VVV-VJ - Dual User Remote A/V Control For Live Performances

After completeing my first installation using VVVV, House Party, and exhibiting it at Imerge I have started my second patch. VVV-VJ (as it is prenimally called) is design to allow two users to access and control a/v on a hub computer from two satelite computers through OSC. So far this includes 5 video channels (two for one user, two for the other and one main although these can be switched) with speed control and a seperate overlaying video channel with luma/alpha control for masking. This is designed for use in my VJ partnership State Of The Art Human Being but I'll post it up here in the spirit of VVVV as soon as I have created all the functionality I require ie. tap tempo, midi input, video thumbnails.

House Party - Interactive Narrative/Audio Installation

House Party is an interactive installation that uses the intuitive interface of a traditional dolls house, albeit with anthropomorphized characters, to explore a narrative with multiple plot threads. By placing characters face to face spectators can listen into conversations in order to navigate the story and find out more information about events.

Inspired by the techniques of Victorian ‘Ingénieurs’ (the engineers behind magicians)and the imagery of contemporary Japanese designers such as Nagi Noda, the artist created a piece that augments the computer with the internal mechanics of a modern illusory toy. An exploration of author Arthur C. Clarke's third law, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The installation uses the fidicial tracking patch developed by the Reactable team in 2003 to create their collaborative electronic music instrument. A webcam set in the hollow plinth of the installation points up, looking through the perspex floor of the dolls house tracking fidicial markers placed on the bases of characters. This allows VVVV to determine the x and y postions of characters as well as their orientation.

VVVV passes these values to Adobe Director through the OSC encoder to the OSCXtra plugin. Depending on characters orientation and distances from one another different audio clips are triggered giving the effect of conversations between the House Party guests.