In the last blogpost, we spoke to Max about the process of content development for his AV album “Emergence”. In this second part, we understand his equipment, live setups, life philosophies & much more. [fold][/fold]

One of the things we have been curious about is how his rig “flows” live. It takes a sweet mash of hardware and software to achieve a perfect sync and, at the same time, the flexibility to freestyle.

Let me explain it from an information-flow perspective.


First, I have my midi controllers, the APC40 and Lemur on iPad, and sometimes the Novation Launch Control XL, mainly for when I’m doing surround sound and/or Aether live shows:



In addition to my usual visual set up, I send midi control information into Ableton in order to launch clips, trigger percussive sounds, work with glitch effects, delays, reverbs etc., and to work with EQs and filters – all the normal Ableton live controls. I also send midi to Ableton for some visual-only controls, such as my effects matrices, whereby I can assign any combination of many different visual effects to link to the filter cut off frequency of one particular filter, for example.


All of the visual controls for my live show arrive via Ableton and OSC over ethernet cable, whether they actually do anything to the audio or not. This allows me to continually work on the audio-visual interface, so that I can constantly try to improve the link between the audio and visual.

I’m always thinking – “OK I want to do this particular glitch effect or audio transition with a delay, or whatever, but how should that particular sound, look?”


Then, the next challenge is to figure out how I can make it work in Arena.

Luckily for me Arena, has a lot of effects and modulation options, so I’ve managed to find some nice mapping techniques which are in line with the concepts I’m trying to show i.e. how simple building blocks come together to create complex beautiful outcomes i.e. emergence. This is a very old video about this, but hopefully still relevant:



There is another, more practical, reason why I send all my controls through Ableton en route Resolume, which is that I can use Max for Live devices to map the control curves – it may be that I want a particular graining effect to come in as I filter in a sound, but maybe a 1:1 mapping of the filter cut off to the grain fade parameter doesn’t quite work. In fact, what I found was that 1:1 mappings rarely felt natural. So, I use hundreds of Max for Live devices for changing the mapping correspondences.

Sometimes a straight line needed to map to a shallow, or sharp, curve; or map to a limit less than the highest value on the receiving end. I use Max for Live’s old API tools for these jobs, although there are plenty more parameter to parameter tools out there which do the same sorts of jobs, some where you can draw in the correspondences yourself. I spent ages on this side of the set-up, trying to create something I could jam with just like I was playing an audio-only set, with my usual glitching and chopping approaches, but whereby the visual would also follow in sync and in style.


That is really interesting.Tell us what made you start working with Resolume. Are there any features that you particularly like? Anything you would like to see more of?

I came to the software with little experience of using visual tools and I found it a pleasure to use, and a very powerful tool for my live shows. If I wanted to do something, I could pretty much do it.

It has mainly been the suite of effects that has enabled this, I have about 70 different effects on my composition channel that I can quickfire trigger live for beautiful fun glitch mayhem on top of the video renders which already contain plenty of their own glitch:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PMJihr4nY8 [/video]

I’m also now doing more and more multi-screen immersive visual shows where I’m projecting 3 or more surfaces around the audience, which Arena is amply set up for achieving.



I have to admit I haven’t had time to try Arena 6 yet, and I know there is a new Ableton communications technique, which may open some doors for me. The one thing I’ve struggled with in the past has been getting a consistent and tight sync between Live and Arena, which may well have been solved with Arena 6 already.

Oh I’d definitely like to see more effects! I love my visual effects, and I’ll use as many as you can provide, all at the same time until it’s a right nice mess.

Boy do we love a good ol' effects mash.
Tell us a little more about your controllers and glitch creators. How do you manage to intricately control the effects and glitches in the visuals with the audio?

I’m using Lemur to trigger glitch sounds like live drumming, and each different sound triggers a different visual effect via the pathway from midi controller to Ableton Live, to OSC trigger via Max for Live mapping devices and the Resolume Parameter forwarder over ethernet cable between the two laptops.

Then, I also have filter cut off frequencies on glitch sounds linked to glitchy audio effects, so that I can smoothly introduce audio-visual glitchyness in addition to the sharp glitchyness of the live Lemur drumming. And I can assign many different combinations of visual effects to a single filter cut off frequency, so that I can do similar audio glitching with very different visual glitching effect.


I know particularly tracks and videos are better suited to one or other type of effect or combination of effects, and every show I experiment with these combinations to find little tricks for each part.

Tell us about your Studio. What’s on your wish list & anything in there that you would like to change/ upgrade?

At the moment, I’m all about my Dave Smith Instruments and loads of random guitar effects pedals mainly. I used to do everything digitally though so I’m not on the analogue bandwagon, just enjoying the wagon for now. My staples being the Prophet 6, the Prophet 08, the Juno 6, The Moog Sub 37, Moog Miniature and still plenty of Henke’s trusty Operator for soft synth sketches, and plenty of NI software – Absynth, Guitar Rig, Razor etc.


