Video Work

The following videos are a few examples of my work. All sounds and music was recorded by my self using Pro tools using a rage of microphones

Calligraphy

Une Mission Ephemere - Piotr Kamler

Spook Sport - Norman Mclaren

.

Still Nacht - Brothers Quay

Audi Car Advert

Guitar Recorded April 2010 - Alistar Warren

Are We Still Married - Brothers Quay

Elysium Software

The reacTogon uses MIDI to generate sound, and its prooving pretty hard to find much imformation on it, but like the ReacTable Im sure that I must just dig a little harder to find out the really interesting information. I was unable to ind out what software the ReacTogon uses but I was able to find another peice of software that was inspired by it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxSP5ZP8IHo&feature=player_embedded

This is called elysium and was created by Matthew Mower in 2008 and is inspired by the ReacTogon.

But what is Elysium?

Straight from the Elysium webwite " Elysium is an interactive generative MIDI sequenser"

"Elysium is a sequencer, that means it’s designed to produce sequences of notes that can be layered to form music.

Elysium uses MIDI which means that it doesn’t make sounds itself but can drive MIDI based synthesizers, samplers, and other instruments. It also means that Elysium’s output can be recorded, and manipulated, in a DAW such as Logic or Ableton Live.

Elysium is generative which relates to the way the music is created by building up a “system” composed of layers, cells, tokens, and playheads that combined, when “played”, to produce a sequence of notes.

Elysium is interactive. Features like MIDI CC control and MIDI trigger mode allow you to take control and integrate generative elements into the music you make and play."


The great thing about this is that Elysium is open source like TUIO and ReacTivision. The down side for me is that Elysium only runs on Mac opperating systems lepard and snow lepard, and as I only have tiger running on my mac I can not use this software.

Luckly for me ReacTIVision and TUIO both work with my operating system, which is one reason why I have decided to create a reacTable.

The Elysium software screen dump looks just like the reacTogon's musical interface and ind if you what the video demo you can see that it looks and behaves just like the reacTogon does and is one way in which you can see how the reacTogon has inspired it.

Full instructions on how to download and make a symple midi sequencer useing Elysium can be found on thie following website:

http://lucidmac.com/products/elysium/

The Reactagon the Chain Reactive Performance Appegiator

The ReacTogon was created in 2007 by Mark Burton and is another example of a musucial instrument that uses a tangiable multi-touch user interface. It uses a larger surface then the reacTable and as its name suggests, its shape is rectangle.

Like the ReacTable this instruement looks cool and futuistic and more importamtly makes music in a real time video stream.

It lookes different to the reactable in appearence and sound, the reactable is round and the reatcagon is recangle, the tangiable blocks are all one shape and do different things, the animation is different too.

Ill go into a little detain on how it works.

"The ReacTagon is based on a harmonic table"

The table reminds me of bee hive in the way that it shows a grid of hexigon shaped blocks upon the table top. These hexigon shapes are known as cells acts and they like the keys on the piano, every cell has a fixed note like C for example.

Round coster shaped objects are placed down on the table to create musical sequences. These objects are marked with instructions

The above object shows the direction of sequence flow and it also deturmins the first note. The note in which the sequence will start will depend on which cell the marker is placed.

This marker is known as a ricochet marker, it plays a note when the playhead reaches it. They can be also be used to change the direction of play in real time. Like its name suggests it is used to pass the play to another marker, like another rocochet marker, creating a musical sequence.


The bar consisting of different square blocks located at the bottom of the table is known as the "transposer bar" and it allows the pitch of the musical sequence to be changed.










Another counter known as a "splitter" can be used to dispurce the playhead in several directions

A "stop" counter can be used to stop the play head after the final not it played. Conbine all these markers you can create interesting intricate musical sequences.


Volume, timbre and rythm can be controled by by lower faders located on the side of the reacTogon. By moving up and down the faders with a simple finger depth and colour can be added to the composition.


The faders above these act like sound banks and additional sounds like drum sequencers and other instruments making the composition experience larger and more exhilerating.