Rastermasters

Yello Tiger Dust

2011-11-26T13:01:00.001-08:00

A pair of middle-aged guys that can still rock it! Yello's deeply textured soundscapes have always begged for visual interpretation. I'm afraid their recent "virtual concert" concept, while well intentioned, couldn't make it above the waterline of popular interest. They're a niche phenomenon and need the kind of midnight movie marketing events that the broader music industry doesn't get very excited about.Still, the Tiger Dust video stands out as one of those tremendously simple visual concepts that you'd love to see done live on stage (somehow) allowing for those little variations that bring life to live performance.

Emulator DVS

2011-11-26T12:22:00.000-08:00

Financing available? Sounds a bit frightening, but the results are very impressive.

Here's Smithson Martin's website link for ya.

DJ'ing as Live Graphics Performance

2011-11-26T12:17:00.001-08:00

What is a Rastermaster? Someone who creates a live performance with music and graphics in real-time, and as tightly connected as possible, with a minimum of prepared material.Visually, prepared material like images or textures on 3D surfaces were acceptable. For a DJ the mix tracks were their 'textures' blended and chopped to suit the moment.Here's a new system that hints at allowing audiences to see (albeit reversed) what the DJ is doing, making his user interface a part of the graphic performance.

Playing With Your Head

2010-02-23T22:59:00.000-08:00

Yet another creative way to combine display technology with music performance on stage.

Neurosonics Live from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.

Spontaneous Fantasia - Improvised Landscape

2010-02-13T21:17:00.000-08:00

J.Walt's real-time generated interactive landscapes. He often performs here in SoCal in a planetarium dome.

This particular session was a warm up. The stage crew settled in for the ride!

Bad Apple!

2010-02-01T21:01:00.000-08:00

A great bit of stop motion animation. The pacing is intense, to match the music, but what if this were combined with the Nine Inch Nails multi-layer screen technology on stage?

Nine Inch Nails "In the Moment Factory"

2010-01-30T10:15:00.000-08:00

A video about The Moment Factory's work on Nine Inch Nails live tour.

Teenage Engineering OP-1 Synthesizer

2010-01-19T13:31:00.000-08:00

A wonderful little aluminum bodied synthesizer

Teenage Engineering

Maledict Car

2009-07-28T12:07:00.001-07:00

Beautiful use of symmetry and movement to music.

Link here.

Video: D-Touch drum machine keeps heads, hands bobbing

2009-07-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

The D-Touch software works with a webcam to recognize a pattern of real blocks on paper to program a drum machine. Physical interfaces like this are vastly more appropriate for live performance than on screen.

See the D-Touch website for instructions and download. The software is free!

YouTube as Musical Instrument

2009-05-15T13:55:00.000-07:00

A grid of videos as a musical instrument? A possible extension of this idea would be simply having abstract images to represent instruments in the video blocks. Combining the music and the images at the same time (through visual+audio blender tools) creates an output image as well as audio.

Mickey Mousing

2009-05-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Supposedly coined by David O. Selznick, the term [mickey mousing] describes "the close synchronization of music to action", such that the action is continually punctuated by a specific musical tempo or motif. - via 2719 Hyperion

Rastermasters -style live graphics strove for a tight integration of visual movement to music. Disney used that idea long ago to enhance the appeal of characters and action in films like Steamboat Willie.

High Sample Rate Multitouch for Musical Performance

2008-12-28T20:34:00.000-08:00

An interesting take on how to build a 2D multitouch interface with sample rates high enough for nuanced live performance. The author claims the rates for this need to be in the 1kHz range. Likely so. His diagnostic displays hint at how simultaneous visualization could easily be part of the performance.

Multitouch Prototype 2 from Randy Jones on Vimeo.

Game Engines as Performance Art?

2008-09-02T10:13:00.000-07:00

The Crytek game engine is one of the most beautiful on the market. Its accessibility to modders and programmers has led to some unusual demonstration videos.

While these are current offline rendered, within a few years we'll have it in realtime. A new kind of performance art?

Mary Ellen Bute: Seeing Sound

2008-08-27T23:20:00.000-07:00

Influenced by Leon Theremin and Joseph Schillinger, Mary Ellen Bute was one of the first artists to use analog electronics to create animation ("Abstronic" 1954). Her earliest works were traditionally animated experimental pieces and given wide exposure as "opening shorts" in movie theaters.

