|
Please
notice :
Unfortunateley
all piksel participants and others involved are so deeply absorbed
by the various aparitions of the code that livestreaming of all
events had to be put to lowpriority. We'll postprocess and put
up an archive later instead.
|
gathering
1
gathering
2
general
kurtz

corner discussion

amy
appears
salsaman
latenite
shared memory

dj anders G

Kentaro

tough
code

Jaromil

Carlo
and Gisle

Tom
and Yves

Yves

VeeJay
crew

Martin

eye-ching

Gabriel

Lives

OSC
meeting

Rice
pudding

Smoking
room fun

OPen
discussion

OSC
meeting

DJ
Yves

admin

Documentation

I
never wanted to be a star

salsaman

Happy
Rama

Skeezo
Crew and Rama

Sara

punk
dancin

Kentaro

Kentaros
Magic hands

Kentaros
Matrix

Kentaro
scratching

Scratching

Kentaros
groupies

spit
king

gentlemen start your engine

open
source pizza
would
you buy pizza from this man?

Amy
lecture

Kentaro
Sake

martin
at work

sakeparty

møb
setup

Møb
crew

Ellen
performing with Hooman

ellen
and erich

purebergercrew

PUREBERGER

PUREBERGER

Erich
after gig

dj
Anders G

Veejay
Crew

Veejay
ange

Veejay
abstract

Veejay
abstract

Gisle
and pepe

Veejay
dance

double
Gisle and Anders

pepe art

pepeart
4

Gabriel
moon serenade

our
friend

thorolf

Looking
for a fox

total
eclipse
|
PIKSEL BLOG
0+1
Day 0 - sunday:
Nearly missed my plain from Oslo. Arriving in rainy dark Bergen. A few
complications with room bookings at Compact House, err Comfort House.
Well, finally manged to check in - it's plain, simple, a bit cold, but
at least clean! Posters with "no fancy extras" on the wall,
which is
absolutely true :)
Heard from
receptionist that "the others" (who is he working for?) were
in the assembly room on the 2nd floor, so I went there and - big surprise
- met a gang of hackers banging away on some code on their respective
pc's.. I later learned they were Jaromil, Tom, Simon, Carlo and Artem.
We all went eating at PastaCentralen, peeped into Landmark and then went
to Dyvekes to meet up with Gisle, Ellen and the others. Later more people
arrived: Yves, Pedro, Antoine, Gabriel. Last beers at Legal before they
closed.
Day 1: Monday
Rain. Power break at BEK, server down, technical problems of all sorts.
monitors didn't work etc. etc. And Carlo had his video cam and computer
fucked up by a new xray system at schiphol.. Shit.
OK, I have
very little knowledge of the actual coding in Linux, but know a bit about
Open Source on a general/political level. I was wondering how this was
going to work out, but I have decided to be open source about myself,
and people here are friendly, helpful and understanding. Good vibes.
Short presentation
round at BEK from 10.30. Seems that almost one third of the participants
are PD/PDP/PDIP based.. interesting.
Anja &
the kitchen gang had made a great effort to get us brunch & coffee/tea
& fruits. Lots of wandering up&down stairs, in&out doors etc.
to find the different spaces: VJ room 1, VJ room2, and the code room,A
new participant joined us: Ole from Denmark.
OK - to the point:
The backbone for the whole workshop is the theme of Interoperability between
the different programs people here are developing and using, mainly for
live/realtime video work on an Open Source platform.
Main challenges:
1 local piping of video (DSP) between apps and modules,
2 streaming video (to a LAN or internet)
3 Common framework for (internal) control API
4 Unique API for plug-ins
---
5 Intermedia (audio/video etc.) synchronisation
6 external control devices
We decided
to divide into two main groups, one dealing with 1/2 (VJ lab#1 at BEK),
and the other in the code room (KHIB, 3rd floor) dealing with 3/4.
The upstairs
group (Tom, Pedro, Simon, Rune, Ole, Yves, Thomas, Mathiijs and Rama)
worked pretty anarchistically, and seemed to be pretty clear about their
issues: For piping, uncompressed video is and should be the standard,
and for streaming one should be able to choose between existing standards.
Vorbis was proposed as the "vehicle" of choice for transporting
the data, no matter what compression being used.
Group 2 downstairs
seemed more organised, and more and more people from upstairs eventually
joined them to have a very active and hefty discussion (physically ended
up standing in a corner of the code room).
The discussion
seemed to evolve around two main questions: whether to use DSO (Dynamic
Shared Objects), rather than e.g. shared memory or external process execution
(which, if I got this right, is Gabriels choice for his video editing
software LIVES).
The main
advantages of DSO are:
* portability
issues (between linux distributions, between programs and also to other
platforms such as mac os x)
* simplicity
Regarding
the sync issue over a network, there seemed to be a general notion that
one could use the networked time servers to synchronise the machine times
over a packet-based network (tcp), however this might prove too heavy
to be usable in practice. But some kind of time stamp would be necessary,
maybe network/streaming programs should devote a dedicated channel for