Pedal-wise, I’m loving my Fairfield Circuitry units I discovered on a recent Montreal trip, and have been putting the Meet Maude and Shallow Water to lots of use.

I love the classic Roland RE201 space echo tape delay too, and the Moogerfooger Ring Mod and Midi Murf. And for full on analogue pedal mayhem the Industrialectric DM-1N and Echo Degrador, and the WMD Geiger Counter. And the Strymon Big Sky for a beautiful Plate reverb simulation.


As for what I want to have – a Jupiter 8! But I can’t afford it, it’s got ridiculous how much they’re going for. So, I’m mainly focused on finding unusual pedals and experimenting with pedal combos.

My most recent upgrade was the Genelec 8050’s from the 8040’s, they’re lovely monitors in my opinion, nice and full and soft and round, both physically and audibly! That’s why I upgraded directly to the next model.

Sweet. That rig sounds nice and heavy.
And finally, any pearls of wisdom for our budding AV artists out there?

I spend most of my time reading science and philosophy books rather than listening to music or reading about work in the arts. It’s those ideas which are the starting points of most of my new projects. The same goes for my video briefs, I’m mainly just trying to convey what I think is exciting and inspiring about a particular idea, with the hope that a video artist might share some of my thoughts and feelings.


For me, too much of the AV and computational art scene is based around the endpoint aesthetic, just making something look cool for the sake of it. The same goes for music. That’s why I’m trying to work with ideas that I love for a more meaningful reason, to enrich the process, harness the inherent value of nature, push me in new directions creatively, and so that I can use each project to learn more about the world.

So, to answer your question more succinctly, I don’t use storyboards most of the time, but instead just try to put across the ideas and feelings I want to convey so that the video artist can express themselves with plenty of room for experimentation. That approach also lends itself well to the sorts of ideas we’re working with, which are often abstract and without the need for characters and traditional narratives.


And my suggestion to help people grow as artists would be to find what it is that makes you, you. Art is a process of making that tangible, and everyone is different, so you can find your niche by being honest with yourself.


So well said.

Throughout Emergence, Max’ love and understanding of science is so evident. There is such a beautiful balance between hard scientific data visualizations and artistic representations of scientific theories, it’s really the sweet spot between hard core science and artistic interpretation.
And so, before we sign off, Max, we must ask you: What comes first for you- Science or Art?

I’m glad you mentioned that it is “artistic representations”, as sometimes it can sound too much like a science lecture, which it absolutely isn’t. It’s about the art hiding in there in science, and plenty of artistic interpretations and maximal artistic license applied to scientific ideas. I actually did a lecture about all of this recently, which is online here:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFjIk_CnRUM [/video]

It’s been a fun process and I can see that there is a lot more potential in working with these sorts of links between fields. While I won’t be adding to the Emergence project specifically, but instead I am working on some new wide-ranging concepts which drive music and visual creation, and my live shows.

Lots more to follow soon about those projects, if you want to find out as they arrive then drop your email onto my website and I’ll send you previews of each project as it comes

Also, one final note, all of the collaborations, credits and ideas, along with stills and videos, are on the Emergence mini-site here.

Photo by Alex Kozobolis

Speaking to Max about science, art, his thoughts & everything else in between has been nothing short of inspiring.

As our good friend & avid Resolume user Albert Einstein says, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

So, go ahead! Imagine. Create. And, of course, tell us about it :)

We keep them doggies rollin' with another Resolume release, version 6.0.9.

In April, Adobe stopped supporting Quicktime codecs in their software so it became impossible to render Quicktime files with the DXV codec across the entire Adobe family. We grabbed that bull by the horns and created Adobe exporter (and importer) plugins for DXV. This means you can now render to DXV straight from After Effects, Premiere Pro and Media Encoder.

Resolume 6.0.9 has over a dozen bug fixes and a couple of small but sexy new features. You can now create presets for colour palettes. On top of that, you can see some mighty fine lookin' previews in the popup for both the envelope and these new colour palette presets. Yihaw.


Now move 'em out head 'em up get 'em up & download.

