Just in time for the end of the year: I made a pdf portfolio with examples of my work from 2000 until 2011.

It can be downloaded either as a screenversion (5.9 mb) or printversion (18.2mb).

Happy new year!

2011 is almost over, and I should probably have mentioned the activities this fall which I have been planning to write about (which have been briefly mentioned in my tweets), from the frame installation at ANX in Oslo, Almost Cinema in Ghent, the acousmonium projection for the Kontraste festival in Krems, the sensxperiment festival in Lucena, the projection on Håkonshallen, the openframeworks workshop at BEK, and finally my current light experiments in my studio this December.

I should mention the frustrating experience of having to shut down the VPT forum with over 500 users due to some malware links which caused my website to be down for two weeks. I made a VPT Googlegroups as a replacement. The motivation to continue development of VPT is rather low at the moment. And I don´t do it for the money: Although over 7500 have downloaded VPT 6 the last four months, I received donations for a total of $360 from 10 individuals (so that´s 5 cent per download). There are a lot more choices when it comes to projection software now compared to when I first released VPT in 2008.

I will mention the first activities for next year, including a performance of  “The queen is the supreme power in the realm” at Radial System Berlin in january (collaboration with Yannis Kyriakides and Musikfabrik for the Ultraschall festival), my first US solo exhibition at Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh opening end of January, my first production in India (a collaboration with Choreographer Rukmini Chatterjee and Vreid), and my participation at a big exhibition at ZKM where I will work with the composition “7 cirkler” by Danish composer Else Marie Pade, and somehow I will need to find time to renovate (and eventually move into) my new apartment in Oslo.

Maag Magazine published an interview with me (p58-76) in their latest issue (which came out in late November) which you can read online, or you could listen to the conversation I had with Juan Cantizzani from sensxperiment in October.

Happy holidays!

I just finished a new collaboration with composer Knut Vaage, Multimorf 3, a composition for waterfall and trombone.

The image above is a snapshot from each of the nine sections of the piece.

The trombone plays together with recordings of waterfall and layered trombone overtones (also combined with live processing of the trombone).
The composition has an open form:
Vaage has together with sound designer Thorolf Thuestad created nine morphed backgrounds of waterfall recordings and trombone overtones. The trombone player, John Arild Suther, chooses how long each morph section should be played and in which order they should be played, as well as which sections of the composed score he wants to play within each section. This opens for very different performances based on the same material.

The video is conceived in a similar way to the morph backgrounds. The material is based on waterfall recordings and generated material, and each of the nine sections can be viewed as individial motion paintings. My intention was not to create something that followed the music directly, but to create a visual component that responded to the energy contained in a waterfall and to reflect the individual qualities of the nine sections. Since the length and order of each section can vary for each performance, I wanted each section to focus on layers instead of creating linear trajectories: If you see thirty seconds or four minutes of a section you will get more or less the same visual content, it is the combination and length of the different sections that create the linear dynamic of the piece.

The trombone player controls both the playback of video and sound backgrounds, using midi foot pedals, making it relatively easy to tour with the piece without involving too many people.

Multimorf 3 premiered on August 12th at Baroniet in Rosendal (probably one of the most beautiful places in Norway). We played outside in the courtyard of the Manor from 1665 to an enthusiastic audience.

It will also be performed at Bergen Architechture School on September 1st (together with multimorf 2), and at Integra in Copenhagen October 1st.

45 minutes of VPT 6 tutorials now available on the VPT 6 playlist on youtube

The available tutorials

Getting Started with VPT 6 (shown above)
Learn to use the navigator and preview window
Understanding presets in VPT 6
Explore the example presets that come with VPT 6
Learn how to use the new cuelist in VPT 6
A quick introduction to using midi in VPT 6

With almost 5000 downloads of VPT 5.1, I am happy to announce that the next version of Video Projection Tools, VPT 6 is now available.