sync/control data. This is a challenge, and yet not solved, but one might
look at how others are solving it (e.g. midi syncing as e.g. in Keyworx.).
However Jaromil insisted we develop or use open source technical solutions.
And he's right, of course.
At this poing Amy arrived, we started emptying the BCooler and soon
there was dinner time (spaghetti) and chatting.
At 9 o clock
Landmark the film Revolution OS at Landmark. Great film, but apparently
too nerdy for most people. There were quite a lot of "normal"
people when we arrived at 9pm, however most left as the piksel people
(who were actually watching the film) started filling up the room. But
maybe it was the dark rainy monday evening. Anyway, Gabriel aka VJ Salsaman
synced (mentally) up with DJ Anders G, and the show started. Nice visuals
and nice music, a somewhat eclectic video mix of dancing people, animals
and effect clips (explosions etc.), long colourful shots, nicely blended
with Anders' german pervo-cheesy favourites.
The last
gang to leave Landmark (we were almost thrown out) was Artem, Antoine,
Simon, Gabriel, Martin who arrived during the Lmark show, and yours truly.
We headed
for one last beer, were denied at (café) Opera and were warned
against going to "Ugla" (the Owl). So we tried "Den Stundesløse",
actually a nice big pub with relatively chill atmosphere. Shared memory
seemed to was the topic of Artem and Gabriel, while I was pumping Martin
for tacky gossip about Richard Stallman, whom he has met a couple of times,
in interview situations for Linux UK magazine.. Saw the big sign at the
pub exit saying "be cheerful today, tomorrow you might not afford
it". Walking home in the rain about 3pm, approached by some drunken
prople looking for "hææmbørdjes . (sorry, can't
help you!!)
In bed 3.30
pm. Big day tomorrow - 8 presentations!!
Day2
- tuesday
Tight presentation day today. Everyone seems to have
said hello to each other, and there is a relaxed and "homey" atmosphere.
When I think of it, it is not so strange, since lots of people have been
placed in double rooms thus sharing nightly sounds and smells :)
The technical facts/specs and links from each of the
presentations will be posted elsewhere on the Piksel site, so I'll just
provide some freshman impressions and keywords:
****************************
Kentaro Fukuchi: EffecTV
- Kentaro, one of the pioneers within the Open Source/video movement,
did a presentation based on slides ("powerpoint style"), which explains
the basic concepts of this program developed in early 2001. Since the
mid-nineties Kentaro has developed video apps, originally for his friend
Shutaro Oku, and before that with innovative analogue/digital solutions
(e.g. filming off a TV screen while twiddling the knobs).
EffecTV is a realtime video app with lots of built in
FX, used for theatre, raves, VJ work in general or in installations. The
most popular FX so far seems to be "Fire", "nervous" and "radioactive".
Kentaro showed a documentation from a 48h rave by mt.
Fuji, where people danced in front of a transparent big screen connected
to a single live camera. He pointed out that an interesting evolution
of usage of the app has gone from a mere computer-user interaction, to
situations where the user actually starts moving in new ways to accomodate
a particular video effect, and how he/she then drags other people into
the installation to share the experience.
EffecTV is based on videoloopback, and everything in
the program is connected to performance with live people.
Except for the Interoperability issues, the immediate
future for EffecTV seems to be in Karaoke business, which is huge in
Japan and would no doubt add new playful features.
******************************************
Jaromil is a great resource both in programming and on
the field of social activism. He has a broad background from lots of different
activities, e.g. performance, theatre, radio, and activism in general.
He showed us som of the projects featured on his website rastasoft.org.
Very briefly:
FreeJ (latest)
chaining effect, e.g. water, ripple etc. low latency, not simple but effective.
Does not have an automatic feature so that the video plays in sync with
the music. Jaromil pointed out that he prefers to operate the app manually
via keyboard commands where YOU (the VJ) should be in sync with the music,
not necessarily the machine.
Audio Streaming software MUSE is a bit older, and is
an app to mix together different net-streams, and it also features an
icecast streming net radio working right away. (ogg or mp3 format). Mixes
6 streams, from files, live inputs or other streams. scalable to different
technical requirements/conditions.
The first software they developed was Hasciicam, a webcam-type
video encoder made for low bandwith/framerate. Apparently there are plans
to develop it into a videoconference app.
DYNEBOLIC (which was also presented at Landmark in the
evening) comes as a free GNU/linux bootable cd. It features a pretty full
