (more to come on the artist performing)
I'll be working with Edirol to curate and manage 12 VJ's over the coarse of 4 days.
April 2-9th
Maui HI
Video shoots for Xarene's thesis and documentation of interactive pods.
April 22-25th
Houston TX
Video shoots for Red Bull Art of Can. (More green screen 360 artwork shoots)
May 24th
San Francisco CA
Skills presents Electro Techno POP.
Now at the Cow Palace with 15,000 raving kids.
3 rooms of immersive environments
http://skillsdjworkshop.com/pop08/
May 28th -31st
Italy
404 Festival
StarCulture Live A/V with David Starfire and VJ Culture
http://www.404festival.com/eng/home.htm
June 13-16th
Istanbul Turkey
VJ Fest.

Skills Electro Techno Disco love 2/16/08

2008-02-19T12:53:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
Feb. 16th 2008
Electro Techno Disco Love SF @ Regency Ballroom.
Animation of the flyer. Individual DJ name titles were also animated based off the design elements of the flyer. (I love it when they give me layered photoshop files of the artwork). that didn't happen this time.

For the main stage we had 2 8ft spheres in the upper corner of the stage provided by Inflate-a-bil.
3 screen surrounding the DJ booth on stage. The content could be separated for the spheres and screens. Mixing and matching at times.
As you can see in one of these videos. The LD was using the strobe effect WAY TOO much. All night long! I had to wear sunglasses because the strobes were positioned right next to the screens. LDs, take note.... Strobes are for accenting the environment. Maybe used 2 or 3 times during the coarse of the night. Not, for constant strobing to the beat.
It was a long night of mixing, (7 hours straight).
Sean Cooper held down the house room (As this party had 3 rooms and 3000 kids).
Since I was tied to the VJ suite I never took any photos of house room.
The theme was Valentine. Pinks, flowers, hearts, etc.
The audio is poorly recorded because it was captured on my digital still camera.

StarCulture Live A/V @ Culture Catch MacWorld Afterparty

2008-02-12T21:20:00.001-08:00

www.vjculture.com

This is a quick little video of David Starfire and VJ Culture's live A/V performance called StarCulture. Filmed at the MacWorld 08 afterparty, "Culture Catch.

Earlier in the day David and I provided demos and shared our creative workflow for our live audio/video (a/v) sets.

Photos and video from NYE Vegas and San Francisco

2008-01-29T17:09:00.000-08:00

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On NYE I over booked myself with two events I just couldn't pass up.
Literally, I agreed to do them within 14 hours of each other back in Nov. I thought if I use all of Dec. to produce both events and use my best personal resources I can pull it off.
We did, but it wasn't an easy ride.
San Francisco
Sea of Dreams NYE. I've done this event a few times in the past. Going back to 2001 it seems almost every other year. It's one of San Francisco's largest NYE events and for the past few years it's been held at the Concourse. A venue that can easily hold 8000 people.
I had an ambitious stage design concept of a mirror ball, circular truss and an "X" shaped screen design. (Never one to settle for just rectangular screens).
This is what our original design called for.
graphic design by inflatabill.
This was the main stage and in the second hall we had 3 large circular screens.
We used DVD's that I created with a circular mask and a Edirol v4 to create the circular mask shape. I wasn't sure about the throw distance with the projector so I made numerous size circles and then created chapters in the DVD to jump between sizes until I found the one I thought fit the screen best.
The "X" shape was created as a png file and hacked into the edirol PR-80 media server. It allowed me to mix two layers of content underneath the "X" mask. Specially designed content was created by Xarene, Kev lar and myself.
This was created by Xarene.

We designed video with the intention of bouncing it off the mirror ball to create a syncronized lighting effect with the video screens. Fragments of light would bounce off the ball and shoot across the "X" screen and 8ft spheres at the front of the stage.
Never mind the girl, you can see how the video was designed to work with the mirror ball. Photo credit tracy b.

Between the Red Bull Vegas gig and the San Francisco Sea of Dreams party I choose to be in San Francisco on NYE.
The Vegas show was in the parking lot of the Palms Hotel. Robbie Maddison broke the world record for longest motorcycle jump. It was televised on ESPN as the midnight east coast as the midnight celebration.
Here is a youtube video of the jump. The edit is a little dramatic.

However, I was flying back and forth between SF and Vegas everyday from the 27th to the 2nd. Then driving a van back from Vegas to Los Angeles on the evening of the 2nd.
I was fried..
Each morning I was getting up at 5:00AM to catch a flight between the two cities. In Vegas on the evening of the 30th I was working with John Taylor until 5:00AM in 33 degree temperatures in Las Vegas trying to fly Hexagon screens outdoors, with no stage backdrop. (I was promised a backdrop so I could hang these screens and register the projector). I never got the backdrop, something about the stage wasn't secure enough for a backdrop if the wind kicked up.

