VJ SESH

Reflective Statement

I was challenged by this assignment to create an engaging performance visually to a song and perform it live! Usually designers like to stay behind the scenes, but it an exhilarating and fun experience. Practicing helped because it's quite easy to forget the parameters the MIDI controllers are connected to. Overall, this assignment helped to tie in different techniques like limit-scale values, alpha masks, wave generators and performance all into one neat visual. 

Watching the other performances was to much enjoyment; it was a unique experience to share music and art "in-sync" for the most part, specially in a supportive and educational environment. It was also enlightening to glimpse the way other students approach the Isadora software 

I challenged myself to make a systematic MIDI controller that helped me to modulate different parameters like rotation, zoom, and the queuing in of 2nd movie players or typography.

Supporting Research

I was inspired by the visuals in the background of rave concerts and various performers. Found footage from kinolibrary and AParchives were used (I don't claim rights to footage or song used, used just for educational purposes). Overall, I wanted to create visuals that were happy and hypnotic.

Fiskprojects and their use of typography was a biig inspiration in the geometric shapes and kinetic type that animates in and out.

Ideation

The left shows my earlier iterations. I kept it simple, lo-fi but fun to watch.

In the later versions, I added more MIDI controllers menus and typography that cues in.

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scene 1. pulsing geos

AIM: to pulse geometric visuals to various found footage.

This scene uses a lot of trigger delays overlayed on one another to create more complicated shapes.
I attached the 2D slider to adjust the inset and size of the shapes that pulse in.

scene 2. rotating abyss

AIM: to transform the plane of the movie player.

In this scene, I used a 3D projector to transform the x, y, z planes of the footage. The MIDI controllers were
adjusted to modify and wave generator through zooming and position. I also used dots, boxes,
and text draw actor to layer shapes onto the screen.

scene 3. 2 movies

AIM: to combine 2 movie players in a modulating visual.

I had two movie players each with different effects like translate and chop to render them differently.
I also wanted to make use of a coloured background that pulses shapes compared to the black background in Isadora.

RECORDED PERFORMANCES

VJ Performance

Stage Performance of Controller and Scene in Isadora