system including everything from internet apps, games, word processors,
graphic programs, utilities, video and audio processing/streaming apps,
and lots of other things (totally 444 Mb as per today). One main feature
of Dynebolic is the ability to save "nested" preferences for your own
setup on a usb device or on a cd, so that you can literally bring the
cd and the prefs file and literally use any computer (well, pc only) to
use the system.
Dynebolic is a radical and user-friendly solution, running
on both slow pc's (586?) and Xbox. The system contains aspects extending
far beyond the artistic community, and is possibly the most extensive
collection of GNU/Linux suite of programs available. All software authors
are duly credited, and the whole project is a great example of the power
of collective work and sharing.
This is the first time for several years that I really wish I had a scrappy
old pc instead of the shiny new apple 12" powerbook I've just ordered.
(Well, at least I've decided to try install Yellow Dog on a partition,
a linux distro that apparently is pretty OK on that machine)
************
Gisle and Carlo: MøB
Gisle started off by explaining the history and background
for this software, and was quickly assisted by Carlo (who couldn't keep
away). He soon invited himself to join Gisle at the presentation table
and literally took over the show.
MøB is a master/module based system, a patcher for multiple
realtime video in- and outputs. Re:actor is the well-known interactive
dancehall system developed by Gisle and his Bergen crew, connecting i-cube
sensors and laser lights to the multiple inputs, outputs and effect engines
of MøB.
They will hopefully try a new version with 12 (!) camera
inputs on friday evening @ Landmark. We have phoned Guiness Book of Records.
*******************
LUNCH: Spaghetti pie! (see yesterday). Tasted great though, thanx Anja
and Peter + Nelle!!
*******************
Tom Schouten: PDP
Yves Dregoyon: PiDiP
Both PDP and PiDiP are modules/libraries for PD, (which
can be said to be an open source version of Max). They both seem to be
highly flexible solutions for live video work on a linux platform.
PD (short for PureData) is a patch-based framework originally
developed for sound, (like Max/MSP), where PDP (a collection of video
objects) runs "on top". PiDiP is an "effect rack" that then runs on top
of PDP. Yves said that while other apps (e.g. GEM) has moved from a 3D
approach into image processing, PDP/PiDiP takes the opposite approach.
Next version will (hopefully) be able to make standalone
objects. In terms of interoperability, PDP could either be an object in
other apps, or (in principle) the other way round.
It is interesting to note that PD and MAX has evolved
from the same source in the first half of the 1990's, and that the audio
engine in MAX actually is built upon and around PD (rather than the other
way around, which seems to be common belief in the Max community)
Interoperability is a core feature in PD by nature, and
it is nice to see that PiDiP originally was built as a port from EffecTV
to PDP - 90% of the effects are ports from Kentaros EffecTV. The latest
object is a colour/shape tracker - similar to e.g. the classic BigEye
app for mac (developed by Tom Demeyer at STEIM in the nineties), or possibly
the more advanced tracking features of SoftVNS for max.
*****************
Veejay crew
(Niels, Mathiijs, Dursun)
Veejay is originally a realtime sample-based sound manipulation/editing
tool. However it also works with video samples, and is now a fully featured
performance tool featuring non-linear editing and mixing from multiple
sources. The program allows lots of different picture/sound manipulation,
and filter settings/new files can be exported and re-imported on the fly.
Veejay features a large number of video effects and frame blending methods.
If I understood the guys right, future development of
Veejay includes a built-in time-based linear sequencer.
**************
Martin Howse: ap02 (02?)
As far as I understand ap stands for "Artificial Paradises".
More than any of the other projects, Martins project is within the realm
of "software art", where the code itself (and not necessarily its functionality)
is the "content" of the artwork. One can also say that he developed ap02
last year together with Artem in Rotterdam, and is working on a new version
(which will be named ap03 or -04 I guess :)).
Martin had his presentation written down as a raw text
file in emacs - green on black, Matrix-style processed by ap02 software
read aloud by the speech renderer flite. He then used the raw data from
this text file as the input source for ap02, where the video images generated
(rough, edgy green/black abstract images). I guess it's not too wrong
to say that this presentation of ap02 is a meta-project, where the data
used as input is only referring to themselves. Did I hear the term "pseudo-meta
data"? (yet another layer)
ap02 is referred to as a virtual computer, an "organism
which runs on top of the existing os", or a total environment - an operating