This was one of my toughest nights in my career. It was freezing, we had to jump into the van every 20 minutes just to bring our core body temperature up. Then, jump out and continue working. The budget had been slashed, I didn't have enough crew and most important I didn't have the backdrop I need to install these hexagon screens. It was only John and I late into the evening. In the end we never used the hexagon design for the backdrop. The television crew wanted to see the iconic Palms Hotel as it's stage backdrop. All the man hours creating content for the hexagons, the hours building the hexagon screens and of course that whole night trying to install them.
Back in LA Vello from V Squared Labs was creating content for the hexagon's and he was coming out the next day to VJ the event while I was in San Francisco.
Vello did a great job on content creation and the client loved what he did with the media provided. He ended up VJing on the large LED screens placed around the parking lot of the Hotel.
Here is a link to a flickr page from someone in production
And here is the link to the official Red Bull page.

Here is an interview with VJ Fader on VJ.tv. I'm talking about the challenges of producing two events on New Year's Eve in two different cities.

StarCulture Live A/V at Macworld and Macworld Afterparty Jan. 17th. Thursday SF CA

2008-01-11T09:58:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

VJ Culture and David Starfire present StarCulture a live Audio/Visual experience.

Jan. 17th Thursday.
At Macworld SF (Best Buy Booth-South Hall) 12:00, 2:00 and 4:00PM

MacWorld afterparty
E.A.T. NOW!
Entertainment - Art - Technology
A Party Celebrating Macworld 2008!
Sponsored by
Shure & Metreon
Thursday, January 17th
7pm - midnight
Metreon
(4th Floor, City View)
101 Fourth Street, San Francisco CA
(Adjacent to Moscone Center)
Celebrate and dance to today’s cutting edge djs and video artists
and their Mac-created, Mac-produced art and entertainment!!!
Live Music
StarCulture www.myspace.com/star_culture 8:15PM
Nyles Lannon www.nlannon.com
:: Z :: www.zyzzyzonemusic.com
Von Iva www.voniva.com
Performance Art
Torsten Kretchzmar www.kretchzmar.com
VJs
VJ Culture www.vjculture.com
Chuck Henderson www.fishrock.com
Spook www.geomagnetic.tv
Videolicious www.lucination.com
Live Digital Painting
Andrew Jones www.androidjones.com
Installations
Rabbit Holes www.rabbitholes.com

Tickets: $10
(payable at the door)
Cash Bar

Information & Performance Schedule:
www.CultureCatch.com/events

Video Riot and Video Salon on Tech TV 2004

2007-12-09T10:31:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

In 2004 Tech TV came to one of our video Salons and interviewed us about a segment on video art. They also covered our annual Video Riot.
Video Riot takes Video Salon outside (across the street literally) onto the side of a building in downtown San Francisco. Lasers, projection, slide projection, lighting and liquid lights all are projecting on the building. Across the street at the Dimension 7 studio DJ's spin music and pump it out to all the car stereos via a 1 watt transmitter.
This might best be watched without the audio.
I left it on there for nostalgia.
There is also a clip of Red Bull's Ascension in this video. Ascension was a celebration of underground dance culture art.

New Years Eve -Sea of Dreams SF CA

2007-12-06T14:43:00.001-08:00

www.vjculture.com
I'll be managing and creating content.
We are creating a really unique screen design for this event. Plus, a second room of visuals as well.
go to Sea of Dreams to get more info and tickets

Bassnectar & Kraddy Snakecharmer mashup

2007-12-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

This is a video mashup I did for Lorin a few years ago. It took awhile redo it after Lorin changed the intro. (I like his and Kraddy's latest version)

Mary J. Blige Performance at Nokia Theater Nov. 20th

2007-11-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

Returning to the Nokia Theater I was treated to a backstage that was actually empty. After Sunday's American Music Awards show and seeing how crowded it was, it was a pleasure to be back there and working with the local 33. This time they actually had time to work with us. The environment was so much more chill.

Tonight we only used the Versa Tubes for Mary's, "Just Fine" Track. After that we rolled it off stage and broke it down.

backstage with my powerbook, uc-33 controller and table.

Backstage at the American Music Awards

2007-11-25T09:46:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
Nov. 18th Nokia Theater Los Angeles CA.
I was hired by Vello from V Squared Labs who was double booked. I provide visuals on Element Lab's Versa Tubes for Mary J. Blige at the America Music Awards which were broadcast live on ABC. Vello developed the content and I mixed it live using Modul8 software.
I had lots of celebrities hanging over my shoulder, (Kid Rock, Slash, Chris Brown) watching the show and watching what I'm doing. No pressure, there were only 7.5 million viewers watching the awards and I never got a solid rehearsal without some technical difficulties. Not to mention the camera feed they gave me was suppose to be a wide shot of the stage so I could see what I was doing, but in the end the camera kept getting tight shoots.
The versa tube design was based off of Mary J. Blige's music video, Just fine".
They wanted to repeat the same look. With over 40 acts we didn't get a lot of time to rehearse on stage, so it was really a, "flying blind" kinda performance.
However, it worked and I nailed every cue.
It worked out so well that they wanted us to come back and do the same thing the following Tuesday night for her solo performance at the Nokia theater.

