Jitter works brilliantly when it comes to processing signal – and that means for signal-like work with video and textures, it’s fantastic, as well as the usual Max-y tasks like processing input from physical sensors and input devices and the like. But try to do a whole lot of sophisticated 3D work, and Jitter may […]

Experimenting in the projection lab; photo: hc gilje. videoprojectiontools, the powerful and intuitive Max/MSP/Jitter-developed Mac and Windows tools for projection mapping, just got a nice update. The new version has OpenSoundControl (OSC) support – and yes, despite the “Sound” in the acronym, it’s really more like Open … Control. Max is not required to use […]

Music lovers now have Max for Live coming later this year. But how about running custom visual patches inside your VJ app? That’s now possible using your own Jitter patches inside Cell DNA, Livid’s new, lightweight live visual tool. Livid has released a “DevKit” with some example patches and documentation to get you rolling if […]

A real highlight for me at the Game Developer Conference was getting to hear Satoru Iwata deliver the keynote. Aside from being CEO of Nintendo as they have launched their most successful console ever, Iwata-san has left a sizable development legacy as a veteran of HAL Laboratory (Balloon Fight, Kirby). In the game community, I […]

c Ever feel like you’ve found the seam dividing past and future? The past: restrictive UI frameworks requiring pages and pages of code to produce dated-look 2D displays. Proprietary software with rigid interfaces. Input bottlenecked through the x and y coordinates of a single mouse pointer. The future: UIs whipped together graphically or with a […]

The Latest Version of Bidule features an OSC Monitor and WaveViewer. Ed.: Plogue Bidule is an unusual animal: this affordable patching tool resists conventional ways of doing things, down to its hatred of the number “1.0.” But Plogue has an underground following inside the already-underground world of modular patching tools for creative music. I’ve invited […]

Ever wished you could pack the sonic goodness and programming power of a soft synth into a hardware box? Dreamed of software that lived in a road case and had the stability and power-on capability of your outboard gear? You’re certainly not alone. That meant many of us were intrigued when soft synth emulator house […]

VJ Kung Fu: Structure in VJ Performance from Momo the Monster on Vimeo. Sometimes, paradoxically, doing more prep and adding more structure is what allows you to really let loose when you improvise. That’s true of music, and it’s just as true of visuals. You’ve no doubt seen “button-mashing”, chaotic VJ sets – and maybe, […]

Morgan Packard (music) and Joshue Ott (visuals) at Mutek in 2008. I’m really excited to play with these guys, as I think they have a lot of great ideas about the collaboration between music and visuals. Photo: mutek2007. VJs and visualists are often asked to just make something nice happen behind musicians. What if that […]

I may have to eat my words — here’s something I didn’t imagine being possible any time soon. It’s extremely processor-intensive computer vision, happening in a video stream, all with JavaScript worker threads. That is, this is possible because the next version of Firefox, version 3.1, allows for multiple threads processing the video instead of […]