system which dynamically re-codes itself, and is recoded in operation.
********************
Gabriel: LIVES
LIVES is one of the first video editors on a GMU/Linux
platform, and is originally not a program for live streaming of video,
but - as Gabriel demonstrated yesterday at Landmark - it is perfectly
possible to grab little snippets of live video and put into the sequencer/editor
and play with them in a live situation.
One of Gabriels main concerns for LIVES is that it should
have a familiar GUI/interface, so that it is practically available to
as many people as possible.
The basic function of LIVES in a live situation is manipulating
clips; speed/rgb properties/transparency, direction, loop, copy/paste.
It cannot really use realtime video, although one can grab frames from
a camera input (or any other adressable screen property, e.g. a screensaver)
and use them in the master mix.
The application has lots of effects, some of which are
built upon the EffecTV algorithms.
Gabriel showed us the first 8 sequences of his project
"eye-ching" (based on i-ching), where the 64 symbols, representing different
forms of energy are represented by a dancer doing a 30-sec movement sequence.
The dancing girl always start and stop in the same position, so eventually
it will be easy to randomize the order of each sequence in a live VJ situation.
Since this is mostly a linear video editing system, Gabriel
says he has to leave the cpu-intensive realtime effects to other apps,
which again emphasizes the need for interportability - tomorrow's big
issue..
*********
*********
The evening programme at Landmark started at 9pm with
the screening of "the code" - the finnish-produced documentary about Linus
vs. Stallman (same theme and same main characters as yesterdays film "revolution
os", but with a noticeable difference in the political angle the producers
presented the persons and discussions around the philosophies and pragmatics
surrounding the terms of GNU/Free software/Open Source/"corporate" linux.
I had seen the film before on norwegian TV, there arriving
a few minutes into Jaromil's public presentation of Rastasoft and Dynebolic.
There was a peculiar, church-like atmosphere when I arrived. I have never
experienced Landmark like this; almost full of people all sitting completely
quiet listening to the evangelism of Open Source and Free Software. Besides
everything else, Jaromil is a great communicator who manage to hold a
crowd easily (despite the usual "demo-syndromes" of having to restarting
the computer, changing prefs, re-figuring the video card etc. etc.). He
also has his own fantastic way of answering complex technical questions
(I think they were) with sentences cut straight out of the vocabulary
of Dalai Lama, or mr. Chance (Peter Sellers in the film "Welcome, mr.
Chance").
In the end I think we were all "saved", and people cued
up to get the free Dynebolic CDs before Jaromil was joined by Pedro for
a spontateous VJ/DJ jam. In the end, long after they closed the bar, people
were dancing all over the place. A great day, and definitely a night to
remember.
day 3 - wednesday
Very slow start this morning, most of us were a bit late
for the scheduled morning meeting. In addition there is some confusion
about spaces, breakfast, timetable, technical infrastructure and what
is actually going to happen when, where and with who.
There were some additional networking problems, the airport/wifi
transmitter seems to have taken a break. Well.. well well... We eventually
decided to let things roll and to gather people in the cantina at 1pm
for lunch/brunch. The Skeezo crew (who arrived yesterday; Lluis, Sara
and Jordi) presented themselves briefly.
- The challenges of Artistic Software
After lunch Artem presented challenges he and the V2 gang (under the project
name V2-jam - see pdf) are facing when
working on "artistic software". He pointed out there are two main directions:
1 Software written for specific artistic purposes/projects.
Most artists like this solution (because they as a default want to be
"avant-garde"), however from a programming point of view its a lot of
extra work, and generally a waste of energy. So rather than inventing
the wheel every time, one should look for solutions involving pre-existing
software with maybe a few line of code implemented on top.
2 The "universal" software approach, where the aim is
to develop a software that is highly flexible and modular and could be
used for lots of different purposes.
The PD/Max framework is built this way, another solution is for example
Keyworx (developed at Society for Old & New Media, Amsterdam), which is
a "multi-user, cross-media synthesizer", containing modules for video/sound/text/midi/images
where users work on the same canvas and any property can be used as an
input for anything else. In practice, Keyworx is a (Wiki-style) live jamming
over a network. I have used this software a lot myself, and I think it
illustrates practically very well how one can work collaboratively.
