Robert Henke - Fragile Territories - Max/MSP Laser Art installation

[BlueFang]

I've been playing around quite a bit recently with Max/MSP. It is an awesome & powerful object oriented visual programming framework for multimedia applications (sound, video, graphics) - and was wondering if anyone had done anything with using Max/MSP to run LPs...

After some googling, found this awesome art installation in France by Robert Henke.

http://www.roberthenke.com/installat...rritories.html




Also was digging around the Etherdream source code, and saw some #ifdefs for __MACH__ and immediately wondered... could it be that there already is source for OS X? And what do you know... it just works.

The installation above was driving the projectors with an audio output device (MOTU Ultralite I believe) - but I would rather keep my MOTU as my audio device and use the ED as my DAC - and now it seems way possible.

Here is a post on the Max/MSP forums about how it all works:

https://cycling74.com/project/fragile-territories/


not sure if this has been posted before - couldn't find it in search....

[BlueFang]

Ok... So I guess I am the only one fascinated by the fact that Robert Henke - aka Monolake, aka one of the founding members and original developers of Ableton Live - is now pretty much a full-time laserist, who in my opinion seems to be pushing the boundary of live / abstract laser performance.

Lumière is basically a live abstract audio+laser performance / show - and follow up to the Fragile Territories Installation piece linked above. Looks like he has a lot planned for 2015.

Here is a video of an entire performance. Probably not for those with short attention spans - it's like an hour long performance - and has a very limited use of color - artistically intentional:



And probably equally as interesting is the talk he gave about this project including some good info on his background, how he got interested in lasers, and how the show is put together and controlled. Spoiler - it is all custom software he created in Max/MSP (actually, Max4Live - which is a version of Max that runs inside of Ableton Live).



Fascinating stuff.... especially when he goes into some details about how the limitations of scanner physics influenced his artistic direction. Instead of trying to fight these limitations and optimize optimize optimize, he uses the limitations for artistic effects.

[masterpj]

I noticed he makes very little use of color which is rather a shame.. when you are using a laser projector which color contrast also plays a big part.
In his interview he also seemed to not know how much points per frame you need to make a flicker free image which was rather awkward.. he must be very new to it all.
I prefer a proper analog console being used or a pre-programmed abstract show like swami's then this that is pushing the limits way more to me.

To get no percievable flicker at 300kpps you want ~800 points to a max of 1000 points per frame.
Not 150 or 300.

[logsquared]

I love the abstracts starting an 36:00. At around 37:00 its like they are "bit crunched" very cool effect!

[BlueFang]

I noticed he makes very little use of color which is rather a shame.. when you are using a laser projector which color contrast also plays a big part.
In his interview he also seemed to not know how much points per frame you need to make a flicker free image which was rather awkward.. he must be very new to it all.
I prefer a proper analog console being used or a pre-programmed abstract show like swami's then this that is pushing the limits way more to me.

To get no percievable flicker at 300kpps you want ~800 points to a max of 1000 points per frame.
Not 150 or 300.

He is not using a typical frame based DAC - he is using audio signals to control the lasers with the audio bitrate set to 96khz. This is how he seems to get a lot of those bit-crushing effects and some of the other noise based effects - he talks about processing things like circles through a low-pass filter with the filter resonance cranked up... I think that is pretty dang awesome, and not sure how I would even go about doing something like that using something like LSX expressions.

LSX (and pretty much all laser software I know of) does everything in the discrete or point domain - while he is doing everything pretty much in the analog domain. Sure analog consoles have been around forever - but they are not something that is available to most people.

[luxilid]

I am attempting to do something similar using a modular synthesizer and a custom built module that converts control voltage from my setup into the proper X,Y,R,G,B levels through ILDA DB25.
I just got my projector last week so I am starting to experiment with this system. It is 100% analog voltage modulations and I plan on making some abstract generative art, kind of a mix between LSX abstracts and the old Laserium analog controllers with a few twists...
I am very interested in these alternative methods of creating laser imagery and I believe some very cool things can be done, I really think Robert Henke is doing some very interesting stuff!

[Spotta]

Quite a few people pursuing this train of thought nowadays, I purchased two sets of scanners from Andy_Con last year, one of which I passed on to some mates of mine who are a modular only group - The London Modular Alliance who have started incorporating lasers into their shows





It's nice to see Monolake mentioned here as i'm using Ableton Live is my main performance laser software at the moment, personally I'm more interested in having shows that I can play live in total sync to music, so this enables me to follow midi timecode, and fire off pre-programmed clips using Push, I'm loving it so far and can't wait to incorporate expert sleepers and M4L into the performance, most of the clips are either created on my modular or using LFI_Player and then converted to wav's via Laserboy for use in Live.
Looking forward to more Laser shows like this in the future.

[planters]

I noticed he makes very little use of color which is rather a shame.. when you are using a laser projector which color contrast also plays a big part.

Peter,
I agree with you that this is limiting, but have you heard of the peacock effect? This is the idea behind some minimalist art; the Japanese tea room with almost no color than white and faint pastels and a SINGLE red flower. A bouquet of flowers would ruin it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...i_2006_017.jpg

[dsli_jon]

Ok... So I guess I am the only one fascinated...

Au contraire mon frere! I thought it was really-awesome! Thanks for posting.. Amazing-looking 'white-balance', too.. IN fact, when I first saw the 'FT's' piece, I immediately got 'chills', because I instantly 'heard' this:

..& @ Vimeo, for those who YukTube 'blocks this' for... https://vimeo.com/116390662

..The coincidences - both in 'form' / timings, as well as 'metaphorically' (lyrics to the visuals.. ie: references to 'sleeping' / 'walking in the morning light', etc.. I did *not* make those concepts sync-up via edits.. Crazy, huh?!..) are uncanny.. I did very-little 'editing' to get the synchronicity to happen, just a few small clips / shifts. Just might be one of the most 'epic, right outta the box' mash-ups, ever... Or, it's horrible blasphemy, one of the two..

..Either way, Hats-off to Robert's exploration. And, awesome that he's so-tied in w/ Ableton.. Actually, we're huge fans of it, since that's how we 'drive' our baseline show-content / make mods / edits, etc, these days in the Laserium-shows.. Very-powerful tool..

..So, ya, , way-up..
j

[james]

... most of the clips are either created on my modular or using LFI_Player and then converted to wav's via Laserboy for use in Live.
Looking forward to more Laser shows like this in the future.

I'm glad to see that some people actually understand the value of being able to create in a studio environment and use the results in a live show.

Nice work!

James.