I am doing a 3 days workshop starting this Friday in Athens, Greece (May 18th, 19th and 20th). The first day is dedicated to Modul8 and the following two days are all about MadMapping with Modul8 & MadMapper. Yes, it is very late announcement, but that’s Athens for you >:-(=)

We have a nice space that is part of the lovely Boose Cooperativa the heart of Athens.

You will need to register and there is a modest fee of 33 euros.

Hope to see you there!

After this overview Frz discussed the importance of light in conjunction with projections and used this as a pretext for providing a sneak preview of the LED Mapper that is being incorporated into MadMapper. The screenshot above is your first taste of what mapping images to LED’s will be like. From a nerd point of view (I have many points of view) I thought it was cool how the resulting selection is converted from pixels into light, so that the data sent from MadMapper via an Artnet interface as low latency data that activates the LED lights.

After Frz finished talking Boris stepped in and demonstrated how easy it is to have Modul8 be a part of this LED lighting magic. Nothing is changed in Modul8 for this to happen. What is exciting and cool about this is that if you can gain access to the stage lighting rig, you don’t have to worry anymore if the lighting operator does not want to coordinate with you on color schemes. Or if you are a lighting designer you can forgo some of the weird DMX desktop software I have seen and use Modul8 and MadMapper instead.

For those of you needing more media about this event so you can triple analyze the movements of the creators in order extract subliminal meanings, this will have to wait until the end of the festival when the documentation crew have a chance to start editing and disseminating.

There is still quite a bit of development that needs to occur before any formal announcements are made about availability however my best educated guess would be that the goal is to get this out by the end of this year.

For now I am off to Athens to conduct a mapping workshop at the Athens Video Art Festival.

Temporarily back home for a few days after the workshop in Oslo for the Art.On.Wires festival. Oslo was experiencing it’s first days of genuine spring. I like cold weather myself so here is a little reminder for me (yes, the used MadMapper) that chilled days are always in store:

By Marcos Zotes

Marcos Zotes, winner of the Reykjavik Winter Lights Festival 2012, and Chris Jordan presented Rafmögnuð Náttúra in Reykjavik, Iceland, as the main event for the festival in February. The work consists of a temporary, site-specific installation that appropriates the facade of Hallgrímskirkja church with a large video-mapping projection. The aim is to transform the static condition of this iconic landmark into a dynamic, engaging and participatory visual experience, and to intervene by socially activating its surrounding public space.

Marcos explains: I am fascinated with finding new ways to interact with the existing urban environment. I feel the city is there for us at our entire disposal, and we must reclaim its public spaces and urban structures in ways that exceed the limited uses for which they were originally intended. In this case, I wanted to subvert the static and timeless image of Hallgrímskirkja church and temporarily turn it into a contemporary, interactive and participatory experience. The idea is to make people look at their everyday environment with completely new eyes.

In Rafmögnuð Náttúra, a series of site-specific video performances and visuals inspired by the four elements are video-mapped and projected onto the church, specifically adapted to each particular detail of the façade. The intention is to challenge the audiences spatial perception with an installation that blurs the boundaries between dance, film and architecture. Of note is the participatory role of the audience, who becomes an active element capable of interacting with the light projected onto the building. The work included a live performance of Icelandic band For a Minor Reflection.

Marcos Zotes is an architect and artist who lives and works in New York.
More info about the artist can be found at www.metacitizen.com

Credits:
Concept: Marcos Zotes
Project Management: Marcos Zotes, Gerður Sveinsdóttir
Artistic Direction: Marcos Zotes
Technical Direction: Chris Jordan
Animation: Marcos Zotes, Thessia Machado, Noa Younse, Andrea Dart, Steven Tsai, Chris Jordan
Dance Performance: Coco Karol
Videography: Azmi Mert Erdem, Raghul Sridharan
Music: For a Minor Reflection

Special thanks to Höfuðborgarstofa, Orkusalan, Luxor, Karl Sigurðsson, For a Minor Reflection, Sveinn Rúnar Hauksson, Björk Vilhelmsdóttir, Kaffi Loki, Enki, NASA

Join us for an exclusive preview of new features for the upcoming releases of MadMapper and Modul8, to be presented to you by the developers themselves, as well as demonstrations of new dedicated MIDI controllers for Modul8.