[fold][/fold]
New
#11169 Envelope Preset Preview
#11167 Envelope keyframe multi-select
#10870 Color Palette Presets
#11134 Hold shift to constrain envelope keyframe along vertical and horizontal axes
#11006 Select next/previous slice with Tab key
#11010 Add 'Show in File Browser' to Clip and Track Menu
#11324 Add Alley 1.0.1 to Avenue & Arena Installers
#11325 Add Adobe Importer & Exporters to Avenue & Arena Installers

Fixed
#10387 Appcrash changing decks with camera sources
#11335 Appcrash renaming Lumiverse and Screen
#10551 Appcrash clicking on Clip menu while deck still loading
#11278 Appcrash clicking to show param animation dropdown for a clip that's playing form another deck
#10829 Appcrash while recording in VCRUNTIME140!memcpy : 135
#11118 Appcrash dropping slice/fixture from slices panel to composition if slice is smaller than 1 px in a direction.
#11052 Possible Appcrash when using Spout (Arena!ra::SpoutVideoSource::render : 76)
#11185 Spout clip disappears from composition when you preview the spout clip's duplicate
#7588 HAP Q not yet fully implemented
#10972 SMPTE icon missing from clip
#11096 Command+A in shortcut editing can cause appcrash
#11032 Two nanoKONTROL2's / MIDI controllers connected no worky
#11164 OSC: Shaper source Shape1 and Shape2 type can only be set to Circle and Ring via OSC
#11161 OSC: clip transport can't be set to SMPTE, int 2-3 sets transport to BPM sync
#11141 OSC query does not return on the same address
#11021 OSC "Selected..." OSC output option disappears from list when you select a value - for layers and groups
#10997 OSC Group select messages are not sent
#10993 OSC Selected Group target doesn't follow selection
#10988 OSC /composition/direction int 2, and 3 not effective to set to paused and random, they set direction to forwards

Photo by J. Rosenberg

Max Cooper is not your average electronic producer. With a PHD in Computational Biology, Max is what we like to call an Audio-Visual Scientist. Through his work he tries to bridge the gap, or reinforce the deep-seeded relationship between science, art and music. A look through his work and you realize how successful he has been. [fold][/fold]

From his experiments with a 4D sound system using Max4Live & Abelton to his first album Human in 2014, Max’ work has been cutting edge, beyond meaningful and focused on a wholesome approach to music as opposed to one that is purely auditory.


On 20th September 2018, Max is dropping his third studio album- One Hundred Billion Sparks. As per Max, each and every one of us are one hundred billion sparks. One hundred billion neurons that fire feelings and ideas, that make us different yet connected. Deep, right? You can check out the first single from this album here.
But before we dive into this one, we caught up with Max to get the scoop on his second studio project and AV show- Emergence.


Emergence as a concept is remarkable. It focuses on different properties of nature and what it can give rise to, or what can “emerge” from it- not just on a physical level but also a mathematical & functional level. It finds art in simple natural processes, something we might be quick to take for granted or disregard.

Photo by Alex Kozobolis

Emergence is divided into multiple chapters- each chapter a different representation of the universe and its evolution from the distant past to the future. All the visual content is so well interwoven with the audio that naturally the question arises, What comes first the audio or the visual?

The concept for the project came first, which then spawned many visual and musical ideas. The narrative form and the fact that it needed to be a live music show, meant that there was already a lot of structure imposed before I had started on the musical or visual specifics – for example, I knew that humans were eventually going to emerge later on in proceedings down the universe timeline, and that things were going to start to get darker as complex forms of subjugation, and the like, came along.


So, I knew how it needed to progress musically too, which also fitted with a live show arc of increasing musical intensity. There were these sorts of macro structures to work to from the start as I began to pull together a palette of rough ideas.


Then there were all the specific chapters, the different science-related ideas, that I thought would lend themselves to the story, and to beautiful visualization. They were designed to fit the macro-arc of the show, and each to also tell their own micro-story of emergence.



For example, the emergence of the first cell structures with the audio track “origins”, which fits into the wider part of the narrative of the emergence of life, which fits into the wider story of the emergence of the universe and all of its complexities. Sometimes I would create a piece of music with a particular part of the story in mind, sometimes I would send the concept to a visual artist and receive visual drafts to which I would score the music.



I’m often asked to describe the audio-visual link more specifically, people want to know what the process is. I can describe the explicit links between the scientific ideas and the visuals in detail, as we can absorb a lot of varied information from visuals and the mapping is usually quite straightforward.


But if you try to map data to music you invariably make a non-musical mess – we have tight constraints over the data-format for music. But what music can do better than data (usually) is convey emotion. And that’s how I’ve always written music anyway, I’ve never had formal training, and have always approached each piece of music by an emotive-optimization process: I have an image or idea in my head and I know what feeling I have associated with that image or idea. I then have to keep sculpting the melodic form and sound design until the feeling it creates is aligned with that of the image or idea.


It’s a bit of a mysterious process, but we all feel things which are associated with different ideas or scenes, so it’s something anyone can do, it just takes a lot of time.


Perhaps the fact that I approached music like that from the start, lent itself to visual work, although again, the links are subjective, so I don’t think it’s so hard to do. The most interesting part in this process for me, was the links to science and nature visually, and the research process of delving into the themes, by which I learnt a lot of artistically inspiring things (Read more about this here)


From visual representations of hard core mathematical data to artistic illustrations of real phenomenon like the big bang; from deliciously cringe-worthy depictions of the emergence of microorganisms to quirky infographic portrayals of humans; from cool facial mapping with Kinect to a good old fractal zoom ending, with a twist- Emergence has it all.