This article in Animation World Network summarizes her work along with that of similar artists working before and after.

There are parallels between work like this, going from frame-by-frame animation to realtime filming oscilloscopes, and Robert Moog's advances from simple "static" audio oscillators to voltage controlled systems. More recently we've seen transitions from rendered to realtime animation in computer gaming systems.

In each of these, technology provides the medium additional depth and responsiveness, which allows use of more dynamic inputs for control. Inputs that would previously have been too difficult to manage.

Tenori-On 'on' the iPhone!

2008-07-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

A developer is building software which more or less emulates the Tenori-On sequencer... on the iPhone.

If the developers of Tenori-On are sharp they'll find a way to keep their intellectual property rights while not squashing this little program.

Its their best (possibly only) hope to sell the high-priced "real thing".

Primal Source

2008-07-21T09:30:00.001-07:00

NOTCOT at GLOW: Usman Haque's Primal Source from Jean Aw on Vimeo.

Santa Monica's Glow 08 dusk to dawn festival treated visitors to a water spray and laser show called "Primal Source". Similar to the larger scale commercial show "Phantasmagoric" at Disneyland, the setup depends on a dark environment, misting water spray as a projection target, and laser or video systems for imaging. The results show what's possible when intrusive screen surfaces are eliminated in large scale image shows.

Technical details available here.

1960s Liquid Lightshow Meets Cornstarch

2008-07-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

Remember those liquid lightshows (wet shows) from the 1960s? If so, you're "experienced" in so many ways...

Anywho, take a look at what's possible with a little cornstarch and a subwoofer. Its a sculptural analogue of those old shows. Just add some colorful dyes to the cornstarch and off you go!

Open Source DJ Mixer

2008-07-09T09:19:00.001-07:00

Versatile devices like this open source Aurora DJ mixer console are great candidates for controlling live video programs.

More info here at "Hack a Day".

Touch Screen Turntable

2008-05-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

Created by Scott Hobbs, a student at Dundee University studying innovative product design, the ATTIGO TT lets DJ’s loop, sample and scratch the actual wave forms of the music using two touch screen displays.
The ATTIGO is about the same size as a traditional turntable, which makes physical interaction a pretty easy transition for the working DJ. The display removes the computer screen and allows you to interact directly with the music.
- Touch Screen Turntable » Coolest Gadgets

Back in the day Rastermasters was trying to visualize music to make it part of the performance. Here's a DJ who has visualized the music as part of a user interface to working with it (scratching and mixing). His website is here.

Has he considered designing his visual user interface so that it could also be part of the performance? That would be the Rastermasters way...

Germany's Fantastic Four Video Performance

2008-05-14T15:05:00.000-07:00

Andy Ypsilon, a member of the famous German band Fantastic Four, created his own sophisticated version of a lichtorgel on a Mac using quartz composer software. He connected his own private animation bits with the quartz applications, simply to let some graphs react to some sound. This was used during the tour of the band in 2007, where the Fantastic Four played in big music halls in front of 15,000 to 20,000 fans. The realtime-generated effects were screened onto seven big screens. Problems of sound latency matched with the acoustic problems of each and every music hall, so in general the fans were very fond of the graphic images shown during each concert. - VFXWorld

[Note: lichtorgel means "light organ".]

A few years ago Creon suggested that the Quartz platform on Mac would be a great way to build Rastermasters style live video performance tools. Great to read about someone using it in shows.

Visualizing Relativistic Plasma Jets (plus Trippy Visuals!)

2008-04-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

Attracted by your gravity, your body's so compact
Pulling me inward, prepare for close contact
No strength to resist, spinning out of control
Falling toward the abyss, approaching the black hole

Full of twisting magnetism, feeling hot inside
Bursting forth with energy, ready for a high-speed ride
Acceleration growing, focusing my beam
The jet starts flowing, plasma shoots downstream

- Scientific American

Physicist Alan Marscher of Boston University has written some lovely poetry (above) to accompany visuals of "collisionless shockwaves" which occur in relativistic plasma jets emitted by black holes.