However, the drawback (from this workshops point of view) is that the
software is mac-only, and not defined as an open source project.
OK, this is how far I got - the programmers/coders got
together to discuss further the Interoperability issues. See the wiki
page here:
http://www.piksel.no/pwiki/InterOperability
There seems to be a general agreement that OSC (Open
Sound Control) is the protocol to pursue for compatibility. This format
is simple and powerful and widely used on all platforms (including mac
and win) - however the linux libraries are not complete yet.
A question connected to the use of OSC is the choice
between UDP and TCP transport protocol. Most people in the workshop seem
to agree that its best to leave the choice open to each user.
Those of you wanting to know the technical stuff please
have a look at the Wiki, I have to give up here!
****************
Dinner! (fish/potato/leek soup and bread. chocolate pudding for dessert)
****************
The Landmark program in the evening started with Pedro
talking about his work with video in theatre. Some beautiful imagery,
projected on moveable screens on stage, controlled by the actors via sensors.
He mentioned some of the technical difficulties connected to the use of
cpu-hungry applications (Max-based), where they ended up having to use
three computers for video processing (one for each video projector), and
one computer to control them all. He brought up the explicit needs within
complex stage work, where cue points have to be in absolute sync between
actors and technical machinery.
Mathiijs had brought the BEK-Shuttle with him to show
a 15-minute presentation of hi-res audio/video - however there were some
technical difficulties so we decided to postpone this show to friday or
saturday.
Tom and Yves were next, an audio/video performance using
PDP/PiDiP. Loud, mostly abstract sound and video feedback, colourful,
high framerate, sound and video extremely tightly connected in the style
of either early video experiments by e.g. Woody Vasulka or Joost Rekveld
- a young contemporary dutch filmmaker (http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld.html).
Artistically this was very consistent - my compliments!!
DJ Anders G was back at the vinyl decks with a friend
(U-tek?), playing nice grooves. Kentaro put on his red dancing shoes again,
Amy was nodding to the beat and Gabriel was swaying happily in the corner
while the Veejay Crew sat got the three screens going with some fresh
imagery.
To bed around 2.30 pm, not too bad!! Still 4 days to
go.. (but late start tomorrow luckily)
day 4 - thursday
Anarchy rules - people show up when they want to and
nobody seems to be motivated for organised meetings anymore. With this
gang it is a good sign though, loooong nights and too many discussions
might get us drunk, but no good for the actual coding.
Artem had to leave today unfortunately, but we were joined
by Janet Casey from the Free Software Foundation, and Erich Berger. BT
- the local newspaper sent a journalist to interview Gisle, me and Janet.
Hopefully something in the paper saturday..
Yves made a comment about artistic software (see yesterday
- V2jam). He says the problem is often that artists refuse to learn about
existing software, or decline to explore their possibilities - which is
why programmers are often asked to do rather uninspiring tasks of inventing
the wheel over and over again..
********
The new interoperable framework starting from today is
called "Piksel", and most of us have by now joined a discussion group
at Savannah to be found at this address:
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/piksel
The Savannah site as of today contains 252 GNU projects,
and 1.694 non-GNU (of which Piksel is one). Here is Jaromil's posting
about LiViDO - Linux Video Dynamic Objects
This project aims to create a general plugin host library
to easily embed a shared pool of video effects in multiple software applications.
The library processes plugin chains defined by the application,
providing automatic colorspace conversion between filters, extended functions
for VideoPiping and support for OpenSoundControl commands.
The implementation of LiViDO emphases on performance
optimization and API simplicity, makes use of ccvt YUV/RGB conversion
routines and *dlopen(3)* dynamic objects. The video frames are passed
as memory pointers and as such a pointer to the resulting processed frame
is returned; in case additional memory allocation is required by the selected
plugins, the library itself handles their freeing at the close.
***************
Pedro made dinner for us: beautiful indian-style vegetables with nuts,
potato mash and fruits for dessert. Great!
***************
Landmark started quietly tonite, although the Skeezo
Crew and Rama already had made quite an impact with their quitcase computer
setup (see pix).
We are honoured to have Janet Casey from the Free Software
Foundation here - she handed out credits to the local BLUG (Bergen Linux
User Group) and to all the Piksel people, without whom.... (etc. etc.)
