Amon tobin isam setup

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D: I guess it's a little nail-biting creating all that refined content before the cube set structure is built? Peter: We'd been working off a digital model provided by Heather Shaw while the cube structure was being built and doing all our renderings based on that model. I had tried to instill in everyone producing content - the big Leviathan crew using Maya and Cinema 4D, to be somewhat procedural in their work But then it turned out that everything was built perfectly and matched up and we never adjusted our virtual model - that was one of my big "Aha" moments which was more of a "Thank God" moment really!

D: Matt, Kinect was used sparsely but very effectively on this show, what did you do? Matt: One of the ways Amon appears during the show is projected on the entire set as a Kinect point cloud.

What the audience sees is a custom rendering of the point cloud using the Kinect image. We have some other ideas on how to use the Kinect and it feels as though we've barely scratched the surface with this project. But we were also careful to not over-do it and risk losing the interest factor here.

D: On a show of this scale and complexity and you're the creative director, were there any actually memorable moments that were illuminating? Vello: I was working with Peter in a hotel room in Vegas doing a Heineken event and working on the Roger Sanchez system and my big "Aha" moment came when I asked Peter to make a box with a sphere inside it because I wanted to prove that we could recreate a faces and edges of the cubes map look with a floating interior.

A big part of what I'd sold to Amon was that the show would have a floating cinematic feel combined with mapping effects. Peter was just noodling around and I looked over his shoulder and he'd re-projected the box and the sphere on the box and the sphere and as soon as I saw that I instantly knew that we had the technique to do ISAM. That was the big "Aha" moment.

That was "Oh shit, there it is! Vello: The second "Aha" moment came when we actually saw the calibration tool project onto the 2bit set for the first time at the rehearsal stage. This was one of the most powerful moments which provided me the most assurance and relief.

I had been really concerned about the overall technology and how things were coming together, how they were going to work. I was actually super paranoid having heard a few video mapping calibration horror stories.

The projectors were literally dropped down off of the forklift and onto the truss stands, plugged in, powered on and calibrated in less than 30 minutes - the first time. Peter: A lot of "Aha" moments were centered around the illusion - the perspectival projection mapping illusion.

We had got it all set up in the warehouse we'd rented for a week and Matt did the first map, the first calibration and said "Okay, throw something up so we can see. It popped up and we just kind of all looked at it and "Woah! It was the most simple thing but it was really remarkable.

There were enough cues to make it believable that it was angled stone cubes. Matt laughs "When we finally saw things light up for the first time going from the virtual to real, that was a really good feeling like, "Wow!

This thing is actually going to work! We're using SSD drives and the video's playing back flawlessly, I don't think we ever really hit a bandwidth for that - you guys Derivative are really efficient with the resources of the system. D: There's been an apparent trend recently, at least, 3 of the artists using TouchDesigner to run their shows - Richie Hawtin's Plastikman, DJ Shadow and now Amon Tobin have nested themselves right inside the performance set.

Amon said that the idea for ISAM was to integrate himself "quite literally, into an audio and visual presentation of the album.

Vello: The performance set is an extension of the individual musician experience. DJ'ing has been and is a very individualistic thing, so it seems like a natural extension of the DJ as superstar to have them be inside a larger structure and have visual representation of the sonic going on around them and be inserted into it.

Bryant: I think there's a common goal now where everyone is trying to achieve the effect of a singular system where all devices are in communication working as a singular system. We're eliminating technical boundaries where something might look as if it's on its own operational system and not quite doing the same things as another element.

So yeah, I think there's some common ground there between all these different projects to create the effect of a singular system. D: Amon Tobin sees tools as a starting and not an end point and has said that music technology can appeal to our inherent laziness. You can now buy what you might lack through your own efforts and creativity.

Shows are definitely getting bigger and technologically more complex Peter: Big shows have worked their way into the zeitgeist. Big electronic artists - Amon, Richie Hawtin, Deadmau5 et al. These days you've got to do a big 3D show. Amon came in at a good time after lots of experimentation in all of this and brought his amazing depth and texture.

Bryant: I think also that the difference between Amon and a lot of previous shows, is that he's generating some of the visuals on his own. There's a point in the show where he's interacting with the Kinect camera, painting waveforms onto the structure by waving his hand around.

Matt: Everyone's always looking for the next big thing. Someone will make a tool and then everyone else will do it and it becomes commonplace. Augmented reality for example. It's always going to be bigger and better. Vello: Everyone wants a show and it's about expanding the immersive performance space. Everyone has a different approach and no matter what they're using and how they're doing it the desire is to entertain an audience. Mediums are converging in the entertainment sphere and they have been for a long time as far as what you do.

The job description's getting a little hazier these days. Bryant: But it keeps it exciting. Every day it seems more and more possibilities are coming into fruition. Vello: What makes this show so nice is that it has feeling. It's cinematic and a feast for your eyes. The production then toured around the world with increasing interest and success. Among the many different media outlets that featured the project, one of our favorites is the piece by The Creators Project , a partnership between Intel and VICE.

ISAM 2. The tour then went to Australia for two sold-out, back-to-back performances at the iconic Sydney Opera House in June. The performances, streamed live from Sydney, accumulated over , views. ISAM Live 2. LOTS to learn. I suppose it's one of those time versus money things. Csound is free, but is it efficient to spend years learning it? Though there's not inconsiderable learning in Kyma too. Just listen to the song thats sampled and the tobin songs and make up your own mind about how much hes added and processed.

Just clicking the play button on the songs will give you the comparison. There is good chunks taken directly from the source, thats true. There's probably some Kyma example videos going about. I believe Kyma's main advantage is real time Fourier Transform based stuff. I'm kind of sceptical of the extent to which it's hardware acceleration is so very necessary, these days. I remember looking into buying a Kyma set-up nearly ten years ago now. I don't feel like they've genuinely moved on that much, whereas computer CPU and memory has.

In a way it's like the Virus TI of sound mangling, you ought to be able to get it all from other sources for cheaper, but it combines so much features, and in such a well put together manner, that people feel it's worth the price.

I might doodle around with free stuff like Pure Data and Csound and Paul's Stretch and Soundhack if you're on a Mac just to see if that kind of thing is to your tastes. That guys a cold piece of work. It takes a whole lot of effort too pull off what he does. Wow, his live show is more like an electronic music theatre. My Studio. I've known two people with kymas. Neither of them owns one anymore. That might be the way to go.