Can you tell us a few different software/ tools the visual artists you work with use to create content?

I can only give a generalized overview rather than getting too specific. But the main approaches were as follows:

1. Traditional video tools like Cinema4D and AfterEffects: As used by Nick Cobby. Plus, he uses Processing.



In the case of Morgan Beringer, he uses Adobe creative suite tools also.



2. Programming approaches using Matlab, C++ etc: This was when I was working with scientists or mathematicians who use these tools for their work. Dugan Hammock used Matlab (for ‘The Primes’) to render my requests for Sacks Spiral, Riemann’s Zeta Function and the Sieve of Eratosthenes.


Andy Lomas used C++ for his cell morphology simulations.



Csilla Varnai from the Babraham institute, well, I’m not sure what they used for their process of gathering DNA binding sequences from real Hi-C chromosomal conformation capture experiments, but I’d guess C++ (See next video)

3. Gaming engines, specifically Unreal: As used by Andy Lomas to map the DNA structural data to a 3D environment with which we could render video content as well as interact with the DNA molecules in VR.



4. Hand-drawn animation was used by Henning M Lederer as well as Sabine Volkert. Sabine hand drew every frame of the Organa video!



That is just amazing. So, Emergence is a product of 3 years of hard work and ideation and a fruit of the labor of a wide range of visual artists. It might be hard, but can you pick one or a couple of your favorite bits of content from the lot? What are you particularly happy with/ didn’t expect to turn out so good?

I was heavily involved in some of the video projects, directing the content and having long discussions over how to move forward on the ideas. Whereas for some of them I just sent the concept and brief to the visual artist and they nailed it with minimal additional input. One of my favorite examples of this, where the concept also fitted neatly into the musical form too, was the chapter/track called “order from chaos”, with the video created by Maxime Causeret.


I was playing with an explicit emergence technique musically for this part, where I had recorded random raindrop sounds during a storm, and was then gradually forcing these percussive hits towards quantized grid positions during the intro, to yield an emergent rhythm from the rain, around which the rest of the track was built – order from chaos.



Maxime applied the idea to early life with beautiful effect, showing complex cell structures and simple life forms, plus other emergent behaviors – murmurations, competition for resources etc, in a very artistic and colorful manner. It’s a great merger of different worlds, and was an exciting surprise to receive his first draft.

Personally, my favorite bits of content are those that involve science & simulation- the awesome visual representations of scientific data.


Those are definitely my favorite bits of content too. Can you tell us a little bit about working with computer-generated simulations? How much of a hit and a miss is it working with simulators and data entry?

Andy Lomas’ cell growth simulations already existed before my project, he is a mathematician and artist who has been working with generative art techniques for many years, and I was just lucky to have his work put in front of me by a mutual friend, upon which I started some very interesting conversations and collaborations which are still ongoing now. It just happened that Andy’s work fitted perfectly with what I was aiming for with the project.

Whereas with Dugan, the process worked in the opposite direction – there had been several animations I wanted for some time and which I had asked many visual artists about, and found that they couldn’t do what was needed, and I needed to find a mathematician instead.

One of these ideas was that of showing higher dimensional forms – structures that exist in more than 3 dimensions of space, for the part of the story about spatial dimensionality.



And, the other main chapter of relevance here is the first chapter, on the distribution of the prime numbers. Because I was working with a mathematician rather than a typical visual artist here, we chose to minimize and simplify the visual form to its basics, black and white wireframe representations of the data. The Chromos chapter also used real data.

But all in all, there wasn’t too much “hit and miss” involved. Nature seems to be inherently beautiful, so we just had to be true to nature’s form and it worked.

Staying true to Nature’s divine form. Believing and falling in love with Nature’s perfect imperfections. That is what Max is about :)

Photo by Alex Kozobolis

With all of this amazing content, it is but natural that Max had to develop a cracker of a live show. People often describe his show as “hypnotic”- something which is only possible with some great blurring of the lines between audio & video. Of course, his setup was never going to be standard. We cover all of this and more in the next part, so stay tuned.

Notes from Max:

1) A big thanks to Vimeo for being so supportive of the Emergence project.
2) All of the collaborations, credits and ideas, along with stills and videos, are on the Emergence mini-site here
3) If you want updates on my projects as they arrive, drop your email onto my website and I’ll send you previews of each project as it comes.

Start of the week with some fresh pixels.

Cytology by Catmac
As cells divide and recombine, life continues to evolve.