VJ Culture in DJ Times Sept. 07 Issue

2007-11-25T09:11:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
Thanks to Jay Spero for writing the article.

Oracle World SF w/ The Magnetic Poets

2007-11-24T17:34:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
Nov. 10th-15th The Magnetic Poets performed opening and closing sets for Oracle World's main conference hall in San Francisco CA.

(a low down shot of the CG-8)
Magnetic Poets- The same band that I performed with in Torino for the 2006 Winter Olympics. Could Beijing be around the corner?
Each set was audio/visual and was compiled during our break between sets.
Scott Dewar, Christopher Hedge, Julian Smedley, Ed McCLary and myself.
Scott and I on the visual assault. Scott served up textural images and I added motion graphical elements.

(a shot of the back of Julian's head)
Ed on drum kats triggered visuals off my PC which was one channel of 5 coming into the Edirol HD440.

(The screens spanned the whole D hall at the Moscone).
However, most of the time we were only playing on plasma displays.
The band was on it, despite our 6:30AM call time.
Keep in mind this footage is of a rehearsal!

Video footage is from my crappy little canon power shot camera so please forgive the audio. (higher res video should be coming soon).

Chicago Red Bull Art of Can exhibit

2007-11-23T19:12:00.000-08:00

Nov. 7th opening night in Chicago for Red Bull Art of Can. (Also a very big birthday for myself. I won't say how old but it's a big one).
Using the 360 rotations of the artwork we created earlier this summer we created atmospheric visuals for the opening night of Red Bull Art of Can Chicago.
Out front as guest arrived we had a title graphic.

Upon entrance there was a large 4x10 plexiglas screen. The producers of the event wanted to keep all visual treatments on some kind of glass screen. We used 3M vikuiti Film on the back of the glass wall behind the DJ. vikuiti film is a new screen product that traps light from rear projection and amplifies it out the front. It is ideal for retail store fronts where you want to be able to see the image during the day. (Note if will only work on north facing facades). The dark gray film creates a holographic like image if the background is right. However, the film material is very expensive, at least $550.00 for a 39"x22" cut. It is somewhat reusable if it is removed within a couple of days.
With the help of Casey Bishop from Simplistiks we also setup projections on the waterfall

www.vjculture.com
and across the room on plexiglass.

All the content was designed to be secondary to the artwork. Minimal.

River East Art Center gallery is a beautiful gallery with lots of glass walls and features. We wanted to integrate with the design by keeping the projections on glass.

Monterrey Forum Monterrey Mexico

2007-11-23T17:01:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

I'm working on a new A/V project with David Starfire. we are mashing up some of David's original music with classic rock, indie and breaks. David plays bass and drums while DJing and I VJ. We lock most of the base layer video down on DVD and use DVJ's for base layer playback. Then I had extra fluff with other playback devices.
Forum invited me to play back in spring of 07. I invited David as I really like his musical style and we both wanted to work on a project together.
David and I.
We decided that the visual elements would have visual statistics. Meaning statistical information about issues like global warming, human trafficing, eco-friendly info but, presenting it in a way that was interesting and won't stop the dance floor from dancing.
The venue were we played.
Forum is produced every 4 years and is coined to be the Olympics of performing arts.
Forum was held at the Parque Fundidora in Monterrey Mexico.
Performing artists from all over the world performed nightly. From french circus parades to Puppet operas and even our own DJ/VJ collaboration.
6 nights a week for 3 months there are different performances going on. The scale of this event is huge. The park is the size of a fair grounds here in the US and the
scale of production is amazing. Parque Fundidora use to be a mill decades ago and it still has the remains of numerous buildings as a backdrop for the festival.

Hatch Fest Bozeman MT. 07

2007-11-23T16:40:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
Each year I'm privileged to attend Hatch Fest in Bozeman MT. This year Aaron who was helping me in San Francisco with LoveFest did most of the work installing the video at Emerson Lounge for Hatch.

This time around instead of hauling heavy VGA and BCN cable on the plane we used cat5 cable and VGA and Svideo baluns. The quality looked great and the weight of the cables was a quarter of what it would have been using traditional cable. Since Bozeman is a small town it's hard to find video rental equipment. So, most of the time I bring everything with me.
CTA Architects created the fabric environment. Red Bull curated the evening events and Aaron, Nate and I provided visuals for the bands and DJ's.
Bozeman knows how to have a good time. The parties lasted longer than I did.

