Music and sound design, words and narrative, a growing set of visual assets, and ultimately a live performance: these are the components of the “postmodern rock opera” The Continual Return of Dr. Ordinaire.
Finishing off 2019 with a live audiovisual set in Barcelona: this was an opportunity to give the latest version of the live performance video tool a test run in front of a festival audience. With only minor UI issues that were easily worked around, the touchscreen-driven visual instrument performed admirably on stage. On return, I used VSx as a presentation tool (imagine a realtime motion graphics version of a PowerPoint deck) at a local Los Angeles forum to tell the story of the event and describe some key features of the application. With the full feature set now tested in front of live, discerning audiences, I’m looking forward to further visual adventures in 2020.
Continue Reading →
In July at a venue in downtown LA I gave a talk that described some of the background, historical references and motivation behind the development of the VS4 project. This discussion touched upon a range of topics — from Wagner and early 20th-century avant-garde art, to UX and design of the current revision of the software visual instrument.
The VS4 (“Visual Synthesizer, iteration 4”) project is finally at a point where it can be called a Beta version, meaning the basic architecture and feature set of this tool for audiovisual performance and real-time motion graphics are pretty much complete and functional.
This is the first in a suite of three tools (and associated processes) currently under development for furthering realtime audiovisual experiences and interactive storytelling across multiple media. While each component has a distinct purpose and audience (ranging from practical to experimental, commercial to fine art, tactical to theoretical), they all share a common architecture built around symbolic structures and patterns.
Continue Reading →