Attend, and you will be treated to an Exclusive, mega 50% discount for Modul8, MadMapper and more stuff (limited stock).

This update brings several fixes, performance improvements and introduces one powerful and highly anticipated new feature: Surface Masks! You can now create masks on individual quads. You can also choose between using the mask within the quad or on top of it, where the mask is not affected by the tranformation.

Release Notes:

New Features:

• Surface Masks
  Masks can now be created on quads. Quads now have a built in mask option.

Fixes:

• Syphon media deselected when corresponding Syphon server stops
• Arrow keys are relative to the rotation of the surface and not the screen
• Project files can now be moved with or without the medias
• Drag & Drop in the input view now adds the media and selects it
• The surface inspector is automatically shown when a surface is selected
• Redrawing of quads when continously duplicated
• Performance problem when selecting a large number of surfaces

The update is free for all currently registered users and can be downloaded using their serial number by accessing the ‘yourspace’ page.
http://www.madmapper.com/yourspace

MadMapper can be purchased from our online shop. The basic license, for two computers is €299. Educational prices are available upon request by contacting us at support [at] garagecube [dot] com. 
A discount price for Modul8 is available to owners of MadMapper via the yourspace page.

Happy MadMapping!

Best beans,
The GarageCUBE/1024 Teams

<< begin >>

MadMapper, Who said protection mapping only?

One of the most common issues with vjing in a large video workspace is the arrangement and optimization of the video signal outputs for LED processors.

If you use a Mac Pro you can maybe have a chance to manage the output video signals because of the multi output feature and Modul8. But you must map each output to fit the desired pixel space in your composition. Large stages require more than an single 4:3 or 16:9 composition, sometimes they require 9:1 or some kind of custom pixel space, mixing more than 2 layers of video along with some cameras, that increases the CPU and GPU usage, compromising your performance.

One great solution we experienced two weeks ago at Viña del Mar Festival. The festival is one of the most important music shows in Latin America, and we used of MadMapper. The show was in charge on MADIS (www.madis.cl), the most experienced stage designing company in Chile, working with Visualists Anatomico and Ju Quezada (www.anatomico.cl).

The festival holds more than 700 m2 of LED panels, 8 LED Processors, 2 Hi End Catalysts systems, a Mac Pro running Modul8 and MadMapper, a incredible render farm of 6 machines rendering a pixel space of 9000 x 1000 in realtime at 60fps, rendering algorithmic visuals programmed by a software called MAMBO made by Proyecto LED from Chile. The experience with MAMBO was awesome, managing a huge pixel space in realtime. Everything was controlled with 2 Lemurs and 1 iPad running the Lemur software.

All this video converged onto a Vista Spider System with 8 by 8 SDI inputs and outputs. One of the big challenges of the show was to convert the huge LED pixel space in one single SDI video signal for all the LED Processors, reducing use of simultaneous outputs for the LED processors. It was a huge remap made by software.

All this video converged onto a Vista Spider System with 8 by 8 SDI inputs and outputs. One of the big challenges of the show was to convert the huge LED pixel space in one single SDI video signal for all the LED Processors, reducing use of simultaneous outputs for the LED processors.

So, what does all this mean? Perhaps these images will provide a better illustration of what was achieved.

And now here is the schematic view of the LED arrangement of the Backdrop.
It is very important to respect the space between LED modules and the gap.

The following graphic illustrates how the gap works in relation to the Modul8 output:

This is what is displayed without the gap:

With gap you can tell the difference, the separation between modules is respected by the software arrangement. So it look natural respecting the spaces and gaps.

We had the change how we used the software for Morrisey´s show and remap a virtual pixelspace in Modul8 using a Syphon output of 9000 by 1000 pixels and remap it to a single SDI output of Full HD with MadMapper. The technical crew was amazed how easy and quick it was for us to do the setup. We used more than 400 quads.

Here is a schematic view:

And another screenshot with the MadMapper interface with both the input and preview windows:

<< end >>

This is not the only instance where our software has been part of a much larger workflow. Modul8 has been known to partake in very large festival setups and live broadcast environments. When you have such highly complex setups, it’s nice to have one or two things be simple.

MadMapper, right there in the same list with the big guns: Advantage LED Solutions, BARCO and Christie. And I can now include ‘Award winning’ in promotional copy.