Music has its own geometry, researchers find

2008-04-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

Writing in the April 18 issue of Science, the trio has outlined a method called 'geometrical music theory' that translates the language of musical theory into that of contemporary geometry. They take sequences of notes, like chords, rhythms and scales, and categorize them so they can be grouped into 'families.' They have found a way to assign mathematical structure to these families, so they can then be represented by points in complex geometrical spaces, much the way 'x' and 'y' coordinates, in the simpler system of high school algebra, correspond to points on a two-dimensional plane. - Physorg - The new shape of music

Another way to visualize music could start with this research.

Animoto.com

2008-03-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

It "feels your music". So just press the "make art" button and go!

http://www.animoto.com/

Linking Synthetic Images and Sound

2008-02-23T14:35:00.000-08:00

I just read an interesting book:

Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century, Johns Hopkins Press

Its an eclectic read, with bits about Guitar Slim and development of feedback as musical performance, the emergence of vibrato in violin performance (1920s) as a response to wow and flutter limitations in record production, etc.

But, this helped me imagine an RM -like performance mode where sound would be synthesized directly by interpreting all or some of the screen images as audio spectrograms. It would constrain the imagery somewhat but deeply connect the performance of images to the performance of music, something we always strove for back in the day.

Visuals and electronic music history

2008-02-23T02:33:00.000-08:00

We're all (well, most of us) familiar with the popular YouTube practice of cutting your own video track for a favorite piece of music. David emphasized that Rastermasters was in some sense doing this live at each performance.

Here's Karlheinz Stockhausen's Kontakte music put to video rather well.

Stockhausen was an early composer of electronic music. Many of the sounds and cadences he created for his compositions in the 1940s and 50s would reappear later in film soundtracks and pop music.

Minumum... Maximum

2008-02-05T14:55:00.000-08:00

Time to liven up this blog with a classic...

Battling the "tyranny" of abstract, algorithmic iTunes visualizers: Osiris

2007-09-26T05:22:00.000-07:00

The project, called 'Osiris AudioVisual', was started by three students as part of a 'New Media Art Production' class taught by Professor Mark Tribe. The original three, Schulyer Maclay '10, Zachary McCune '10, and Sebastian Gallese '10, (and later, Nicholas Greenfield '10) worked together using the iTunes visualization suite, iVisualize, to create a plug-in that took the lyrics of a given song playing in iTunes and then searched for images that matched the lyrics. The images, along with keywords from the song, are then displayed as an iTunes visual. - Battling the "tyranny" of abstract, algorithmic iTunes visualizers: Osiris

Sounds a bit... literal eh? Its an interesting approach, one that would make more sense as a dynamic palette from which an artist could make selections during a live performance.

But see here:

The Osiris team submitted its final project to mtvU and Cisco's joint Digital Incubator Grant competition, and, in May 2007, were awarded $25,000 for further development of the project. "At this point, [we] began preparing for the second stage of the competition, a $100,000 grant," McCune told Ars.

Wow. If we'd had grants like that available to us during the Rastermaster days perhaps we'd have continued doing it for a few more years ;-)

Tenori-On Visual Sequencer

2007-08-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

Back when we were doing the Rastermasters shows we always dreamed and schemed about having a better way to integrate the performance of music and visuals. This device from Yamaha called Tenori-On would fit the bill, with its graphics edging toward something we'd have incorporated onscreen:

I look forward to this being combined with the next generation of multitouch interactive screens from Sharp and others.

Autostereoscopic display from ICT

2007-08-31T10:07:00.000-07:00

The Institute for Creative Technologies at USC here in Southern California has shown an autostereoscopic (no glasses 3D) display based on a spinning mirror and projector at SIGGRAPH 2007 emerging technologies. Research site linked here. Their interest seems to be in combining this with their research into light field rendering. I foresee them detecting ambient lighting around the display volume and rendering in it to match.

With a little realtime processing, you could present live video on the spinning mirror. You'd need a ring of cameras and some realtime video interpolation software to extract the horizontal slices.

Its possible the system could also be made cheaper (or less computationally intense) by limiting audience viewing to one side (front) of the cube. That would mean fewer horizontal slices.

Japanese Kalidescope Projector

2007-08-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

Sega personal Kalidescope projector from Japan.

Source article here.

Vidvox, Modul8 software

2007-01-06T22:04:00.000-08:00

Creon sends along pointers to some interesting looking VJ performance software:

http://www.vidvox.net/
http://www.garagecube.com/

Updated to new blogger

2006-12-31T16:15:00.000-08:00

I've updated us to the new Blogger, which has features like private entries, categories, etc.

