Audio/Visual Culture

Gentleman's Gaze

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

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This installation was the 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

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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

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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

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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

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

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.