Sounds for Datamoshing/Visual Flow Distortion

Purple Water is a brief experimental attempt at matching visuals made with the newly popularized techniques of visual flow/data mosh processing of video to an appropriate sound. Since this process tends to render fluidly distorting images, the sound of splashing water seemed like an obvious match and I found the results interesting.  

The video was made by processing clips of an old video of mine, Ipanemicenema, using an adapted version of one of Andrew Benson's hsflow distortion patches for Max/Jitter. The sound was chopped and composed in Ableton Live, which is in turn sending OSC timecode information through my custom made Pluggo Plugin to Max in order to chop the video footage in the same linear way that the original audio piece was chopped and rearranged.

Inspiration: Civilization Elevator Mural Installation

At New York City's Standard Hotel, while you ascend to your 20th floor suite, you also ascend from hell to heaven via a collage of video loops from classic films.  

Marco Brambilla's Civilization video collage tickles me in just about every way.  

First, his immaculate collaging of these moving images into a surreal and ethereal sequence that maintains a somewhat believable illusion of natural vertical panning movement with convincing but impossible architecture.  Then there's his keen appropriation of beautiful, iconic, and even outright hilarious images from films ranging from Arnold Schwartzenegger flexing his muscles while standing over Princess Leah in her classic Jaba's slave garb, to the Stay Puff Marshmellow Man from Ghostbusters stomping through a cityscape, to Michael Jackson doing his high kick dance.  

The sheer volume of appropriated video clips in Brambilla's work places me in a state of nostalgic curiosity, as I try to recall where I might have seen each little chunk of imagery before.  This activity of trying to place small samples of historical moving imagery seems to be the visual equivalent of recognizing and placing sound samples in much of hip hop music; one of my favorite parts of listening to hiphop in the first place!

Live Visuals update

In the last several months, I've been shooting original video and manipulating it through Modul8. One of the projects I am compiling my live VJ set for is a collaboration with the Montréal "psych-soul" band, Golden Isles, (formerly known as 'Crystal Moustache').

The band will be playing a live show at Ex-Centris, Montréal's premier art house cinema which decided to stop operating as a cinema this Summer in order to take a new, experimental direction and become a multimedia and live performance venue this Fall.

My plan has been to develop an immersive environment for the audience, in line with the band's live performance which they described to me as being 'psychadelic'. The band has chosen the theme for the visuals: the four elements. Over my last month in Hawaii, I shot footage of the epic natural beauty of the state's dreamy islands. As I edit down my HD footage of slow-moving clouds, thunderous waves in the ocean, and rolling pastures, I am imagining how these images will be projected in the venue. More to come!