VPT is a powerful and flexible video projection tool that does much more than just mapping.

What´s new in VPT 6.0
A completely new graphical interface making it even simpler to position, scale and distort the layers.
32 layers (previously 16)
mesh distortion with variable-sized control grid.
a completely rewritten cuelist making it even simpler to create transitions and to build complex sequences. You can now also send osc formatted commands directly from the cuelist.
crop-scaling of sources.
increased syphon support with two syphon (crop-scalable) inputs as well as syphon output support (mac only)
a DMX module has been added, with support for Enttecs usbdmx pro interface, enabling both control of VPT from DMX light consoles, or the possibillity to control dmx devices from VPT.

VPT still supports mac and windows, and it is still free. However, I have added the option for contributions through paypal:

VPT 6 is made possible through the support of IMAL in Brussels and Atelier Nord in Oslo.

IMAL offered me a one month residency in april to give a VPT workshop and to do an exhibition.

Atelier Nord has supported me twice this year: First they hosted a workshop as part of Oslo Lux in January which ended up in a VPT 5.1 release, and in june they gave me a week residency to write documentation for VPT 5.5 which instead turned into intense development of VPT 6.

So hosting workshops and inviting me to residencies is another way of supporting my work.

Read more about VPT 6 and try it out

(update: VPT 5.5 turned into VPT 6 before it got released, and can be expected very soon)

I am busy finishing the upcoming release of VPT 5.5, and wanted to share a few of the new features.

One major addition is the possibillity to perform mesh distortion to each layer, giving you even more flexibility over the projected output.

The control interface gives you control over each point in the mesh.

Syphon is becoming an important tool for sharing image data between applications on Mac osX, supporting more and more applications (there is now a more or less working Processing implementation as well).

VPT already impemented syphon-in capabilities with version 5, but with version 5.5 there is more:

You can record the output from VPT using the Syphon Recorder App.

You can use different parts of the incoming Syphon image data in different layers: Using your favourite syphon-enabled application you can tile your output so that VPT split up the single syphon source into multiple sources.

For instance, if your syphon-app sends out something like this:

VPT can either use the whole image or split it up into four individual layers:

There are plenty of other improvements, which will be covered when it is released.

For VPT 5.5 I finally get the possibillity to make proper video tutorials, as Atelier Nord has generously offered me a one week residency to do this.

Expected release date: mid-June.

As always, free (with the possibility to donate).

btw, about 3500 people have downloaded VPT 5.1

I have made two new works for my exhibition at IMAL, which is my first solo show in Belgium (29.04-22.05.2011).

As in my recent installations blink and split I am interested in relating directly to the architecture of the exhibition space. The main IMAL space is about 200m2 with a grid of 12 columns.  The circular discs are freestanding sound modules (five in total) placed on the floor. A slowly-paced sequence of projection and sound transforms the space into a contemplative environment.

The other installation explores through projection,light and reflection the inside,outside and perimeter of a circle mounted at a 90 degree angle to the floor. This is a first in a series of work creating dynamic volumes out of precisely cut flat shapes (in this case using a cnc mill).

For more images (also in print quality) from both installations take a look at my flickr set from the exhibition.

In beginning of April IMAL hosted an openLAB workshop called “Projections on forms and spaces”.
The workshop was led by me and was mainly based on using VPT. We selected 7 projects to be realised during one week development at IMAL, and the documentation is now available from IMAL.

It was an intense and interesting week, and interesting to see VPT explored for new uses in installation and performances. A new development for me was to introduce a simple video and audio trigger setup (available in the xtension section), which allowed for some audience interaction, as well as use of the serial module for controlling lights inside sculptures.

This year started with me co-curating together with Anne Szefer Karlsen an exhibition about Len Lye at HKS in Bergen, Norway. Lye has interested me for a while. I discovered him the first time in the eighties when MTV screened his experimental films between music videos (yes, they still showed music videos back then). I then rediscovered Lye through his kinetic sculptures a few years back when I was doing research on motion. I became particular fond of Lye´s “figures of motion”, he described his raw material as not being film or steel, but motion.

