uebergeek

PIGS is a software/hardware/percussive framework developed in Max/MSP/Jitter. It's designed for fluid, multi-layered, visual performance. It functions as a performable, improvisable, instrument; as a software framework for developing future instruments and performances; and as a testbed for working out performative concepts. PIGS focuses on experimentation with visuals that are not bound to traditions of rectangular frames and “movie” structures and on creating visual instruments designed as performable instruments rather than as controllable software. In its initial implementation, it enables a performer to perform visuals as they might perform a musical instrument; to be able to improvise; and to create fluid forms rather than rectangular, movie-like images.

Current PIGS performance interfaces include iPads, Leap Motion controller, and silent MIDI drums. Real-time gestures are drawn on the iPads and Leap Motion  and can then replayed with variations by striking the MIDI drums. The PIGS system allows for an assortment of variations from the original gesture in both duration and form with each drum stroke. The performer may also use this functionality to create theme and variations or looping structures. Individual drums/video layers may also be set to auto-loop, allowing the performer to improvise on the other drums/layers against the rhythms of the looping background layers.

While PIGS uses musical instruments and strategies as general models for thinking about performativity and temporal structures, care is taken not to attempt to simply translate musical approaches to visual ones: PIGS is designed from the ground up for visual performance. Rather than approaching audiovisual integration as a matter of synchronization of sound and image, the idea is to create an instrument that is performable as a part in a duet or ensemble (analogous to the way various instruments in an ensemble play different musical parts even though they are performing the same piece.) Likewise, while twentieth-century gesture and drawing-based abstract animators like Len Lye and Walter Ruttmann are progenitors, PIGS is interested in combining abstract drawing with live action, and in integrating contemporary visual influences from cell phone videos and YouTube to CGI, concert light shows and holographs.

The cultural zeitgeist is increasingly one of immediacy and unconstrained expression, while the zeitgeist of digital performance tools is often that of planning, control, and reserve. PIGS is designed for immediacy, to propose and facilitate a match between the ways we create cinema and the zeitgeist of the immediate. And although initially PIGS software is being performed traditional stage/screen concert settings, it’s intended to eventually expand into a variety of contexts.

"Rocket's Red Glare: Things Exploding on YouTube," an audiovisual improvisation by Amy Alexander (visuals (Max/Jitter), percussion) and Curt Miller (clarinet, computer audio (PD)) is the first composition developed using PIGS. 

The visual software is written entirely in Max/Jitter. There are four channels (layers) of visuals, each of which can be controlled by any of various gestural controllers. In slower parts of the performance gestures are drawn continually - in faster, more intense parts, MIDI drums are used to replay the gestures. (The gesture point data is replayed.) Each time a gesture is replayed, it is varied depending on velocity of the drum strokes, sonic spectral data, etc. The variations are spatial, temporal and textural: in other words, faster, more forceful playing might replay the gestures larger, faster, and with more opacity. The videos are both used as both textures on jit.gl.paths and as mattes behind them. A variety of video processing is performed on the videos to allow them to vary between more abstract and more recognizable: this allows us to work with the way videos are used culturally to aestheticize real-world events. Video processing is controlled both by parameters of the gesture/drum stroke and by manual adjustment (Launchpad Mini, Behringer BCR 2000, iPad/Mira.) 

PIGS software lead developer: Amy Alexander. Contributing developers: Wojciech Kosma, Curt Miller. Video Assistant: Doug Rosman.

percussive-image-gestural-system-pigs

Percussive Image Gestural System (PIGS)

Andrew Benson

New York media artist Peter Burr presents SPECIAL EFFECT, his newest mash-up of live music, video, and staged theatrics. In this performance, Burr becomes the live ‘presenter’ of an imaginary television show featuring fresh new works from the underground animation label Cartune Xprez. These video segments are all inspired by the Zone, the site of an unnamed cataclysm in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 sci-fi film Stalker. The Zone is off-limits, forbidding and mysterious; but also pregnant with hope, for deep within the Zone, it is rumoured, there exists a room where wishes may be granted. 
Special Effect includes original video pieces by: 
James Duesing 
Amy Lockhart 
Yoshi Sodeoka 
Billy Grant 
Michael Bell-Smith 
Ola Vasiljeva 
Jacob Ciocci 
Andrew Benson 
Jeff Kriksciun 
Chad VanGaalen 
Philippe Blanchard 
E*Rock 
Luke Painter 
Brandon Blommaert 
Stu Hughes 
Michael Robinson 
Sabrina Ratté 
Brenna Murphy 
 
Original music by Seabat and Lucky Dragons

SPECIAL EFFECT TRAILER

Last year, Peter Burr approached me with an intriguing Kickstarter campaign he was starting for a travelling show, and wanted to know if I would contribute a video.  The concept was that a group of video artists would each make 30 second videos about "the Zone" from Tarkovsky's film Stalker, and/or the book it was based on Roadside Picnic. 

I immediately jumped in and started reading the old Russian science fiction novel.  Before I even sat down to watch Stalker, I had a clear view of the visual style and process I'd use, and in fact never bothered to watch the movie (highly recommend it) until after my video was finished.  I'm excited to be included in a really fantastic group of artists and what promises to be a pretty great show.  For my part, I created a 3D animation with Maya that was exported as a Collada file and then brought into Jitter's jit.gl.model object.  In Max, I created particle effects, applied generative and animated textures, and created a number of other special effects using OpenGL geometry.

Still From "Into the Zone" - Andrew Benson

This Friday, the touring Max-driven live cinema show will be making it's first US stop at the Museum of Moving Images in New York.  For some more info, check out this interview with Peter Burr at the Creators Project.

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