Get Cytology from Resolume Footage

Geometrika by Videomaster
The use of volumetric lighting in this pack is nothing short of spectacular

Get Geometrika from Resolume Footage

BlackDancer by Chromosoom
Infuse some class into your set.

Get BlackDancer from Resolume Footage

We've only heard about Compton in rap songs but like Eazy-E, we did get the 8 ball rolling. Here is Resolume Avenue & Arena 6.0.8. This version has more than 40 ounces of bug fixes and is packing some nice additions to the Parameter Envelopes. You can now create envelope presets. Edit the parameters of an envelope keyframe and when you're done fold it to make it smaller.


Now don't drink brass monkey but get funky on the 6.0.8 download.

New
9153 Envelope Presets
8682 Envelope Keyframe Parameters
10526 Envelope Folding
10970 Slice Transform, allow flipping in Mask mode
9668 Can i has F2 to rename a screen/slice?

Fixed
10883 Resolume indentifies two displays as the same on PC
11038 Clip loading hangs on a grey bar
11024 MM can't relocate files which have & (&) character in the original file path
11062 Input & Output Guide when importing image stays blank
11013 After duplicating a clip, you cannot add effects to the original
10919 Cannot select stereo FFT input.
10978 Group dashboard assignment is broken
10953 MM: Relocate by double click doesn't work
10957 Alley shortcut on desktop points to wrong folder
11224 Instant app crash Shift + dragging clip onto layer's playing clip thumbnail slot
11187 Layer master fader dashboard assignments are bound to the composition dashboard on reload
11212 Decklink mini hdmi signal contains transparency
10954 Distribution of DMX values over ParamChoice is incorrect
11014 Allow reordering of decks without switching
10991 When you set a clip to SMPTE timeline, the time remaining label initially displays milliseconds
10989 Envelope: if Value is at max you can't edit it anymore using the spinner
10987 Autopilot incorrectly triggers action after being reenabled and clip has been around the block
10976 Don't render a VirtualOutputDevice if its texture is not being used
10964 Add a 'Blur Distance' parameter to the Blur plugin that acts as a multiplier to 'Blur X Distance' and 'Blur Y Distance'
10912 slide effect shows black gap between texture instances when animated.
10904 Fix last used layout not being restored on restart
10873 Hue jumps back to 0 when saturation is 0
10724 Crop effect on a layer: Right and Bottom max out on composition reopen to 1920 and 1080
10722 OSC mapping: clip in/out points have the same address as the playhead, they can't be changed this way.
10658 Weird result when envelope is first applied without automation
10542 Slice input list gets messed up when screen and layer/group names are the same as screen names
10176 OSC: composition/layers//clips//connect not launching clips when getting selectedclip/connect at the same time
9883 OSC output all preset doesn't output /composition/layers/position
8848 group audio/vst source not cleared corretly after audio clip eject
7674 Envelope editor, placing several points to the most left or right edge, the lines connecting the dots disappear
11000 After duplicating a clip it can't be replaced any more by dragging a file to it's clip slot
11174 Shaper Source controls can't be assigned to dashboard
11029 The NanoKontrol MIDI preset does not actually do what we says it does
11041 Don't set audio device type from input device combobox
11163 OSC: Shaper source Shape1 and Shape2 OSC addresses are incorrect

Ultra Music Festival is a technology lover’s Disneyland. Every year, the month of March has all eyes on Miami: Artists showcasing fresh sounds and music; Visual artists showcasing fresh content & mad skills; festival organizers showcasing new heights of production design; and fans showcasing new levels of outrageous clothing. The festival has it all.[fold][/fold]

Photo by Rudgr.com

A close look at the Main Stage over the years tells us one thing: It is a visual artist’s wildest dreams come true. With super complex rigs, a robust mega structure to hold it all and processing power to tickle our nerd parts, it is always a really well-designed canvas where visual artists can come and show off. And man, do they come all guns blazing.

This year’s stage was remarkably symmetric. Not just left to right but also top to bottom. We especially liked the L’ shaped LED mesh columns that were used to create a massive X. Arranged in a way to make full use of the Z axis, with the ‘L’ shape, the designers ensured no gaps in the LED- no matter what angle you view the stage from.

Photo by Rudgr.com

A small almost unnoticeable detail, but this makes all the difference in the world for an LED heavy stage. The countless pixel strips and a massive lighting & laser inventory perfectly added the cherry to the top.

Photo by Rudgr.com

In our Ultra series of blogposts, we take a look into what went down in making the enormous Main stage, this 20th year of Ultra, a reality. To start off with, our go- to person is, of course, Vello Virkhaus – Resident VJ at Ultra Worldwide for over 15 years.

Vello in the mix: Photo by Eric Mintzer

A genius in anything related to pixels and visual production, Vello & V Squared Labs are real pioneers and have been such an integral part of making Ultra reach the technological heights it’s achieved.