A friend at work is still on the hook to provide a review of his graphics gigs.

Viva 2007!

Roland CG-8 Visual Synthesizer

2006-06-05T15:08:00.000-07:00

Hey! Dedicated hardware

http://www.edirol.com/products/cg8/index.html

Slowly Sinking Beneath the Waves...

2006-05-11T21:29:00.000-07:00

SGI (Silicon Graphics) filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this last week. It's been a long time coming. A reasonably concise and complete history of the company can be found here. A longer "what went wrong" article from Business Week in 1997 can be found here.

The Rastermasters rode the parabolic curve of the company's success and excess during the 1990s, peaking with it in the middle of the decade. Our custom live-performance programs made us one of a very few using nearly all the advanced hardware features in a single application. As such, the sales teams and executives kept throwing out lifelines. Our shows were high-end hardware demos for customers, and morale boosters at company events.

It's sad to see the old dog die. I understand Google now occupies it's place, both in the hearts of venture capitalists and quite literally by leasing the buildings sgi constructed...

VJ Software we've heard of...

2006-05-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

I got to chatting with two work buddies here at Sony Imageworks, were we do film projects, not audio visualizers. There's interest in visual art all around a place like this.

After chatting with them, here's a list of what they consider some of the better pieces of commercial software for performing visuals to music. This isn't an endorsement (yet) because I plan to put up reviews that compare and contrast capabilites, both among themselves and with what we did in Rastermasters. For now, start your own research:

Zuma http://www.3dmaxmedia.com/Zuma_01.htm
Touch 101 http://www.derivativeinc.com
Resolume http://www.resolume.com/
Pilgrim http://www.loosegoose.nl/

Multilayer Drawing

2006-04-10T18:21:00.000-07:00

While in not sure if he was the first, a trick that Dave used in the RM programs can now be seen everywhere. It's a way of doing feedback effects in the graphics hardware.

If you look at the iTunes or Windows music visualizers you'll see a central bit of graphics moving around, usually lines or dots, which "seed" a smearing effect moving off to the sides of the display. This is how its done.

The chart on the left shows the process. It starts by capturing the screen & holding that image in a texture.

Next, the screen is fully or partially erased.

The captured screen image texture is now applied to a geometric surface. The orientation of the surface & its UV coordinates determine how the feedback smears. What's critical is alignment of surface & captured screen coordinates. Small offsets make smokey, flowing feedback, while big ones produce wild streams.

Finally the graphics algorithm is run with the current parameters. These are the "seed" graphics just like in iTunes. They feed the feedback.

Then you start over again. Repeat 60 times per second.

There is much more to this, but beyond this its DirectX or OpenGL programming details. The parameters of every aspect of this process could be (and often were) controlled by a continuously moving slider control.

Slider Control Basics

2006-04-10T16:58:00.000-07:00

The slider was David's simple, elegant solution to the problem of how to control one variable in a graphics drawing algorithm. Keep in mind: the slider moves continuously. You need a realtime control to manage realtime graphics.

It looked a bit like a scrollbar and has three regions: the mode, the value and the rate.

The value slider moves continuously in the middle region, faster or slower according to the mode & rate. Mode would be, for instance sine or square wave or perhaps an external audio or MIDI channel. Click dragging the rate would make the value slider roll by faster or slower. Setting rate to full stop allowed you to click-drag the value slider itself.

Later versions of the slider were, to say the least, complex & versatile interfaces. There was much more to it than I can describe here.

Software Internals (broadly)

2006-04-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

Like many graphics programs ours were divided into a control section and a graphics redraw loop. Early versions redraw controls & the graphics in one loop, or even one thread.

Each control managed one parameter going to the drawing algorithm, color of particles, speed of rotation, camera X, y & Z, etc. In the largest program there were (I believe) about 100 sliders, each controlling a discrete parameter.

Later versions improved performance by reducing the priority of control (slider) redraw.

The Programs

2006-04-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

Watching the videos you can pick out which programs are running at any time. These were:

Electropaint 2 (EP) - big brother to the screensaver linked in a previous post.
Squish - David's successor to EP. This one started with texture manipulation.
Icosa- Creon's geometry generator. After a while it had some great texture options.
Surface - a surface with vertex coloring options.
Dancer - a state diagram-based robot. options to change shapes, set beat and path of dance moves.
swarm - a modified particle storm demo.
Audio - FFT visualization demo.