For info on the FSF and GNU, please click to http://www.gnu.org . Some
of us were lucky and managed to get out hands on the brand new t-shirts
(with "happy hacking" on the front and a beautiful arabic-ornament-style
gnu on the back).
Kentaro was next, talking about his SmartSkin project,
a sensor architecture based on capasitive sensing technology. As far as
I understand, the project is developed at Tokyo University on behalf of
Sony. The demo was quick, dirty and funny - especially the demos of "battling
hands" went down very well with the public.
Then hell broke loose with Yves on the mp3 players, and
Rama + Skeezo Crew on three projectors. Electro, then oldskool punk rock
made everyone get on their feet and shake the hips and fists. This went
on for about a whole hour. Landmark was literally a VJ war zone, any young
Bergen babes or wannabees who entered quickly went out again shaking their
heads. Catalunyan, dutch, italian, swahili, english and french were the
default languages, louder and louder.. Ecstatic!!
Then suddenly all quiet. Up on a chair went Jordi from
the Skeezo crew, in a street performance somehow about Bergen, involving
some comments on the weather and lots of spitting! Fantastic!
After that Marike took over the DJ desk, and Jaromil
+ Kentaro played at Ramas console, writing sly little comments on the
bright screen.
Everything has to end, this nite too, but Marike was
kind enough to offer a little nachspiel in her flat at Nygaardsparken.
I counted 8 dutch people (sorry Tom, you're one of them), 5 catalans,
4 norwegians and 1 french. Four bottles of beers and a joint in the park.
Dursun did a rolling stunt.
To bed at 4pm - Dursun did a downhill rolling stunt.
Moon is getting fuller and fuller. Help!!!!
Day 5 -
friday
The moon is getting bigger and bigger, weather's still fantastic!! Bright
& sunny in the mornings (I guess Carlo is probably the only one to
notice - he is walking up & down to "Fløyen" every
morning), and moooooonlite at night.
Woke up very late today, with a badass headache. The wear & tear of
24/7 activity is now becoming very visible to most of us. 2 valiums and
three cups of strong coffee made me feel somewhat human again.
If you arrive somewhere in Africa for a meeting, lets say its scheduled
at noon, and nobody's there, you might ask: "When does the meeting
start"? People will look at you as if you are really really stupid,
because the answer is: "The meeting starts when people have arrived,
of course!". The workshop part of Piksel is by now working the african
way. Groups of people are doing different tasks (of social or technical
nature), and Gisle & I have decided to postpone the "final draft
meeting" until tomorrow.
Piksel has turned more and more into a festival, although the hardcore
gang is still those who eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at KHIB/BEK inbetween
coding, cigarettes and configuring machines.
Today Jaromil took on the task of making pizza for all of us - 4 different
ones with only one oven!
******
Landmark again, this evening confortably full but not overcrowded. I arrived
just in time to see Amy Alexander's screensaver (Microsoft '98 logo) flying
around the screen. Amy Alexander started her little lecture around 10pm,
excusing herself about that logo but at the same time stating jokingly
that in this collective she is probably the only true anarchist! :) Her
presentation was a quick show&tell about her work within the field
of net.art (e.g. plagiarist.org
) and visual experimentation with text layering as the performance artist
Übergeek. She is also one of the people behind the software repository
runme.org , together with a.o. Florian
Cramer and Alexei Shulgin.
After Amy's presentation, Ketaro threw a spontaneous Sake Tasting Party
(mmm!), before we were interrupted by Übergeek herself, in her shiny
silver jacket. To a soundtrack of pumping techno this character whirled
around with all sorts of techy gadgets ("air-mouse", keyboard
in a neck strap, cd as jewelry), while doing google searches of themes
like "love", "valium", and more elaborate sentences
- the results all rendered out in old-skool psychedelic patterns, sentences
cut off at exactly the right suspense moment (e.g. "I stopped using
valium while masturbating because.."). A great show, and big applause.
A quick rigging break, and then Martin Howse was set up at one of the
tables with a laptop and the BEK machine, and a weird looking blue USB
microscope. His audio output was abstract synthetic loud sounds, and were
for some reason (the barman?) soon blended in with some techo chill by
resident DJ Anders G. Martins setup is "auto-generative" (partly
based on ap02) in some way, meaning that the input of the microscope picture
generates the activity on the rest of the screen, mainly abstract formalist
3D-shapes, drawing and re-drawing in different colours and shapes. The
peak of the show, in terms of live performance, was no doubt when Kentaro
and Gabriel did a jackass-style body exploration with the USB thing.