Photo by Eric Mintzer

Thank you for doing this, Vello! Let’s get right into it.

How long have you been on this crazy ride with Ultra?

I have been associated with Ultra as a VJ and visual art talent resource for close to 20 years. Time flies when you are having fun!

Over these past 20 years I have seen so much growth in the visual arts community, having met visual artists from around the world, touring with the Ultra family.

Ultra Japan 2016

Ultra Brazil 2016: Photo by Rukes

Talk to us about this growth. What has stuck with you the most?

During the formative years of Ultra, I would VJ from opening till closing, performing 12 hour sets, back to back with very few guest VJ’s. This was an epic journey with wild weather thrown in, to say the least. I used to have management deliver artist visuals on DVDs and VHS tapes. Artists like Armin and Paul Van Dyke used to provide me with visual loop DVD’s, some containing logos on blue backgrounds so I could key them out on my analog switcher to layer over additional elements. Most of my show was standard definition and was still partially mixed off tapes.

Looking back to these early days feels like the dark ages now. This is just an example of the remarkable growth that has occurred. We have come such a long way in our technology and methods of expression. Look at the Armin show now, and see how much the visual art and music scene has exploded globally.

Ultra Miami 2012

Another visible sign of growth has been the increased scale of the production and audience attendance. There was a time when rave culture was illegal and not commercially acceptable. There was a time when Ultra had only one 16x9 LED screen on stage as a backdrop with two flanking IMAG screens stage right and left. Maybe 100 tiles max. Now the main stage is 1587 LED tiles. WHOA. I still remember protesting for the Right to Dance and VJ’ing the night away at illegal warehouse raves in Chicago. Look at us now.

Ultra Miami 2016

That is an incredible story. Look at us now, indeed.
So Circa 2018, let’s talk about the creative process behind the stage and content.

For content creation, I typically get animated materials from Luis Torres, Ultra's animation lead. The process involves a technical review and then a final delivery. I usually get 10-15 pixel mapped animations which I incorporate into all the change- over looks throughout the day. This process has been established and in effect for many years now.

Luis Torres, Ultra Music Festival

Luis Torres, Ultra Music Festival

Luis Torres, Ultra Music Festival

I also program custom generative effects using the Macro Editor/Panel Effects and Chasers/Tracers systems in Crescent Sun. The combination of pixel mapped content layered with architectural, generative panel based visuals makes for some good looks, and lots of possibilities.

I also curate content from my visuals library, along with integrating artist visuals for every Ultra. My approach has always been to group content into large theme banks, and to make sure I have enough, stylistic variation in the main project to hop across aesthetic choices in a rapid manner.

For Ultra Miami 2018, I used Resolume 6 along with Crescent Sun as the primary media server package. I use Resolume to quickly trigger columns of preset mixes, running in 8 layers x 200 columns of content for my primary deck. I capture Resolume into Crescent Sun via a magewell capture card, along with IMAG cameras. The combination of the two different programs (Touch & Resolume) has always been my jam.

When it comes to the all things Stage design, Richard Milstein is the mastermind behind Ultra’s unique stages, of late. I know he currently collaborates closely with Ray Steinman and The Activity/Patrick Deirson for rendering, production and lighting design.
As the House VJ, I really enjoy the canvas I am provided to paint on.

Main Stage Render by The Activity

And how much LED went into this colossal canvas?

A LOT!

The video was 50 ft (15 mtr) high by about 150 ft (45 mtr) wide.

Most of the stage was made up of 8 mm tiles. The columns and top fingers was 37mm.

With the Upstage Video Wall, UMF logo, DJ Booth & IMAG there were around 1240 x 8 mm tiles & 350 x 37 mm tiles for the columns and top fingers.


Wow. That’s close to a 1000 sq mtr (10,000 sq ft) of LED. Massive massive.
You guys seemed to process all of that like child’s play..

For processing AG provided the Barco e2 as the primary screen management tool. It easily handled the complex number of HDMI / DisplayPort inputs and outputs.

The e2 also provided the ability to have multiple preview monitors setup so guest VJ's could view their signals and check pixel maps before they go live. The e2 is very low latency at 1 frame or less for progressive sources.

When our international vendors do not have Barco technology, we also integrate the Analog Way Ascender units.

Running one of the biggest festival stages around the world, you obviously face an onslaught of guest VJs running timecode, live feed and inputs to LED processors- How do you handle the madness?

Overall, we have been trying to consolidate and group 1920 HD outputs into 4k signals to reduce the number of cables needed at FOH, per setup. There are usually 3-4 VJ positions at each Ultra around the world, which have ethernet for TC, audio PGM and HD-SDI for camera feeds as well as inputs to processors.