There were more, but these were the ones we mashed up the most.

David and Creon's programs were written from scratch and explored the high-end GL pipeline capabilities on the Reality Engine graphics of the Onyx. Rastermasters started after David had written EP, and around the time texture mapping was become a regular part of the Reality Engine. Squish and it's combination of texture distortion through digital feedback were on the bleeding edge. When realtime video textures were added, it became something new again.

I took a different tack. I wasn't as GL savvy as David, nor did I have casual access to an Onyx. To explore, I grabbed demo programs and modified them, usually ones that ran on lower-end machines of the time like the O2, the Indy and the Indigo2. I wrote digital puppets, including one called RiGBy for the band D'Cuckoo, in addition to the dancer program we used in RM.

Eventually we'll get some video up here so you can see yourself.

Just screensavers?

2006-04-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

Over the years when we tried to explain Rastermasters people would invariably come to the conclusion "So you're running screensavers?" Well, no...

The difference is clear if you go through the levels of interaction with the software.

In simplest form, a screensaver runs without interference. It must, because it starts up when no one is around.
Some of these, like the iTunes Visualizer, allow setting configurations and switching between them. This is minor interaction, but satisfying.
If all (or most) parameters of the Visualizer are displayed and can be controlled in real-time, every color, every decay rate, every curve parameter, then you have a realtime graphics performance instrument (RTGPI). Built like this, the whole thing requires experience to control well, especially live to music.

Its like the difference between a car horn, a car horn that plays dixie, and a trumpet.

What it looked like on stage

2006-04-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

raster-masters1
Originally uploaded by creon.levit.

Creon's posted some great photos to the Rastermasters Flickr group. Here's what the setup looked like on stage. The DJ/VJ stations would be to the left/right but are not visible.

Thanks Creon!

Electropaint (tm)

2006-04-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

I wanted to wait for David, but perhaps I can begin talking about the programs we used with...

David's Electropaint, the program that started it all (for us). The first time you see it, the impression is confetti swirling in a glass. As time passes, you realize there's quite a bit more going on. The second thing you realize about Electropaint, sometimes months later, is that it can be started in a mode with controls to work it manually. This is what makes it go beyond a screensaver. Once you can control it, it's a whole other world.

Other than that, explaining Electropaint in words is a useless exercise. I'm looking at building Java applets to explain the ideas behind it, but meantime I suggest downloading and giving it a try.

A version for Windows, including the panel library on which sliders were based, is at this site. There's a version for Mac OSX available from this site but I don't believe it's interactive.

As proof of its elegance, Electropaint's "larger brother" remained one of the mainstay image generating tools for the Rastermasters, even after we'd written other, more complex programs.

The Networked Instrument

2006-04-07T21:23:00.000-07:00

Over time, our computers became more tightly networked during performances.

It started as a practical way to set up. David carried bootable hard drives to the shows in an anti-magnetic case made of "mu metal". Once onsite we'd crank up the Onyxes and do some development (programming) to add new features. Sometimes this would go on until moments before the show, with the producer counting down on headset while we tried to finish a compile and start the program running to generate output. Talk about nerdy excitement...

We used several custom-built Open GL programs (more about these in a future post), but they were so versatile, so capable of producing completely different looking imagery, that we'd often all be running the same program, but with completely different "slider settings."

Given this, David implemented a way for us to share slider settings across the network. If one of us found a "sweet spot" it could be shared as a starting point for another performer.

One of the slider settings we could share was the music's BPM and phase. While this was tapped out manually on the space bar, we also had access to the music directly... at least, to it's power spectrum.

A small "tag along" system listened to audio and MIDI feeds and broadcast them on the network as UDP packets. The audio was encoded as it's FFT analyzed power spectrum. This machine was usually an Indy or O2. It often got set up and buried pretty deep under the cable spaghetti, since we didn't need to touch it during the shows.

An evolution occurred with shared 3D viewpoints. Early on we would fly the viewpiont around to line up 3D scenes "by eye" on separate machines. Maggie then blended them, enhancing and masking problems at the switcher. This worked well for the particle storm and Electropaint in particular. After doing this for several shows we started transmitting SpaceBall "fly-around" parameters on the network. One machine transmitted a viewpoint, and the others followed while applying a local offset.

