Jitter Video Thoughts
In looking back into my Thoughts, I have found I have not talked through my visuals and video manipulators in Max enough. Let’s rectify that. Over the years I have worked at larger projects in video that I have been reluctant to share with everyone. Not for the reasons of secret keeping, as you know that teaching Max is my passion. It is more for there reason of the messiness, idiosyncratic-ness, and out-of-date-ness of a lot of the base parts of these patchers. What I have done though, is share some of the base components of those projects that I have done over the years.
Visuals
Recently on Instagram, I was pondering about my visual style. In my life I’ve defined my aesthetic by 2D art, pixel art blocks, waveforms and the basics of simple colour. This is the definition of medium shaping art and form. It was one of the first Jitter visualizations I learnt and I never really wanted anything other than that. You can see in this example it was a major thematic style of my NOW-WHAT work (picture of which can be seen here). You can see some examples of those on my Resources Page:
Dots the move - a patch that moves some coloured balls around a square - good as a starting point for shape and movement in jit.lcd
Simple Waveform Visualiser - a jit.graph patcher that lets you simply control waveforms of audio files and exports them
Geometric shape generator - this patch generates triangles, squares and circles - a fun experiment
Video_Drone Synth - a patcher that combines a few different lcd visuals that can be controlled by audio input
Video Manipulation
You will see that I have been a fan of video sampling. In fact when I first learnt Max at university, I made a video sampler and manipulator as my capstone project. This is something I have worked at in live shows for other bands in the past and something I like to explore in my Live Takes. You can see some examples of those on my Resources Page:
Random video sample player - a jit.movie player that selects random parts of a video to play, automatically - with extras
Jweb video wall - this patcher opens a wall of video files from the web
Video manipulator - a group of manipulation effects for video files, with a healthy dose of irony
Video Tools
Every time I create a little component that makes video and visual work easier, I have been of the mindset that sharing that is of utmost importance. I have had to adapt and use these over the years in my live installation work in galleries I have been able to do. You can see some examples of those on my Resources Page:
Colour_Sukah - a colour picker from a video file, using the Sukah object
Mouse disappear on fullscreen - this is a patch that is utility for video works - makes the mouse disappear when video on fullscreen
Flasher - a fine addition to any crossfade visualiser that flashes different colours into different divisions
I hope this little exploration and history insight has been fun. there are other works on the page that I am sure you will find of use. Check them out.
