I’ll be premiering some new work at this years Big Chill Festival in England on Saturday, August 5, along with Gardner Post, and Xavier Perkins from Exceeda.
We had a great show, and I was fortunate to meet and work with an incredible group of musicians and vj’s. I also had the good fortune of meeting the artist and radionics researcher Duncan Laurie, who let us stay at his incredible studio in Jamestown, Rhode Island.
Baby Grand Master™ – The King of Video Instruments.
Introducing the breathtaking Baby Grand Master™, Gardner Post’s latest, most muscled athlete.
Shouldered and powerful as always, but sleeker now with Pioneer DVJ-X1 DVD players, this powerful entertainment machine is purposefully trimmed and tuned for heart-pounding performance. Artistic expression, power, control and comfort await notice with bold assurance.
There’s not an ounce of excess. But there is anticipation… because on stage, in the museum, or in the living room, the Baby Grand Master™ commands.
Sweatin’ to the old school: here are some early VuJak videos which I recently found on Hi-8 tapes in my closet.
The first video is from the Digital Hollywood conference in Beverly Hills, 1994. Some friends at Interactive Light lent us an array of floor mounted infrared controllers, so we hooked them into VuJak and let people do what they wanted during the exhibit. Shown in this video is a dancer who got quicky hooked on it and spent a long time with it. Interactive Light, Inc. created the D Beam Controller, which is now integrated into Roland keyboards.
The next video is just us having fun in the studio one night in 1993. We had just gotten the system working well and there were people over for a party, so we turned on the camera. Fun stuff.
And here’s some raw footage straight out of the system from around the same time. Fun with randomness. Always liked this. Still kinda relevant. Bill was so much more fun than GW…
Busted out some of the old 3/4″ tapes from The Leisure Channel and digitized them for your viewing pleasure. These were produced for public access in New York and Los Angeles between 1987 and 1993. Some zany stuff – here are a few choice nuggets.
In many ways much of what we were doing here has become “real” on the web, in particular the “All Talk” Show, which was just people talking and telling stories – not unlike what much of YouTube has become. And KTV – the 24 hour karoake channel. Seemed wacky then. Not any more.
I’ve been playing with a game controller VJ interface for about a year, so I polished it up and used it live for this year’s Optronica show. Worked like a charm – fast, stable, and easy to use.
I’ve shown this to a variety of people, and I think it’s a great interface. Addictive and fun. No learning curve. And I’ve been user testing it with kids to make sure it works right.
This interface was made with Max/MSP/Jitter, and the hi object, and I’m running it on a MacBook Pro. It uses full res dv files and can scratch, jump, loop, and do real time effects. I have tried to build it to suit the real world needs of VJ’s. It also uses a standard usb game controller. The one I used for the show cost $10.
Kid not included.
Below is an simple diagram of the button configuration. I went through a variety of configurations before deciding on this one.
A big thanks to Addictive TV, Amy Z, and everyone who made Optronica 2007 a big success. And to all the folks who came to see our show a the ICA London.
We had a great time, and were glad to meet so many super-xlnt people.
Addictive TV keeps getting better and better. If you get a chance to see one of their shows, do it! You wont regret it. Their stuff looked monumental on the massive Imax screen, and they played an amazing new remix of Willie Nelson’s “On The Road Again”. I think this one could be a big hit.
I also got to see two killer sets from Exceeda. I had never seen their set before. Fantastic stuff. Xavier rocked the house with his Phantom of Optronica set.
Peter Greenaway performed a spectacular live mix of his films in the Imax theatre.
Ok, so now it’s out. My good friend Gardner Post and I are going to do a show in March at Optronica at the ICA in London. We’re pulling together some classic old footage from the dusty old archives, and mixing it together with some brand new material for a special one night show. I was thinking about calling it “Aged 15 Years”. But then again, I was thinking about naming my son Orange or Vector. And that went nowhere. Except that now he likes the name Orange, and even came up with a rhyme for it: Door Hinge. But I digress…
All thanks are due to the awesomeness at Addictive TV
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Optronica presents for the first time in the UK, Gardner Post and Brian Kane from the massively influential, but sadly no-longer, pioneering American audiovisual act Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN). The duo will present a sharp-edged set of unseen EBN work mixed with some new material.
EBN was originally founded in the late 80′s by Gardner Post, Josh Pearson and Brian Kane, all graduates of Rhode Island School of Design. In the early 90s they pretty much invented a new standard in the culture of AV remixing, video scratching and audiovisual sampling techniques. Post was also heavily involved in the spectacular set design for the band, while Kane developed the first known VJ software called Vujak, with the charismatic Pearson also working as front man for the group.
Their modus operandi was to take cable TV broadcasts and remix them with a funky beat, often having the lyrics ‘sung’ by half-second sound bites cut together. They gained popular acclaim after their involvement with U2′s ZooTV Tour in ’92 and later released their video album “Telecommunications Breakdown” in ’95 on TVT Records.
After Kane had left the group, they were later joined by turntablist Ron O’Donnell and video effects artist Greg Deocampo. All the team still pursue personal projects and here, for Optronica, Post & Kane perform together for the first time in nearly a decade!
