DJsounds caught up with the US conceptual/video artist Gardner Post to talk about art + technology at the Remix Hotel, at The National in South Beach. The interview is followed by a trip to a nearby apartment to get a special, behind-the-scenes insight into what Gardner’s working on this year – complete with words from celebrity DJ Tom Laroc!
Gardner was in South Beach with his Baby Grand Master creation (an acclaimed DJ/VJ masterpiece, modestly tagged the king of ‘video instruments’) to collaborate with the New York-born, Miami-based hip-hop DJ Tom Laroc/United Content Providers.
DJsounds last spoke to Gardner in 2007 at the Optronica festival, so it was great to see his vision for Baby Grand Master-style video mash-up materialising in such full-on splendour. Enjoy the show.
Special thanks to Sandro Canavezzi de Abreu and everyone at UFSCar for making the 1º Contato festival a great success. I had a fantastic time, and was inspired by the creative efforts of everyone involved.
For the festival, we put together a weeklong experimental workshop which focused on exploring interactive connections between disparate media. We used Max/MSP Jitter for processing, iCubeX and Wi-micro devices for input sensing, video tracking, audio analysis and event detection, improvised electronic instruments, and synchronized OSC timing via a network server.
We were fortunate to have Tania Fraga bring her Java 3D virtual environments to the workshop, which created a beautiful lightscape when mixed in with the media.
The dancer Ivani Santana performed live improvisation with the piece using a wireless control glove and other body sensors.
On Saturday evening, I performed live video with Daevid Allen and Gong for the festival concert, which was a blast. Thanks to everyone who came out to the show for making the event such a wonderful time!
Over the next few weeks, I will be posting some more pics and videos from the festival and the workshop. If you have any materials, let me know and I will be happy to post.
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Patients and caregivers should be informed that impulse control disorders/compulsive behaviors may occur.
Baby Grand Master™ – The King of Video Instruments.
Introducing the breathtaking Baby Grand Master™, Gardner Post’s latest, most muscled athlete.
Shouldered and powerful as always, but sleeker now with Pioneer DVJ-X1 DVD players, this powerful entertainment machine is purposefully trimmed and tuned for heart-pounding performance. Artistic expression, power, control and comfort await notice with bold assurance.
There’s not an ounce of excess. But there is anticipation… because on stage, in the museum, or in the living room, the Baby Grand Master™ commands.
Archival excerpt recording of OVNI playing the Sugar Refinery in Vancouver BC in July of 2002. This OVNI consists of Brian Kane, Brian Comerford (E23) and David Fodel (devslashnull). Fodel and Comerford performed on synchronized laptops with Ableton Live and Kane performed live video from laptop using Max/Msp.
Live improvised experimental techno.
Part of the Summer 2002 “Future of Kitchen Design Tour”. See also http://www.commtom.com, Communications of Tomorrow.
Sweatin’ to the old school: here are some early VuJak videos which I recently found on Hi-8 tapes in my closet.
The first video is from the Digital Hollywood conference in Beverly Hills, 1994. Some friends at Interactive Light lent us an array of floor mounted infrared controllers, so we hooked them into VuJak and let people do what they wanted during the exhibit. Shown in this video is a dancer who got quicky hooked on it and spent a long time with it. Interactive Light, Inc. created the D Beam Controller, which is now integrated into Roland keyboards.
The next video is just us having fun in the studio one night in 1993. We had just gotten the system working well and there were people over for a party, so we turned on the camera. Fun stuff.
And here’s some raw footage straight out of the system from around the same time. Fun with randomness. Always liked this. Still kinda relevant. Bill was so much more fun than GW…
Busted out some of the old 3/4″ tapes from The Leisure Channel and digitized them for your viewing pleasure. These were produced for public access in New York and Los Angeles between 1987 and 1993. Some zany stuff – here are a few choice nuggets.
In many ways much of what we were doing here has become “real” on the web, in particular the “All Talk” Show, which was just people talking and telling stories – not unlike what much of YouTube has become. And KTV – the 24 hour karoake channel. Seemed wacky then. Not any more.
I’ve been playing with a game controller VJ interface for about a year, so I polished it up and used it live for this year’s Optronica show. Worked like a charm – fast, stable, and easy to use.
I’ve shown this to a variety of people, and I think it’s a great interface. Addictive and fun. No learning curve. And I’ve been user testing it with kids to make sure it works right.
This interface was made with Max/MSP/Jitter, and the hi object, and I’m running it on a MacBook Pro. It uses full res dv files and can scratch, jump, loop, and do real time effects. I have tried to build it to suit the real world needs of VJ’s. It also uses a standard usb game controller. The one I used for the show cost $10.
Kid not included.
Below is an simple diagram of the button configuration. I went through a variety of configurations before deciding on this one.
The first video sampler. I created VuJak with Max (from Opcode at the time, now Max/MSP) with Lisa Eisenpresser and Jay Haynes. Much fun followed.
I have many hours of video material which I will try and post in the next year or so. There are lots of good stories, too, so I will update this from time to time.
This is a music video I made shortly after Jitter was released in 2002. I had used music which was created by Josh Clayton, so I sent him a copy, and he smiled on the piece. Thanks again, Josh.
It was shown at the Raindance Film Festival in England in 2004.
OVNI Logo, 2004, created for 2004 Mixmasters TV show. This Logo appeared on the “Low Rolling Resistance” video which David Fodel and I created for Addictive TV’s UK series. Brian Comerford provided the copy for the text crawl. This was an interesting piece, very experimental. I would still love to go back and re-edit it, as I never did feel that it was properly finished.
There’s a nice pic of dev, e23, and myself as Ovni here, along with some other pics from our 2002 “Future of Kitchen Design” tour.