Carlo is by nature not a night-worker, and Gisle has had 6 million and
two other things to do this week, so the MøB presentation unfortunately
didn't show its capabilities until at the very end of the night, when
most people had left the building. But then, almost as they turned on
the lights, some very nice live pictures of the room showed up, blended
rhytmically with a movie of a dancer, which was again tracked to generate
some abstract shapes. No time for a 12-camera setup as promised earlier,
but at least we got a glimpse of some of the possibilities this software
can do.
Most people headed home by now, but Thomas took Yves, Martin, Rama, the
Skeexo crew and myself back to the art academy, where Jaromil also turned
up (he'd been sitting at BEK the whole evening enjoying the fast connection).
We found a few beers in the fridge, and a cassette with catalunyan hiphop
music. Soon the discussion turned to scripting languages etc., and Jaromil
launched the idea of using s-lang in the libraries in the Piksel framework.
More about that tomorrow.
In bed 04.51am..zzzzzz
day 6 -
saturday
Yet another slow start, people are now sleeping everwhere in the BEK/KHIB
building, on sofas, chairs and under the desks. The hacker-myth comes
true.. (only things missing are the jolly colas and half-empty pizza boxes).
A positive little article about BEK and Piksel in the paper today, read
it here <>.
It says something like: "Bill Gates - beware. These people are gonna
take over the world" (or something like that).
Brunch by Anja - fantastic as ever, today with pasta salads, breads, juice,
coffee and lots of different cheeses (among them the dreaded "gammelost"
- very old norwegian cheese). Some strange faces.
At 3pm the
last general assembly for the Piksel workshop. Some concluding remarks
- this is probably full of holes, so hit me with your rhythm stick:
* Jaromil suggested to use s-lang
for scripting libraries. Seems like an old (1992), pretty simple and well-proved
language, possibly smaller and simpler than Python, but with lots of flexibility
and it is definitely effective.
* OSC will
from now on be referred to as OMC (Open Media Control, previously Open
Sound Control) still protocol of choice, see previous postings.
* Tom and Jaromil started working on the video plugin specifications,
which will soon be ready and postet to the Savannah site.
* Streams should anyway be multiplexed, and control&data embedded
in the same multiplex stream. Gabriel proposed to embed port specifications
witnin the signal to specify where signals should go. Ogg is the default
transport protocol (or "container"). As far as I have understood
there aren't yet any video compressionalgorithms (as for audio e.g. the
wellknown Vorbis), but theora seems
to be a start. However video compression hasn't really been an issue at
this workshop, what everybody really wants in the end is uncompressed
video.
Working conclusions:
* The Svannah
site is now up
* FTP site
at BEK is up. All videos and pictures etc. etc. will be found here
* The domain piksel.org seems to be available, Gisle will register it
and host it at BEK
* The Piksel
mailing list will keep running
Pedro has
written (oops, sorry compiled) lyrics for the Piksel song "no user
no cry". Here is the recorded demo version
in Ogg Vorbis and mp3 (where? - loglady)
format featuring Jaromil, Yves and Pedro (thanx to Gijs for transferring).
The backing track is here (midi file),
and here are the re-written lyrics (Jah bless):
*************
No user, no cry;
No user, no cry;
No user, no cry;
No user, no cry.
said said said i remember trying 2 compile
video software in bergen
download Veejay from sourceforge.net
but im missing all the libs
so i turn my eyes to the Free-J
try 2 install in 3 different ways
only jah knows whats wrong in SDL
if only LIVeS could change our lives
No user, no cry;
No user, no cry;
No user, no cry;
No user, no cry.
Said Said Said i want to make experimental avi
so i turned my work to ap
but the framerate it goes so slow
its the graphics card, you know
try to install P i D i P
but only got as far as P D P
I found mob but carlo was walking up a hill
so all that was left was effecTV
on playstation 3
everythings gonna b alright
everythings gonna b alright
everythings gonna b alright
everythings gonna b alright
everythings gonna b alright
everythings gonna b alright
everythings gonna b alright
everythings gonna b alright
no user no cry
no user no cry
A little darlin', don't shed no tears:
no user no cry
said said said but then janet she came to piksel
and jah send his blessings down
we found the flags for gcc
and we chain the filters with yuv y'see
install s-lang and use ASM to optimize
then we see the new sunrise
jah bless free software it all works
except for some user jerks
but until they've gone
no user no cry
etc.
*************
Before going
to Landmark this evening I went with Pedro, Ellen, Sara and Jordi to see
Hooman Sharifi's show at Teatergarasjen. An old show (I learned later)