Ultra Miami 2018- Pixel Map 1

Ultra Miami 2018- Pixel Map 2

My solution to the FOH craziness was to create an Ultra VJ rider that we can distribute to the various production vendors around the world. This combined with effective artist rider review and solid team communication makes the experience flow smoothly. With the rider and emails our teams know exactly what everyone needs/wants and can provide enough runs to accommodate all artists way ahead of time.

Coordinating it is definitely tough, and could not be done without the help of Ray Steinman and the awesome production team from Ultra.

When you’re pushing so many outs & running systems continuously in the heat, your equipment must be top notch.
What gear do you recommend?

Photo by Eric Mintzer

For my hardware, I run a custom-built Windows 10 PC, inside a cooler master case.
I chose this setup as it can accommodate a full-size graphics card, hot swap drive bay, m.2 slot and the ability to support a Corsair high performance liquid CPU cooler. With this configuration, I can run 3 x 4k outputs no problem utilizing the Titan X Pascal card.

This portable setup stays cool in the most demanding circumstances, like Ultra China when it was 100 degrees + outside during opening sets. While my laptop slows down to a crawl, this rig keeps on rocking.

What was your biggest challenge this time round? Any words of advice for our budding VJs out there?

For me the biggest challenge this year was using the experimental VJ software Crescent Sun, along with the new version of Resolume 6. I went a little crazy on clip loading with over 200 columns. Figured.. hey its 64bit and can take it. Then it took 5 minutes to load my show file. Oh Boy!

Photo by Eric Mintzer

The best way to overcome challenges for me involves as much practice as possible and pushing through it with good old elbow grease ;-)

As for advice, don't ever take things personally, it's a very challenging business.

True that. Wise words.

Thanks Vello for talking to us. It has been a pleasure. Congratulations on your many accomplishments and on being such a boss-man. Here is to creating a lot more magic and pixel pushing together :)

Vello’s (gorgeous) studio

Vello’s (gorgeous) studio

See you guys in the next blogpost. Until then, go grab that elbow grease.

Credits:

Ultra Creative Director & Production Designer: Richard Milstein
Ultra Animation Lead: Luis Torres
Ultra Production Director: Ray Steinman
2018 Main Stage LED & Tech: AG Lighting & Sound
2018 Main Stage Video Engineer: James Watral
Lighting Designer / LD: Patrick Deirson and The Activity
Main stage MC : Voice of Dance Music, Damian Pinto
Imaginex VJ assist / system programmer: Eric Mintzer
Photos: Eric Mintzer, Rudgr.com & Vello Virkhaus

Just in time for your show this weekend!

Transvolt is a gorgeous piece of motion design, which uses the full power of DXV HQ and alpha channels.
Get Transvolt by Ablaze Visuals


I don't care what style of music you play, it always needs more mech.
Get Mech by VJ Galaxy


And Albertus Luki is just bringing out banger after banger.
Get BluredLines by Albertus Luki

This is such an all-star line-up. Like going to a festival with Hardwell, Armin and Garrix. Or AC/DC, Iron Maiden and Slayer. Or Dr Dre, Eazy E and Snoop. Or Taylor Swift, Adele and... Well, you get my point.

Come on, enjoy the show. After all, you always have front row seats to your own set.

Unit 44 opens the show with the follow up to his hit series Enter.
Get Enter by Unit44


Next up is crowd favorite Laak, playing the amazing new fifth VJ Survival Kit album.
Get VJ Survival Kit 5 by Laak


And closing the show is Nexus 6, dropping another crowd pleaser with AbrilBeats.
Get AbrilBeats by Nexus 6.

With this Resolume release the Easter Bunny hops to version 6.0.7. Fixes a couple of bugs, makes some performance improvements and eats his chocolate eggs. Download!

8877 OSC, /composition/direction sends -1 for each direction
10163 MM: unable to relocate files when path is the same, cross platform
10408 Fix of #9842 results in Envelope Graphs being bugged with Shaper Effects
10529 Selected Clip on Selected doesn't give a midi feedback
10695 DMX Input is disabled until you open Preferences unless you have a DMX Output enabled in ASS
10720 Deadlock using Text Block
10843 Sometimes frame prediction breaks on start of clip
10882 Composition 16 bit color depth not applied on Resolume start composition auto load.
10886 Global Playback Controls have Piano options; but doesn't have the expected effect.
10895 Colorize and Tint effects don't use input color's alpha value
10907 Composition Master's parameter ranges not set to default when creating new composition
10915 Fix output shortcut manager eating entire core although no output shortcuts are enabled
10920 Clip in group with unpinned direction does not have composition's pinned direction applied on launch
10921 Group direction gets pinned to composition's pinned direction on composition open if group direction is not pinned.
10927 Stingy sphere's near side is transparent so you see through to the far side
10930 Playing with Transport controls (on BPM Sync) on clip level creates a feeze
10940 AutoMask, add Channel option to determine which channel defines the mask
10960 "DNA upload test" is part of the generators in 6.0.6 public release
10969 Fix layer's connectSpecificClip param being serialized
10971 Fresh installation of 6.0.6 on windows 7 is broken
10975 ConnectSpecificClip does not send upstate for clip triggers
10978 Group dashboard assignment is broken
10982 Cannot add audio track when dropping audio file on video clip panel
10995 OSC "All" shorcuts send * as index instead of a number
11001 Fix 0% opacity layers still being rendered
11034 FPS doesn't recover when you have ran out of vram (possibly)

...and of course an assortment of egg shaped crashes have been boiled, painted and oooh-ed at.