Over time the network become more and more important to the shows, in future it will be at the core.

What's an Onyx?

2006-04-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

In its heyday, one of the most powerful machines around. Now, a display in the museum.

Check out the pictures here to get an idea of what we had to setup for our shows (three of these).

They were heavy, complex things, but remarkably reliable once you got them started.

A Video System for Live Performance

2006-04-06T11:41:00.000-07:00

Our video system was important for both practical & performance reasons.

As a practical matter, we needed to get what we were doing in Open GL on our desktop onto the big screen over the stage. The Onyx machines had a video "scan out" feature. This is like the TV video output of a modern PC graphics card, which scans out a small view of the larger desktop. The Onyx machines had a few options, but we tried to use professional D1 digital video whenever possible. That signal then needed to be sent to the projector(s).

We didn't always use a screen so wide that it needed to be covered by multiple, side-by-side projectors, but when we did, a video wall processor (not pictured) broke up the signal into subpieces, sometimes stretching them along the way.

The second reason for the video system was as part of the performance. Maggie would watch our computer outputs, blending them together on a commercial video switcher. We typically used "Grass Valley Systems" equipment, which was the cat's patooty when it came to that sort of thing.

Aside from the Onyxes (Onyxen? we never got a definitive literary plural for these beasts) Maggie had live cameras and stock video footage on betacam tape. We tried to keep use of tape to a minimum , except as input to the Onyxes.

Which was another thing Maggie did: route video to us. The Onyx was one of the few machines at the time which could take in video and use it as a texture in Open GL. Our system setup allowed video from cameras, tape, or the other Onyxes to be routed back in as video textures.

Finally, Maggie could act as a kind of conductor (as for an orchestra) if we were going off too far from each other graphically, such that our images didn't blend well any more. One thing not mentioned up to now is that we were all on headset while performing. We'd hear something like, "Ron could you go more red on those particles and shift to the left?"

In the end it was all that, talking on headset, watching the big screen, listening to the music and sharing video inputs, that made it a live group performance.

A Cockpit for Realtime Graphics

2006-04-05T17:52:00.000-07:00

Controlling an SGI Onyx for a live show was tricky. We came up with a setup like this for each person on stage "playing" a computer. By the way, we've always considered everyone a band member who contributed on stage. Sound & video mixing were integral.

While people have tried MIDI or other exotic interfaces we found that a mouse & keyboard handled the algorithmic interfaces to the RM software. We sometimes used a spaceBall to fly in 3d, but that was the exception.

There were two areas on the display, one was an Open GL window with the art being generated, and other areas contained onscreen controls. Two smaller video monitors showed the input video available to the station (we often used live video textures), and the current mix on the screen behind us on stage.

Stage setup

2006-04-05T15:39:00.000-07:00

One interesting thing about the old RM shows was the stage setup, roughly pictured here. We did lots of shows, so its hard to say what was typical.

We had a large, wide screen above & behind us on stage. Putting it up there helped with the ever present problem of"spill light" bouncing off stage and & reducing contrast. It was covered by between two to three projectors. In the early days eidophors & later the Hughes-JVC LCD panel units.

Our sound was spun by a DJ, often Jonathon Nelson, founder of Organic Online.

There would be two or three realtime graphics stations in the middle (David, Creon and Ron) & the VJ/mixer station (Maggie) on the other side.

An interesting thing about the RTGS was a monitor at the front. This way the audience could see each performer's raw video feed before the VJ mixed it up to the main screen. I think David suggested this as a way to let the audience see us "solo" graphically similar to a Jazz band.

2006-04-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

Unlike David I haven't done any graphics gigs since the days of RM. Some contract things with D'Cuckoo in the late 90s, but nothing seriously to music.

The only gear I still have is an O2, sans video card the last five years. The old DAT backup tapes that held software I'd written are unreadable at this point. My SGI DAT drive died years ago and I never did a network backup.

I do have a number of tapes, mostly Beta SP, quite a few PAL. Several VHS copies of shows from Dave. Wanted to copy them to DVD, now to MPEG-4.

So, no garage full of gear, just a shelf in a closet.

