NAMM 2010 was the death of VJ as the industry did not have anything new regarding the control and integration of music and video.
It looks like innovation was there at the Frankfort music and sound show, the old continent has something new and very cool regarding control. DA FACT did introduce the Karlax and we added support for it in GrandVJ just in time for the show. And now at ArKaos we have a proposition for artists that would like to explore this with us, read this, watch the video and the details are at the end of this article…
It’s all about maximizing control and using your body to express your ideas. 10 fingers running on a MIDI keyboard can allow triggering many events but as Nintendo did show to the game industry gestures and your body can add a whole new fantastic layer to expression and control.
This is the idea of the Karlax. It’s a MIDI instrument that generate key press and control values via standard pads and sliders on the instrument but it has also gesture support to generate even more MIDI controller.
It’s a delight for GrandVJ because when designing it we made sure that everything can be controlled via MIDI. In this video you see the mixer interface mapped to the various MIDI notes and controllers generated by the Karlax. In this first implementation we did map 5 controllers to the intensity of the first 5 layers of the mixer. You can use 2 keys to select the next and previous layer so you can edit live the state all layers directly from the controller. Other controls can affect loop speed, triggering visuals from the patch, select next previous effects, moving the visual position, changing effect parameters value… the gesture itself is mapped to loop speed.
In this video you see GrandVJ controller in the same time with an audio processing application.
We have received an interesting proposition from DA FACT, we would like to receive submission from GrandVJ users living around Brussels or Paris. DA FACT will provide a controller for one month, we will provide software and support. During that month the artist must create an original piece both audio and video. We will shoot the progress and record the final presentation. This will be used as an example of what can be done today when you use such powerful combination. Send us your proposition via mail at contact at arkaos dot net.
A big thank you to Christophe Martin for making this happen!