LoveFest 07 SF CA

2007-11-23T16:14:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

Each year I do this I am so busy setting up I never get a chance to go outside and experience the Love Fest daytime activities that are happening right out in front of the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. This year was no exception.
Reason I never get to experience it? We are responsible for 2-3 rooms of visuals. This year it required 12 projectors and Union labor. (meaning things don't go as fast as if it were my own team). Sean Cooper, Kev lar, Chris Samarvich and Aaron Hiejt
This is my 3rd installment of the Lovefest (Love Parade) official after party.

were apart of the team. In the main room we had a massive 30x22ft screen plus 2 15x20' screens and 4 10.5x15ft screens. We also had hexagon screens behind the DJ being controlled with different images in each hexagon via Modul8. We had 3 mixing stations to control the visual assault.

The bottom side screens took live camera feeds of the dancers who would perform in front of the screens. We would process the feed through the korg entrancer and various VJ software. Allowing us to grab realtime loops of the dancers and buffer them in RAM. The girls were wearing illuminated props to accentuate the visuals and feedback into the screens behind them. The crowd of 10,000 loved it and so did the dancers.

In the side room we installed 3 screens pictured here. Vello and Sandra did a headline A/V set in there.

These events turn into a full 24 hours of production. We arrive at 10:00AM and work straight through the night into the morning.

Some of our gear scattered across the floor.

Exprescion Alcatraz Island

2007-11-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
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Via Flavor Group I was invited to create video installations for a number of locations around the island of Alcatraz for Scion's Exprescion party in June 07.
This was one of the hardest installs ever. Since the inland is a national park we were not allow to hang any screens from walls or even tape things down to the floor.
It was an remarkable experience spending so much time on the island. I spent a couple of nights out there. Sleeping on hard concrete floors in the cold. The weather was beautiful and it was still cold. I couldn't imagine what those prisoners had to go through.

With the help of Kev lar we created a number of different looks for different parts of the party. There was a fashion show in what used to be the mens shower.

Circus performances in the former hospital, a dance floor in the mess hall and live vjing in the theater room.
we also did laser graffiti on the side of the building where guest arrived via the ferry.
As far as equipment goes we had to bring everything over via a barge. All my equipment was put into large buckets and then a crane lifted the buckets on and off the barge. Even the Scion cars were brought over there by barge.

The sad thing is, this event happened 6 months after I'm posting this. There were so many notable, interesting and emotional things that I've forgotten since then.

The crew on one of the many walk throughs.
The rangers were pretty cool to deal with. However, when it came to install, they were watching us like hawks. I felt like I was in a prison!

Barcelona

2007-11-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
Xarene and I took a couple of weeks in Sept to do cultural research in Barcelona.
It was much needed and you can see all the pictures on my flickr site. There would have been more photos but thieves stole my camera and phone.
We used the time to hunt down street art and Invader tags.

We also visit the great outdoor club at the Forum by the beach called Cubik.

You can go to youtube and see more videos of the space.

Red Star Soul Tour 07

2007-11-23T15:15:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

Red star soul tour
Through out the Aug. Sept and Oct. I provided visual support for the Red Star Soul tour. I was working for Corso Communications.

First stop was Los Angeles at Boulevard 3. Artists Common and Chrisette Michelle
We used a couple of projectors and tapped into the house system which is nicely setup for video.

My favorite and most inspiring artist was Erykah Badu.

As for a DJ, Jazzy Jeff and Kenny Burns had the crowd whipped into a frenzy in Atlanta..

I did the stops in LA, Cleveland, Detroit, Washington DC, Philly and Atlanta.
Artist line up included.
Alicia Keys
Anthony David, Chrisette Michele
Common D-Nice, YahZarah
DJ Cassidy, Deemi
Eric Roberson, Erykah Badu
Jazzy Jeff, Kenny Burns
Raheem DeVaughn, Raphael Saadiq
Teedra Moses,

Moto GP Monterey CA.

2007-11-23T15:09:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
I was contracted by Flavor Group to setup and provide video for a outdoor exhibition during Moto GP in Monterey CA.
I brought out my inflatable screen 15'x20'. We double stacked to 5K projectors to boost the image.

Live bands, DJ's, motocross jumpers etc. However, most impressive was the inflatable screen!

My right hand man Sean Cooper saved the day.

Red Bull Flugtag Austin TX

2007-11-23T15:04:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

Aug. 07 Red Bull had me come out and provide live mixing on the giant LED screens placed around the park where Red Bull was host Flugtag Austin TX. A great event
Est. crowd of 200,000 people. It's one of my favorite Red Bull events.