The Elephant's Graveyard

2006-04-02T15:39:00.000-07:00

Sony Imageworks had a public auction of surplus equipment. Silicon Graphics Onyx workstations were stacked up like cordwood, waiting to be sold or scrapped. The monitors attracted more interest from buyers...

Still trying to add RMs as team bloggers

2006-04-02T14:37:00.000-07:00

I've tried several times to add other RMs as team members of this blog. Took about five tries with David. Tried twice for Maggie and once for everyone else.

What you get for free I suppose...

2006-04-02T14:25:00.000-07:00

Interesting that you still have video switching gear David. That stuff was so vital for our shows during the 1990s. I remember hours of jetlagged "fun" setting up for the shows in Germany. Off the plane, drive to the show site, then immediately start unpacking boxes and cabling up. Didn't you have a picture of me asleep with screwdriver in hand, still pointed at the back of some rack? ;-)

One of us should post a diagram of the stage setup and block diagram of how the gear was connected (video and network).

Other work: Complexification

2006-04-02T14:22:00.000-07:00

Hey RMs, have you seen this web site?

http://www.complexification.net/

Inspiring stuff!

2006-03-25T21:58:00.000-08:00

well, going through some rather intense shit just now. I think we have finally listed our house for sale. This is without having another one to buy. The new place is bigger floor plan but less space for video crap, that is, crap of all forms, so Claire and I have been jettisoning things left and right. I did find a few VHS video tapes along with all the beta stuff that I can't play. Of course, we gave away our TV's. So it will be a while before I can watch even the VHS.

but I'm agonizing (a bit) over what video equipment to keep. I've put together a multi-level composite switcher out of junk I found on eBay. It's pretty funny, three different Panasonic mixers and three tremedous boat-anchors of frame syncs. It's medium cool, you can dissolve from two different combinations of three layers. I also have two (and a backup) of these incredibly nice YEM scan convertors for getting my computer output into my video switching system. Absolutely beautiful color and depth of intensity gradation. Kind of a shame that I use the composite outs on these things. These also weigh approximately a million pounds centigrade.

So it took a while to find all this crap, and build the cables and find racks and time it all, so I think I will keep it a little longer. But moving it around has really inspired me to write all the video compositing stuff in software. Still going to be a little difficult to do what I can do with the switchers. I think I have worn Claire down to the point where it can stand in the garage for a while at least. She's amazingly tolerant, although there are bursts of vitriol aimed at all this junk I have.

More about recent work in subsequent posts. (good intentions at least)

2006-03-23T11:50:00.000-08:00

We can leave the tabloid stuff about the RMs to others ;-) I'm sure we can write about, shows, technologies, etc. which are of personal interest without "getting personal."

Based on the difficulty of getting the blogger "Team Member" invite to David, I will try to add Maggie, Creon and Jonathon, etc. by emailing them first to let them know the invite is coming. Each person can create a post after accepting the invite to acknowledge they're onboard.

Hey! I like the idea of using empty subject lines for chatter, and subject headings for discussion topics.

2006-03-22T20:59:00.000-08:00

rasteroids: aloha from the great beyond. I suppose since this is a public-readable blog we should probably keep ersonal, unrelated, off-track stuff out of here, but I think that would eliminate pretty much everything I want to talk about. Ron, I think we should get Klaus on here, and pigboy. And Dawna. Got contacts?

What the heck?

2006-03-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

What's a Rastermaster? What's the plural? The singular definition is a circuit board comprising the last stage of the graphics hardware pipeline in a Silicon Graphics Onyx computer. The plural is several people from in and outside of SGI (Silicon Graphics at the time) who formed what they called a "Visual Band".

We got up on stage, plugged in our instruments and played. The "instruments" were high-end Silicon Graphics workstations, Video mixing systems and DJ turntables. Sometimes we performed ourselves, and sometimes with musicians like Herbie Hancock. Eventually they called us "the SGI house band". We once played for 12 hours straight, in front of an audience of 20,000 people and live on European television. The gigs went on for several years before the cost, both personal and monetary, become too difficult to bear. The band faded.

About a week ago we all had dinner together for the first time in nearly ten years. As someone there commented, it was like we picked up a conversation that had never really stopped.

That's what this blog is: a way for us to continue the conversation, about what we did, how we did it, and about where we might go next.