pouët.net

Hi,

There is no real status for live demos/VJing. It can be recognized as an entry for wild competition, so it's not quite bad. I don't know when this phenomenon started, if anybody has an idea about it. Any opinion about it, from who already participated to such a show.

We did a live at Synthesis Party 3, here is a post-mortem : http://sanx.fxteam.net/demos/svlive.html
Respect to statori and einklang.net :)

If you will do a live act at breakpoint'03, please announce your show ;)

Cool, I am seeing the video now. I wish I were there ;)

That's a very interesting article, thanks. I can't check the video now but I'll watch it later.

I had the sensation other people like blasphemy and alien prophets (http://www.effekts.dk) or statix (http://www.bluespoon.com/) had to leave the scene to do live stuff.

There was a live demo compo at least one year at the bcn party (http://www.bcnparty.org/) .. don't know if it was a success.

the first to do visuals on electronic music in live was JeanMichel Jarre in the 80's.

(i had friends who made visuals in live with an A600 in a Lyon's club in the start of the 90's, it's old like house music)

there are programs for that.. like visualJockey and such. can't say those deliver any spectacular effects though.

zone, it's very doubtful JMJ was the first to do visuals on electronic music live ... maybe "in lives" but not "live"... Disco people were doing stuff with video synths for their clips ... Anyway "firsts" are uninteresting.

non-demoscene people are using: nato.0+55 or jitter or softvns or their own software .. There's really a ton of stuff.

Thanks for the positive feedback on the article.
For the definition of live, I was using this definition : a show, with music and demo-engine-powered visuals, that are fit together at real-time.
Knos, interesting info and links...

live demo is imho different from vjing,
when vjing, only the visual part is actually done in live,

a live demo should also allow musicians to perform live when the visuals are played, which is more interesting, because they have something to bring in the live to make it more dynamic.

nice article,

nowadays with fast laptops, wireless lans and quality soundcards i don't see why it would be a problem to organize live demoshows in parties ..

maybe because preparing a good live demo performance requires much more preparation than 'just' a demo. to have a good one, the whole crew could at least practise a couple of times. this means that they must live near each other, all the code is ready and done so no partycoding, and all equipment should be available.

especially when talking about music, many very good musicians have little or no equipment to be able to perform that quality live. also, putting up a whole band and one fella with a laptop veejaying some demo-effects, might be no more than a band performance with some veejaying (which just happens to be built up of demoscene-ish code).

florent, I don't know where you really draw the line, after all, you can do "vj-ing" with live musicians. I suspect you think vj-ing is only in the context of clubs where you have someone mixing tracks instead of "playing live".. It can't be argued wether mixing
is a form of live music :)

Besides, vj-s also do live music + graphics, take a look at someone like Kurt Ralske.

Zden is also doing just that for example when he toured europe with sofasurfers: both music + visuals were done live. ... so sofasurfers + zden live could technically be termed a "live demo"

I'd say maybe if you want to define a subgenre of vj-ing that'd be more "demo-like" you'd have to add a restriction like, both music + video should come from the same machine, or something similar.

oh yes,
i may actually see vjing as something too restricted, as finally not the main show (which stays the music ), but something behind the music ..

while live demos would be equally centered on both points (visuals & music)

ok, i stop arguing now, let's talk about that next week-end while drinking german beers :P

yeah! drinking alcohol and doing live demo !

/me wants vj-sets at breakpoint

Some IDM groups do this with programs like MAX/MSP and Jitter, a combination live audio/video programming enviornment. I've seen Autechre and Funkstorung use these live, and Autechre uses MAX/MSP to program all their tracks nowadays. the included visual compilers do allow for alot of different types of manipulation.

Then again I've seen Plaid do a live video/audio set with a camcorder spun in front of a monitor to create some weird ass kaleidoscope effects... they threw stickers at it to keep the pattern changing. This was just as, if not more entertaining than the flying cubes and colorpulses of Autechre/Funkstorung's all Macintosh setups.

Meat Beat Manifesto has whole Videos set up for their entire shows... the video isn't live, but the music is. Very Hypnotic and entertaining.

The SONAR Festival had some great visuals via BLUESPOON - supposed 'custom software'... check his [flashy] site here: http://www.bluespoon.com/indexrex.html -- apparently affiliated with TPOLM.

If you want to see what the hell MAX/MSP is about, they can be downloaded [demo versions] at http://www.cycling74.com/products/index.html

glttch
¿[phÿlûm]_siñt£r

why 'supposed' ?

/me wants macaw-sets at breakpoint.

'supposed' because it looks alot like what is done with max/msp's jitter as well. pure speculation though. I'd like to see the interface.

If anyone decides to have live demos at their party, please capture the audio and video from the source ;)

glttch you'll have to speculate better then. First it was created at least 2 years before jitter was released, second, it runs on pc (you maybe could have guessed that, since it comes from statix) Third, it's already on its 3rd version and the interface has evolved as well.
http://bluespoon.com/noo/blog/blog.php?show_id=86835494#86835494

And I'd like to point out that until very recently the definite way to do video stuff on MAX was nato.0+55 (which cycling74 (dest!tute korporat th!evz) conveniently inspired themselves of)

For win32 pc people there are 2 main options if they want to taste the MAX type of environment:
pd + framestein or gem,
vvvv (though i wish you could make plugins for this one)

Personally i'm sick of putting any more hard work into learning to use proprietary software that is at the whim of their creator, can't follow me on any platform i wish to roam, (see the emagic logic audio debacle) or is inappropriately extensible.

(at least PD is opensource)

i actually was wondering when videos replaced coded demos wild demo competitions (using code instead of video is still alive here in Greece, btw, however some think that those wild demos are real demos just because they're not videos)...