Tiesto Bill Graham Civic SF CA

2007-11-23T15:00:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

Late July we produced the visuals for Tiesto in Concert at Bill Graham in San Francisco. About 9000+ kids came out for that show. Produced by Skills it had two other rooms with top notch DJ's. Uberzone, Mark Farina, Derek Carter, etc. I was shocked that both those rooms were empty when Tiesto was playing.
Tiesto had his own LD/VJ who had a tight lighting and visual show.
I was happy to check out the other rooms during Tiesto.

Art of Can Chicgo Red Bull

2007-11-23T14:29:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com
In Chicago we had more of the same. In hind site we should have had a glue screen, green screen and yellow screen. That way if we had any color too closely matched to the screen material we could have substituted it.
Some of these shots took up the whole studio in setting them up.
I had photos of all of this but my camera was stolen in Barcelona before I dumped them.
This glass chess board was a huge pain in Larry's but. We ended up roto-scoping a lot of these.

One of the hardest colors to deal with in motion graphics is the reddish color of the Red Bull logo. Since I work a lot with Red Bull it is always an issue color correcting and putting into motion.

We also used the content during the opening at the gallery. (See later post)

Green screen shoots for Red Bull Art of Can

2007-11-23T13:36:00.000-08:00

www.vjculture.com

In July I spent two weeks in Philly and Chicago producing green screen shoots for Red Bull's Art of Can. www.redbullartofcan.com
We were filming 360 rotations of artists submissions for Red Bull's Art of Can gallery.
Larry was DP on the shoot and in post the compositor.
Because of the highly reflective nature of the cans it posed a huge problem getting a clean key or eliminating the camera or lightings reflection.

We had over 40 subjects to shoot and some of these pieces took hours to setup the shot.
Not to mention some of these pieces were barely being held together.
subjects like this ice cube like sculpture were especially difficult to key in post.

x

Here is the final video. Our final output was flv with alpha. If you go to the Art of Can site you can see the art pieces as they drop into the gallery.

Laser Tagging @ the Stunt Awards 2007 After Party

2007-05-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

Laser graffiti on a building in the Paramount Lot.
The 2007 Stunt Awards After Party on the Paramount Lot was produced by Keith Gecor Decor and Grace Entertainment/Red Bull.

I was asked to produce the laser graffiti that has been showcased by Graffiti Research Lab. The code was open source and available for "Processing". Jacob Tonski basically rewrote the whole code and added some extra features. In the pics, notice the small squiggles at the bottom of the laser tagging, just below the bird.

By pointing the laser at these icons you could change the brush strokes thickness and color. To the left bottom of the screen is a small box. When the laser beam hits the box it erases the screen.
Guest were invited to come up on the platform and give it a try. As in most cases the kids picked it up better than the adults.

We used a red laser because there were 9 other lasers ranging from 40watt to 3watts projecting all over the 2 block radius of the NYC section of the Paramount Lot. If other lasers hit the area we were tagging it would have conflicted with the tagging we were doing with the hand held lasers. So Jacob isolated the color to just red.
Lasers were provided by Creative Laser Media & Design
Keith Greco Decor created the environment and building projections. Keith wanted a 70's theme. He told me, "Think Burt Reynolds, Hooper, Smokey and the Bandit, Starsky and Hutch, Muscle cars and groovy patterns". That was a tough theme to come up with for the laser graphics.

It was a 3 day install for the lasers, Andrew's team consisted of 9 laser experts. If this were a real city it would be impossible to install all these lasers inside buildings. However, in Hollywood anything is possible.

The buildings during the daytime
The buildings look just like any other building in NYC. However, on the inside they are designed for lighting and rigging. We couldn't have asked for a better environment. We could even pull power straight off the street lamps with a 120 edison plug.

Inside the buildings on the NYC section of the Paramount Lot
Here is some of the other artwork.

And then there is always VJ Culture and his damn flowers

Tokyo and Visualux

2007-05-22T15:54:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
April 28th- May 8th Lightrhythm Visuals invited me to spend sometime in Tokyo, for Visualux @ Super Deluxe and another one off event.

This was a partially to support the VJ Book 'vE-jA" Book written by Xarene Eskandar.

What an incredible time... both Ben Sheppee from Lightrhythm and Shinji (Visualmixer)really took care of me. Shinji put me up in the super swank, designer hotel "Claska". Ben made sure I had a good time and was able to navigate the subway system in Tokyo.

(Missed Connections- You girl with straight dark hair and gorgeous almond shaped eyes around 5'4" with expensive hand bag)

The famous Shubya intersection and station
It was Golden Week while I was there. Basically 3 holidays in one week so most the country takes the whole week off. Everywhere we went was extremely crowded. Tokyo itself is crowded, now add a holiday to that.

Even the parks are packed
The first event was Visualux, an evening combining presentations, hardware/software demos and A/V performances. I performed with Ian Hartley a true master of audio.

Grant and Ian

Photos by Chiemi
Also performing was Shinji; (Visualmixer) and Jon Schwark of Lightrhythm Visuals demoed the new VDMX 5.

