To sync up the lighting and visuals, including the main room’s matrix
wall, the GB team called in Stuart Wilson (a.k.a. VJ Definitive) of
Definitive Media. We asked him about the process:
Believe it or not, GC brought me in on the last week. This was due to the
installation being finalised and tweaked right up to the end. No one really knew
what would work on the LED screen due to its bizarre shape, so we really
needed to see the installation completed before we created the visuals.
So we did two things: firstly, to allow the LJ (controlling the LED wall) to sync
as best as possible, we created all visuals to run in a four-beats design, meaning
all the movement, colour changes, animations moved, transformed or altered
on a beat. This allows the LJ to tap the beat into the control software and the
software then speeds up or slows down the visuals to beat-match the tapping.
This sounds awkward but it is very user friendly. Basically, if the LJ can tap to the
beat of the music, the visuals will follow. The control software is ArKaos DMX.
Second, we created a number of loops that had audio recognition capability. This
is done via Adobe Flash. The beats are picked up via the PC’s small microphone
and then this triggers effects in the Flash animation. Very powerful when done
correctly. Pulsing shapes work great.
January / February 2009 047
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