HKS, which has never presented the work of a non-living artist before, was eager to do an exhibition on Lye, based on my enthusiasm for his work. We ended up showing six of his films in the gallery, presented one at a time on three screens of different size, thus forcing the audience to move around and relate to his work at different scale. In this way the presentation of his films became a choreography of the movement between the screens. It was great to see his films in high quality digital copies which really brought forward the textures from the paint strokes and scratches in the original film. Presenting Lye´s films by showing restored digital files projected by video-projectors onto custom-built screens obviously influences how the films are perceived (Maybe not even Lye has ever seen them in such a good quality). We were intent on focusing on the relation between colour,texture, movement, rhythm, sound and scale instead of making a historical pristine presentation.

The films we showed in the exhibition were A Colour Box (1935), Trade Tattoo (1937), Swinging the Lambeth Walk (1939), Rhythm (1957), Free Radicals (1958, re-edited 1979) and Particles in Space (1957, finished in 1979). We also had several side programs during the exhibition period, including the lecture The Musicality of Modernism by Per Kvist, a screening of the documentary A flip and two twisters, as well as a live evening, Len Live, where we invited three sound artists, Lasse Marhaug, Maia Urstad and Espen Sommer Eide,  to create three different soundtracks to Lye´s film Tusalava (1929).

For those interested in checking out Lye´s films in a quality better than the pixelated youtube copies circulating I would recommend the DVD release.

As part of the preparation for the exhibition we got the chance to go twice to the IKON gallery in Birmingham which had a Len Lye retrospective from november 2010 to february 2011. This gave me the rare opportunity to see some of Lye´s kinetic sculptures, which I made a small documentation from.

After nearly 2500 downloads of the first version of Video Proejction Tools VPT 5 released in december 2010, I am happy to announce the new version 5.1, partly based on feedback from workshops and the VPT forum.

The release focuses on all the possibilities to expand and customize VPT to be the right tool for your particular project.

This includes a vastly improved controller section, making it possible to control almost every feature of VPT from another application (like maxmsp, processing and PD), computer, sensors through the arduino microcontroller, midicontroller as well as built in lfo controllers for automating control and software sliders and buttons. This comes on top of the already existing built-in preset and cuelist system for playback. Through OSC, VPT parameters can relatively easy be controlled by gestures, using camera or kinect tracking.
You can easily set up VPT to control simple projector shutters by controlling servomotors using the arduino module.

Templates are provided with the download for exploring OSC on maxmsp and Processing, PD will follow later. Arduino templates for input/output as well as a servo example is also included with the download.

VPT can be used with multiple projectors using Matrox Triplehead2go, and the latest version also includes support for multichannel sound: The movie sources can be individually routed to up to eight channels, depending on your sound card. Using the provided maxmsp template it is possible to process the sound further.

VPT 5.1 includes a new possibillity of processing the sources using the FX bus. The FX bus consists of eight FX chains, modules which contains shader based effects. New FX chain modules can easily be made using the provided maxmsp/jitter template, and can be dragndropped onto the existing FX chain to replace it, making it easy to customize the effects to your particular need.

Three new sources have been added to VPT: A solid (if you just want a colour in a layer), a noise texture generator and a text module which can either use text from file, osc or typed text. A maxmsp/jitter template is also provided if you want to create your own source.

Read more about VPT 5.1 and download it here

Read the online manual

Visit the VPTforum

VPT templates and examples for maxmsp/jitter, PD, Processing and Arduino

VPT is a free multipurpose realtime projection sofware tool for Mac and Windows developed by HC Gilje. Among other things it can be used for projecting video on complex forms, adapt a projection to a particular space/surface, combine recorded and live footage, or for multiscreen HD playback.