Plus, a brief presentation of the 'vE-jA" book. The place was packed and for a Monday night it was unprecedented.

Super Deluxe

We were featured in Pingmag thanks to Chiemi.
The next Visualux is June 4th w/ VJ Anyone.
The next gig on the Tokyo tour was an event at Club Asia in Shubya.

Club Asia

(7:00PM)
This was a party that started at 4:00 and ended by 10:00PM. By 6:00PM the dance floor was packed and you would think it was any given dance club around the world on a Saturday night at 2:00AM. The audio talent was a little lacking, but it was a fun event none the less. My new moto: "Don't let Models DJ". That's all I'll say.
Ben and I also checked out Hifana, w/ DJ Kentaro and Pharcyde from LA.
I'd have to say the scratching and A/V set DJ Kentaro laid down was one of the tightest sets I've ever seen.

and this one

The content was just okay, but it was an amazing mix of VJ GEC and Kentaro on the DVJ and korg entrancer.

April 27th Crosswired Performance

2007-04-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

You have to RSVP by phone or you won't get in. Last week they had over 800 RSVP's and it was a chilly night. (but oh so good)
free drinks and free admission, just RSVP to 310 494 0357
visit the site here

Upcoming show dates

2007-04-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
April 27th
Crosswired
@ the A + D Museum Los Angeles CA
More info here

April 28th - May 8th Tokyo Japan
May 1st Visualux

check back for updates on the other Tokyo dates.
May 20th
Taurus World Stunt awards
Hollywood CA Paramount Lot
After Party
June 8th, 9th, 10th
NYC
June 16th Alcatraz Island SF CA
Scion / Flavorgroup

Cisco Gig Vegas

2007-04-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
I arrived home from SF at about 10:00PM. I had to unpack and then repack all the gear I was taking with me to Vegas. I was driving there in the morning and had a noon crew call. That meant I had to leave LA at 5:30 in the morning. I only got 4 hours of sleep.
This show was at the Vienitian. OMG, their rooms are as big as a San Francisco 1 bedroom apt.
We had two days of rehearsal with Luma.
We had 7 screens all double stacked with 12,000 lumen projectors.

Here is video of the screens.

Here is a pic of the video world backstage. They were making the screens come alive via a Encore system.

and here are a couple of pics of my VJ suite. The blacked out area is a new piece of video sampler hardware under developement so I can't show it to you yet.

Skills Electro Techno Disco POP 07 SF

2007-04-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

Yet another amazing event hosted by Skills. I couldn't believe it. 10,000+ kids. The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium sold out. The doors even got bum rushed at one point.
This crowd was different from the usual crowd. It was like going back to 1993. Glowsticks, pacifiers, cuddle puddles and lots of shiny things.

It was another one of those arrive at 11:00AM and work until doors and work straight through the party until 5:00AM only to get up again at 10:30 to finish strike and then hit the road and drive from SF to LA. Yeah, it was a tough one but, I had great help.
Sean Cooper
Kev Lar
Brooks
All pulled it off with out any problems.
The video is shot off my little digital still camera so the image and sound quality are pretty bad.

Beatport/Remix Hotel Miami poolside parties

2007-04-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
Um....yeah, 4 nights poolside during WMC. I'm just happy Edirol helped make this happen. I really didn't want to get stuck doing visuals in some smokey club in Miami, not when I could spend the early evening doing the same thing poolside with amazing talent and warm weather.
Thursday night (The opener) VJ Anyone threw down for the evening.

Friday Devan and Nika from C-trl Labs lit up the evening for the Minus label which included Ritchie Hawtin. Grandmaster Flash showed up to trainspot. MotherF**** was standing on my pelican cases asking dumb questions.. I was like, "who is this guy"?

Saturday is was dumping. That didn't stop the dancefloor, it was like "girls gone wild" in miami. Way too college crowd gone spring break for my taste. Gotta give it to them though. They stuck it out in the rain. Gear was getting soaked and only my one laptop and DVD player were working.

The parties started at 2:00PM every day. I would have to fight my way through the crowds with my large pelican cases and then try and setup off to the side of the stage where everyone was trainspotting. Luckily nothing got damaged or stolen.

Friday afternoon was the VJ Panel at WMC. Moderated by Andrew Borg of Hi-Beam Entertainment. Lots of good information on this one.
Panelist
Sandra Collins
Vello Virkhaus - VJ v2
Joshua Goldberg - Saccade
Xárene Eskandar - Author of 'vE-"jA’
Grant Davis - VJ Culture
Chris Biggins - United Vision
Justin Kent - EJ Kent

Xarene and I also hosted a presentation at the Crossfader lounge @ Remix Hotel with Justin Kent from EJ.
Later we did an interview which is on the Crossfader.com web site.
check it out here. Xarene and I talk about the vj book, "vE-jA" and the state of vj culture. http://www.crossfader.com/default.aspx?st=2

It's Miami Time! Remix Hotel Beatport Poolside

2007-03-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com
During the week of WMC in Miami Beach VJ's unite, with several events happening around the town.

