Björk’s videos are always impressive and surprising at the same time. The new video “Wanderlust” reached a new milestone in the aesthetic process of Björk’s video works. They used a wide variety of different techniques, from 3D-rendering to scenes made of clay and people in costumes. To top this the official video will be released in 3D-stereo: you will have to wear old-school 3D-glasses to enjoy it. However, the version released on the internet is in plain 2D. Enjoy the epic quality of it! Never seen something like this before.
What can you say about the band TRS-80? At least lo-fidelity aesthetics, use of retro-technologies, very unique style and hypnotizing music. The new video “Tinted” is made of 2 or 3 simple layers and could be, in other words, made with Resolume or others of this “I layer three videos” VJ-Tools. The mix of vintage look and live recordings give them a very special feel. At least I love the music. Somewhere between early Mouse on Mars and Nonex. The glasses give me urban-moods like DaftPunk did before.
This is the highest wisdom of manufacturing synthesizers in a homebrew way! It is loud and awesome, does not sound that good, but looks amazingly beautiful. But maybe you have to practice in order to get nice sounds. Nevertheless I would like to play with it a little bit.
The creator Stanley Povoda lives on Prague and simply looks like he made it very far on the way of being a real slack-master. You can check out his working-place – or should I say home or laboratory? – here, a nice 360 degree picture.
If this thing is really working as good as it says, than finally a good solution in making computer-suitable drawings outside is offered. The “Paperium” is basically a pen. With it you can draw and write as with any normal pen. The funky detail is that all your movements are stored in the pen and with the click of a button you can send the path you just drawn to your computer via Bluetooth. It combines the freedom of expression with computer-based memory and the ability to enhance the data after you have generated it. Sounds to me like an interesting alternative to most of this ugly table-boards. The people who made Paperium this is small company located in Vienna.
The pen is computing your drawings.
Maybe there will be good times coming at us for computing outside. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) also offers a monitor that is clearly visible in direct sunlight exposure, at least in black and white mode.
Korg is always very certain when it comes to find cool names for their instruments. They launched a sythesizer-project on the Nintendo DS that is simply called DS-10. It is a full scale synthesizer, that should be available for under 50 Euro. A tool that really would add value to your gaming console. The features of this synth are: two patchable virtual synthesizers with two oscillators on each channel, a drum machine, a sequencer, and a full range of effects. Here is the official website. Notice that interesting use of the stylo with the appregiator I somehow seen before anywhere in the homebrew scene…
Good news for everyone who are interested in both, computing game history and game design as well. There is a Monkey Island wiki, complete dedicated to Lucasarts Monkey Island games. As you can imagine they feature everything from the complete cast of all characters over the setting towards the people behind the games. We get to know mind-blowing, unforgettable quotes from the characters, like Elaine Marley, who said one time: “I… I can’t. I’m washing my hair tonight.”
Like on Wikipedia, you can edit and more interesting discuss each article. Same people ran the site “The World of Monkey Island“, but discontinued it at the end of 2007. The wiki will be the replacement, although the World of Monkey Island site is still up. If you want to need to know anything about this games, just ask those people.
Blog - Date published: March 20, 2008 | Comments Off
Paris Treantafeles travels much. He has to meet many shows, where he works as a visualist. Many mails from him arrived me from airports or after satisfying shows he played. Paris Treantafeles is better known as Paris Graphics or Voltage Controlled. His unique specialty is making visuals with self-programmed handheld gaming consoles like the Gameboy Advanced or the Game Park. It is no coincidence that especially the 8-bit scene is requesting him. He seems to be a staff member at the Blipfestival and is supporting the 8-bit scene events with his works. At least his decision to go on gaming hardware originally came from the 8-bit music scene, where he saw that musicians working with those tools in a natural way to produce and perform their music.
Live performance from Hally with visuals from Paris Graphics.
“Why is there no matching point in doing the visuals the same way like the musicians do?”, was one of his main motivations to go on hardware. After years of researching and exploring the possibilities of Pure Data with the graphic extension GEM, as well as trying math-based graphics, he went on to use Gameboy Advanced and Game Park consoles. Originally he has a background as a scientists and most of his inspiration still comes from physics and math. But also pushing boundaries of contemporary hardware, rooted in the deepest sense of the demoscene spirit, is one of his driving forces.
What is the basic design concept of your tools? Are they tools or experiments?
They are tools in the making – so let’s say experimental tools. Or thinking about it in another way, I guess I’m writing visual games – things that can be played.
The story of your visuals is connected to the project Voltage Controlled, but you also work as Paris Graphics. Sometimes this causes confusion. What is what? How is the story going?
Voltage Controlled started when a friend, Robert Martinez, and I began creating audio with voltage controlled electronics. We gathered anything we could get our hands on and produced music using just voltages to make melodies – no keyboards.
From there we got into creating visuals with an oscilloscope and as a feedback loop had voltages creating images which were being manipulated with the oscilloscope, and then voltages coming out of the scope fed back into audio devices. From there we began using function generators with television sets to create patterns, colors, and so on. Somewhere along the way I started doing live sets on my own in New York City, while Robert lives in California. People liked the name Voltage Controlled so I started using it for my purposes as well.
