Ok Go

Ok Go's creative team need a pat on the back, consistently quirky and original the band recently broadcast a live performance which was pixelated using the avatars of people who tuned in to watch through facebook and twitter. A creative and interesting way of getting an audience interested in a live performance.

Coldplay Wristband audience interaction

Recently Coldplay have been using wristbands which are controlled through radio signals as part of their show at arena gigs, shown below in use at Wembley during the X Factor final and in the video, an audience member at the Glasgow concert demonstrates how the audience experience is enhanced by the bands which create a sense of togetherness and interaction with the show.

An interesting and novel way of creating participation and a communal feel for audience members. This technology could be pushed further to react with all notes and beats automatically, or through tracking of position and different colours implanted within the lights could be used to display images when filmed from above.

Jamie XX x Quayola

Jamie XX (of The xx fame) teamed up with Quayola—as part of RizLab‘s series of collaborative projects—to road test the latter’s Partitura sound visualisation software, which he built in collaboration with Abstract Birds. What ensued was a perfect melding of sound and vision. Jamie XX’s laid back pulsating beats gave life to Quayola’s highly rendered graphics, which flowed and formed on 17 meter HD screens, immersing the captivated crowds in their glowing fluctuations. The intricate forms that played out across the canvasses danced and splintered, breaking and reforming in flickering structures, turning music into a visual entity.

Someone remarked that it was the best screensaver they’d ever seen, but it was much more than that—a real-time music visualisation tool with 500 different visual parameters that uses algorithms to generate a beautiful palette of colors inspired by artists like Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Impressively, the unfolding graphics are not pre-sequenced, so it becomes an exploratory piece and is addictive to watch. It’s so smooth you forget that it’s actually responsive, as it takes on a life of its own, coming alive in bursts of color and assorted shapes.



(original article)

Research project

I've been reading more to get more depth on my research topic cause I'm really struggling to find a question. I looked into how colours make you feel by reading a journal about an experiment tested on university students which has given me some inspiration. I also looked at the Technoetic journals following on from Simon's lecture on the research project. I found some really interesting articles regarding projects which experiment with perception and interaction and I'm going to read more into those tomorrow. I really want to create some visuals for my project which can be used in club environments, looking at people currently doing this like Kenzo Digital and Ali Demirel, amongst others.