Remix Hotel/Beatport Poolside parties in Miami during WMC @ The National Hotel VJ’s performances sponsored by Edirol and hosted by Lumens.
Edirol is proud to sponsor the visual performances poolside at the National Hotel during Remix Magazine’s, “Remix Hotel”.
Each afternoon and evening Beatport pool side parties will be enhanced with the visual talent of C-trl Labs (NYC) http://www.c-trl.com/ctrl07/ VJ Anyone (London) http://www.anyone.org.uk/gigs.htm VJ Culture, (Los Angeles) http://www.vjculture.com/ VJ Juanka (Miami) http://www.myspace.com/vjjuanka
The national hotel is located at 1677 Collins Ave Miami Beach

Thursday March 22nd
VJ Culture 6:00-7:30
VJ Anyone 7:30-9:30Musical artists
6 p.m. Kaskade
7 p.m. DJ Rap
8 p.m. Nick Terranova
Friday March 23rd
C-trl Labs 6:00-7:30
VJ Culture 7:30-9:30
Musical artists
5 p.m. Richie Hawtin
6 p.m. Magda
7 p.m. Troy
8 p.m. Steve Bug
Sat. March 24th
VJ Culture 6:00-7:30
VJ Juanka (Brainwash) 7:30-9:30
Musical artists
5 p.m. Dubfire (Deep Dish)
6 p.m. Ralph Falcon
7 p.m. Heidi
8 p.m. Bush II Bush
Sunday March 25th
VJ Culture 6:00-9:30
Musical artists
6 p.m. Milk & Sugar
7 p.m. Gabriel & Dresden
8 p.m. Radioslave

On Friday March 23rd at 1:00PM, “Let’s Get Visual”
At the National Hotel in the Microsoft Crossfader Lounge
It’s a VJ Showcase with 3 presenters showcasing their work.
Xarene Eskandar’s newly released book, ‘vE-jA” Technology of Live Audio/Video
www.vjbook.com
Justin Kent (EJ Enterprise) Showcases. Baby Grand Piano, in conjunction with EBN.
http://www.ejenter.com/start.php4
VJ Culture presents current installations and Immersive Environments
www.vjculture.com

Also, don’t miss the VJ Panel at the WMC

Visual Music: Past, Present & Future
4833 Collins Ave. Miami Beach FL
Start Time: 4:00PM
Ready Room: Balboa
Meeting Room: Mediterranean West
Panelists:
Sandra Collins Vello Virkhaus (VJ v2)Joshua Goldberg (Saccade)Xárene (Author of 'vE-"jA’, the VJ book)Grant Davis (VJ Culture)Stefan Gosiewski(VJ Stefan G.) Justin Kent (EJ Kent)Chris Biggins- DubSpot/ Crobar NY
Plus, VJ's will be throwin down at Miambient.
I'll be playing Saturday night after C-trl Labs 10:00-12:00AM

Austin TX During SXSW

2007-03-15T23:12:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

Just wrapped up SXSW Interactive. I went down there with Red Bull to takeover venue and create an interactive immersive environment that seamlessly intergraded into the aesthetics of the venue (More like venues) as there were two clubs joined together with different themes.

“HiLo” was a sexy club with a 70’s lounge vibe, attached to it is “Betsy’s” a Pinup girl theme with exposed brick and stain glass windows and dilapidated wooden doors and windows as decor.

The planning began months ago with John Taylor and I going out to Austin to do a walk through of the venue and John (Parts) did a full-scale sketch up of the two venues. Now the venue owner has a “to scale model” to a 1/8th of an inch.
We arrived in Austin on March 5th to begin load in of all the equipment and installations.

We had a crew of 8 to build and manage all installations. Most of the projectors had their own Mac Mini running content to the projectors. We were using odd aspect ratios like 600x800 vertically or 600x2400.
In this blurry picture we are using a matrox triplehead2go over 3 projectors. This is Brooks flash animation with the event logo
So all the Mac Minis were networked together and “Parts” had a G5 running Remote Desktop as the central brain. We could reroute the video clips from any Mac Mini to any other machine.
One the video clip that was 600x2400 Brooks create a beautiful growing vine with the event key logo intergraded into it. He did it in flash so we could have smooth playback on a large format. We were projecting on a dark green concaved surface so we kept the backgrounds black and the vines and logo gold. Since the screens weren’t edge blended it didn’t matter if the projectors didn’t perfectly match up pixel for pixel.
As seen in this photo we created a vintage cabaret, pinup style content with a red curtain mask. Betsy’s had Red Velvet curtains so we wanted to keep that same aesthetic.

