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CONTAKT 

(2008) 

was a series of interactive performance events to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Richie Hawtin's label Minus. Ali M. Demirel, Hawtin's visualist, produced the show's video and also interacted with the audience.

Ali: This year we are doing a series of events called CONTAKT which has the concept of communicating with the audience on an advanced level. We have an interactive cube at the event, members with RFID cards who come to the event and identify themselves will be displayed in my visuals.

A member comes to the event, approaches the cube, waves his RFID card, the cube identifies him, and the name is written to a file on the Mac Mini connected to the cube. I am connected to that Mac Mini via network cable, and I use the Kineme FileTools "String With URL" Patch, insert the network IP address of the Mac Mini, read that file with the name of the member, and integrate it with a Quartz Composition I have. I trigger and mix Quartz Compositions via VDMX in my performance. I don't do immediate triggering of the identified name because sometimes they don't fit in with the image I perform, so when I see a new identification, I wait for the right moment and trigger it.

Before our first performance, I had some cache issues with that Kineme patch — it was not displaying the latest name sometimes. I posted this issue on the Kineme forum, Christopher added an "Update" input to that patch, and it worked perfectly at the show!

In the first video, you also see another Kineme plug-in based composition used for my live visuals — I took a ParticleTools sample composition and adapted it to my visual set.

In the second video you can see the cube, and how it reacts by changing color and flashing when someone holds up their RFID chipcard.  

 

Beth: Can you explain about the way this cube interacts and how it was set up?

 

Ali: The visual patterns on the cube are not directly controlled by me — we are thinking about this development for the next release of the cube. At the moment, those patterns are controlled by the Mac Mini which is connected to the cube, simply changing patterns when there is an interaction like identification, upload, or download.

 

Beth: Which of the visuals are pre-rendered and which are generated live/interactively?

 

Ali: I use 2 laptops and a video mixer to produce the final output. One of them runs only Processing compositions, and the other runs VDMX triggering Quartz Compositions. Each composition has some variables which I can control manually or via MIDI. I also receive MIDI information from Richie Hawtin's mixer and assign it to some variables. However, mostly, I follow the music and match it manually. A good example would be the Kineme ParticleTools Quartz Composition titled "Fire" — I use this because it gives me very rich graphics and dynamics. 

 

CONTAKT, processing, Live Visuals, Interactive

Reading

Audio.Visual - On Visual Music and Related Media (2009) by Cornelia Lund and Holger Lund (Eds.) is divided into two sections: the first deals with the academic discussion on the subject of visual music; the second introduces contemporary paradigms of audio-visual praxis in brief presentations and contextualises them. Apart from being a guide in the historical sense, this new volume provides theoretical approaches to understanding and making visual music. (Fluctuating Images)

The Art of Projectionism (2007) by Frederick Baker (in German) sets out the principles behind his use of projectors in the film making process. He defines a projectionist school of filmmaking and media art. In this publication he also presented Ambient film, a surround experience that can be shown in specially developed cinemas. (Wikipedia)

Links

 

SEE ALSO

META/DATA: A Digital Poetics (2007) by pioneering digital artist Mark Amerika mixes (and remixes) personal memoir, net art theory, fictional narrative, satirical reportage, scholarly history, and network-infused language art. META/DATA is a playful, improvisatory, multitrack digital sampling of Amerika's writing from 1993 to 2005 that tells the early history of a net art world gone wild while simultaneously constructing a parallel poetics of net art that complements Amerika's own artistic practice. (The MIT Press)

Perceptio (2011) by PMP is an audiovisual concert that investigates the state of our perception towards pollution and climate change in a local context. Perceptio combines cinematics and generative art/ animation with sound and music that is a whole, inseparable from one another. Collecting sound and visual samples from various parts of Singapore, these field recordings are then harmoniously combined with computer generated visuals and sounds to create an immersive experience. (PMP)

Reza Ali is a designer/ technologist/ hybrid who is interested in everything from design to biology to art. He is interested in human computer interaction (interaction design), architecture/ product design, software, mobile technology/ hacking, generative visuals, algorithmic art, data visualization, audio-visual interactive immersive environments, new media tools for DJs/ VJs/ Performers, Trans-Architecture, photography, graphic design, user interfaces, electronics, 3D animation, modeling, rendering and scripting. (Reza Ali)

Robert Hodgin is a commercial designer and artist from Boston, Massachusetts. He was the co-founder and Creative Director at the Barbarian Group. Robert Hodgin's creative outlet is flight404.com, an interactive experimental Flash site that has also garnered him international recognition. His work has been featured in virtually every major design magazine. Robert earned a bachelor's of fine arts degree in sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design. (Austin Museum of Digital Art)

Advanced Beauty (2007) was curated by Universal Everything and musician Simon Pyke. Advanced Beauty is an international collaboration and ongoing exploration of digital artworks born and influenced by sound. (Universal Everything)