It turns out this Kyma Symposium is a very good occasion to explore some ways to use OSCulator. At least I can put down my developer hat and be a musician, again.

During my research I thought it would be nice to show a little demo of VDMX, a modular VJ mixing software. I actually tried several of them, that is Modul8 and Resolume. There is also Isadora which is looking very professional.

I picked VDMX because it offered those little details that a long time Mac user likes:

• it supports natively OSC, provides Bonjour discovery, and binding an OSC message to a button is as simple as saying “hello”, or “bonjour” if you will.
• it leverages the architecture of Mac OS X by using Quartz composition up to the max, and I like it. I’m sure VDMX developers will do wonders with the new technologies Snow Leopard offers, like Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL.
• it has a reasonable price tag considering the capabilities it offers.
• Memo Atken is using it too.

Incidentally, at the same time, Martin Thoburn was experimenting with controlling video from his iPhone. He’s a media artist, and I really like his work. Here’s a beautiful montage he did for the NASA Remix Contest #7:

Examining his work makes no wonder he’s a extremely talented user of Photoshop, After Effects, Resolume … but he admits he’s no expert when it comes to programming OSC routings in languages like Max/MSP, Puredata or Processing.

OSCulator was there to help him create the routings he needed to translate the data from TouchOSC to Resolume, turning his iPhone in a cheap but powerful video control device. Here is one of the 5 layouts you can use:

There are still some little caveats to solve however. Hopefully, the Resolume team will fix those bugs, and Martin will be able to increment his bundle to version 1.0!