Meagan shot some of her own Cabaret content so we could incorporate it into a LCD display behind a shutter window. The effect turned out awesome. It was just one of the many little installation piece that let the attendees discover and explore the venue.
“Parts” as production manager had commissioned two small bar top refrigerators customized with a LCD screens in the door. The content was a snapshot of the Red Bull cans in the fridge. It appeared as if you were looking at a normal Red Bull Fridge but then video would start playing on the LCD and the cans would fade away.
Each night we had a different partner to co sponsor the event. We also had DJ’s spinning nightly and we setup a VJ suite to mix in co sponsored content or live camera footage of the Play Motion unit. Play Motion was the highlight of the installations. Camera detection, interactive playback of the video screen. People absolutely loved it. The camera detects movement and creates dynamic, playful interaction with what is being projected on the screen as people dance and play in front of it.

Check out the latest from Serato. We discovered that it has a pong game built into it, so the crew retrofitted a coffee table from the venue to hold two turntables. Then participants could play pong using the turntables as the paddle controller. Rotate the record forward and backwards to make the pong paddle move up and down the screen.

As an experiment I set up a midi keyboard connected to a VJ application on the dance floor side of the video booth. This allowed the participants the opportunity to contribute to the visual performance. On the first day I had mapped effects on the black keys of the keyboard and video on the white keys.

A lot of people didn’t understand the method of using the black keys to add effects to the white key clips. The result was less than interesting visuals. On the other days I set it up to be more foolproof. The results were great and the quality of clips and effects were better. Note: I don’t think I would give this much control to the audience if I were in a setting that wasn’t so much about interactivity and/or if the screens were really large. There is something to be said for experience and having an eye for VJing.
Here's the booth

In this photo we are back lighting a wall with Element Labs versa-tubes being controlled remotely by a Sony DS2 action pad.

5 pentagon screens @ Webster Hall for Futbol de Calle Red Bull

2007-03-15T23:02:00.000-07:00

www.vjculture.com

For the month of Feb. I was working on a project for the New York Red Bull’s. The event was called “Fotbal de Calle”. (Freestyle Soccer or, juggling soccer balls in a B-boy battle format). The challenge was to create a unique screen installation that incorporated the soccer theme and the four live camera feeds on the players.
In this photo I’m experimenting with a jitter matrix routing patch built by my good buddy “Parts” (John Taylor).
Checkout the warehouse… I’ve been granted this 40,000 sq ft warehouse for the next few months for free, curtsey of Liza at Phantom Galleries.

I’m using 5 dell projectors, a dual core Intel 2.66ghz machine with dual graphics cards and doublehead2go and a triplehead2go card on each graphic card.
Since I don’t have wifi at the warehouse I was running back and worth to the coffee shop downloading new patches being updated by “Parts”.

Instead of shipping my Apple desktop to NYC I borrowed my good friends at C-trl Labs machine, which is identical to mine.
We had 2 days to setup at Webster Hall. I arrived on Thursday night Feb. The show was on Sunday night Feb. We worked long hours for 3 days setting up
Michael Byrnes and team from 3rd Ward (Brooklyn) did an amazing job of event design, and logo treatments. His team also built the pentagon shaped screens, bleachers and stage.

My team consisted of Guilaume Clave (Gui"Aum"etriX), Larry Akiya and Devan from C-trl Labs.
The idea for the installation was to have the 4 incoming video signals and 1 quick time movie masked and routed to each individual screen. Whenever I tapped the space bar on the keyboard it would re-route the camera feeds and movie to the next pentagon screen. So the various camera feeds were rotating clockwise around the center stage. The jitter patch was also setup to rotate automatically by keeping tempo to the music. (This was accomplished via a tap tempo on the space bar).

Ocean Watch provided all the live camera feeds. They brought in track w/ a dolly that went half way around the stage and a 30ft boom mounted camera and two hand helds. All camera feeds came into the Apple desktop via DFG 1394 fire wire capture box. These little units allow to you capture uncompressed 640x480 QuickTime.

I had to add an extra graphics card to accommodate the four streams of video coming into the machine.
Once in jitter a pentagon mask was laid over the live feed and then it was routed out to the various screens.

We used Dell 2400MP projectors (3000) lumens attached to magic arms, which were then attached to the truss. The nice thing about the Dell’s is that you can save a screen shot as a default image when the projector looses a signal. So if your computer goes down or something gets unplugged before it gets to the projector you can still have an event logo as a screen shot. (It’s also a good idea to change your desktop image as well.
We were having issues with Jitter before the show. It can be very finicky about the process and the order you do it in. We were a couple of hours from show time and Jitter was hanging up on us and not recognizing the DFG units. Then just before the show started everything started working and it stayed stable throughout the show.
Again, hats off to Michael Bryne’s team for all their hard work and there planning.