Minor point updates are like those songs that get stuck in your head.

In time, another song will come along and you'll wonder why you liked this one so much. But right now, it's the best thing in the world. You're blasting that baby on repeat, singing along at the top of your lungs, moshing out in the bedroom. While your significant other looks on in equal parts amusement and embarrassment.

Fire up your guilty pleasures on Spotify while you hit that download.


[fold][/fold]
6.0.6 adds two new songs to the album!

New
6966 Identify Slice or Fixture: new option in the Show Slice and Grid menu, will draw a slice white when mouse-overing
10830 NDI Ptz controls: Pan/tilt/zoom and focus controls in the Clip Properties

Also, we hang our head in shame for ever listening to these songs. We were young and emo was still cool, ok.

Fixed
10660 Shortcuts panel missing
10670 Random BPM Sync drunk walk is broken
10694 Slow loading time when entering MIDI Shortcuts
10734 Midi Clock jumps to 20 or 500 bpm
10779 Unable to save alpha type of an transparent image file
10787 External FFT broken on group parameters and effects

While we were at it, we got rid of these annoying commercial jingles and various crashes.

Fixed
9475 Only open the audio device channels we need
9575 Not all thumbnails are correct for GIF images
9946 Resolume hangs when using multiple USB ports for capturing.
10199 FFmpeg implementation not 100% ok
10200 AudioFormatReaderFFmpeg leaked on shutdown
10228 OSC output shortcut dropdown can be empty
10254 shortcut multi select changes target when multi selection contains composition level target
10285 can't select soundcard for audio input on Windows
10389 Group transport controls in deck UI don't behave properly when Envelope is on it.
10404 Appcrash - Unplugging Black Magic Intensity while active
10449 Touchbar controls don't respect parameter ranges
10459 Fader Start = On; shows one or few frames where you last went on 0 opacity instead of picking up from the beginning.
10524 Don't set Text parameter when applying a Text animator or Text Block preset
10537 NDI memory leak when dragging in (non connectable) source
10556 Some text fonts lose the style setting on deck switch or composition save
10560 Assigning multiple midi input - gives incorrect feedback
10587 FFT Animated parameters on effects on non playing clips cost a lot of FPS
10602 Memory leaks when plugging / unplugging monitors on windows
10616 Transport freezes when using beatloopr & bounce
10635 OSC Output /composition/selectedclip/... doesn't get updated when selecting new layer
10666 Slice's input list headers are missing, when multiple slices are selected
10671 Text Editor Changes Parameters when switching decks
10675 No footage installer should not include example comp with footage
10719 Ableton push not working in Resolume 6, works on the same machine in ableton.
10727 Exiting mapping mode leaves unlinked dashboard dials in enabled state
10730 Fix animation getting into a state of having no duration.
10731 Parameter shows when using FFGL mixer on effect
10732 Composition Master and Video opacity movements do not show in recording
10733 Premultiplied & Straight options for NDI
10737 Fix generators not getting released
10753 Better sorting of available formats for capture devices
10757 masks don't load properly sometimes when you replace a masking file
10775 SMPTE input from high number sound card input does not work
10777 size of attached files is incorrect on composition reopen
10783 Cursors in Default Key Shortcuts doesn't work properly on Windows
10794 Changing the Hue, Saturation or Brightness of color through OSC has no effect if Color is in RGB or Picker mode and vice versa
10799 Fixture Editor: Generic channels can only have even numbers as default
10833 Control + clicking on a parameter - + buttons set the parameter to -1 or 1 respectively
10834 AV DXV flashes file's first frame start on launch if clip is set to loop.
10841 DMX clip, column launch relaunches clip constantly above the launch threshold value when channel is changing
10844 Link Unavailable after assigning VST effect parameter to dashboard
10848 Fix ffmpeg file reading taking too long (windows)
10855 apphang dropping magewell source to composition in 6.0.5 works in 6.0.4
10857 ContextManager warnings on shutdown
10858 Magewell PCIe boxes no worky
10881 Displayed time remaining on license is a non-existent number
10885 Generic channels can only have even numbers as value
10894 Pre-updating video clips breaks group direction & speed