consisting of some very dynamic hard body movement, then a badly projected
movie ("Harvest" by Anne Lise Stenseth, I have seen it many
times before - the ultimate wrinkleporn classic). Then they went into
a "political" mode quoting numbers of killed people in Israel
and Palestine etc. etc., and thenb engaging with the public. I don't really
like this kind of stuff, the piece has a basically postmodern structure
(with non-acting theatre as a major part), but I have a feeling they are
shopping credibility with the "political" statements, which
makes it even less credible. Anyway, Ellen had to lie on the floor for
a bit, and I eventually got a kiss on the cheek from the female dancer.
So it wasn't all bad.
Saturday
evenings at Landmark are for the "others" in Bergen; while the
rest of the inhabitants are out in the streets or in noisy discoteques
screaming their lungs out (Brann! Brann! Braaann, the Landmark gang is
a polite and arty gang. After the second screening of "The Code"
(see tuesday), it was time for Peter Votava (aka Pure) and Erich Berger.
The aestethics
of the Pure/Berger show is very connected to the now world famous Vienna
scene of glitch musicians and artist, mostly gravitating around the record
label Mego. Visually it connects very well to the film/video distribution
company Sixpack. Erich and Peter's show is aurally and visually very pleasing,
a kind of hi-res formalism floating in and out of a/v sync, an organic
digital carpet consiting of ambient noise and mostly rectangular visual
shapes of colour and retro-counterparts of black, white and gray. Very
soothing, and consistent. This could very well have been made into a videotape
which would probably have done well in festivals (Rotterdam Film Festival,
Viper, Impakt etc. etc.). Oh, I forgot you are all nerds - Peter/Pure
is using Max/MSP for the sounds, while Erich does the graphics in PD/GEM.
The Easy
Listening project by Gisle has been going in the early evening hours (6-9pm)
of Landmark everyday through the Piksel workshop. It is an old project
of his, with basically a couple of microphones "listening" to
the conversations in the room, and using a speech recognition engine to
interpret the sounds and project them as green-on-black words/sentences
on the wall. The results are often extremely funny, and if one tries to
play with it - it gets worse!!
The end
of the evening was Anders G back at the decks (with a friend), while the
Veejay crew had a go at the three projectors. It was a rhytmical and colourful
mix of diverse video loops, and after a while they connected the live
cameras and went through most of Kentaro's EffecTV effects: Nervous, Radioactive,
water etc. etc. Some strange behaviour around the tables when people saw
themselves on the screen, as if everything finally came toghether then.
Everyone
stormed out from Landmark at around 1.45pm, not because the Veejay crew
did a bad job, but because the wise man in the sky had decided that the
moon would be undergoing a full eclipse this very night. And it happened,
very very slowly a shadow came from the upside of the moon and squeezed
the light out of the yellow ball. Finally just a tiny smileyface at the
bottom, which was about when Gabriel fired up his laptop with some swooshy
ancient techno music.
Some of
us didn't want to stop after this, so a gang of about 10 people went back
to BEK to kill the last beers and a big bottle of Glenfiddich (a gift
from Martin), playing Erik Satie mp3 files and discussing war, life and
death in a rather philosphical manner.
To bed 05.12,
with my radio on (program about Jaques Brel).
sunday - day 7
... and on the the seventh day Jah took a siesta.
Great lunch/brunch
again by Anja, pasta/pie and fish!
Today is
a goodbye day, a few tears, handshakes, smiles and big hugs as people
are leaving the scene.
Linus (ellen's
1 year old son) appropriately joined us for lunch, reminding us that we're
doing this for the next generations..
Fog enters bergen, it is chill outside and people are red in the eyes.
The "No user" soundtrack will be finally mixed tomorrow.
Tonite features a freejam session at Landmark. Those hardcore souls who
are left are: Jordi, Lluis, Sara, Rama, Kentaro, Pedro, Yves, Martin,
Tom and Carlo. Gisle, Ellen and Thomas are staying here to clean up and
prepare for next year (??).
No doubt this has been a marvellous week, thanx to each and every one
of you/us for a great time! Esp.
thanx to
the BEK crew!!
(Big applause).
FIN
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| Nature
by Pedro |
Nature
2 by Pedro |
Nature
3by Pedro |
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| Nature
4 by Pedro |
Nature
5 by Pedro |
Nature
6 by Pedro |
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| Bergen
seen from Fløyen |
Another
view of Bergen |
Jordi
and Sara fixing it |
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| Just
ask me about PiDiP |
The
Bar by Pedro |
Yves
and Tom show |
>>>
Those afterthought pictures were courtesy of Pedro. Tusen takk!
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