MSNBC has a video of the Showpix in action during a Beyonce outdoor performance.  Check them out!  (and I don’t mean the catsuits…)

Check out the video here.

Did you know that the new The Killers album dropped this last week?

I found a video on YouTube of their performance at the EMA’s a little while ago - check out the projections, the content, and the general orchestration of the light.  Awesome!

I found a bit better video of CNN’s holographic projections of Jessica Yellin during election night.  I keep wondering where Mr. Scott is to finish beaming her up.

Have you seen or heard of Jenny Holzier’s installation at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art?  Jenny’s exhibit, entitled “Protect Protect,” is a cacophony of video pixels, color, darkness, and shadow, and is absolutely stunning.  Yatzer’s art blog had some images - actually a lot of images - that are beautiful.  Jenny’s art was something I studied a bit about in graduate school, making me see how important content was when placed with light.  Thanks for that, Jenny.

Okay.  If I wanted to make my blog look like a cheap R-rated piece of crap, I would be saying HOLY SH%&, SONOFAB&%$, MOTHERF%$#*&^%^$%, and few other choice phrases about what I just read and saw.  Amazing.  I am so freaking thrilled right now, becauseI have always wanted the kind of lumen magic that a Catalyst provides when hooked into something like a Christie X-10, but then throw it on a yoke.

This is what I read.  It’s the product page on the Barco DML-1200.  It’s a 12,000 lumen digital light.  You have to see the specs:

The DML-1200 is the first moving digital luminaire which can truly be used as both a super bright, moving light source and a high quality video projector.

In light mode, the DML-1200 produces a perfectly circular light beam with a light output equivalent to that of a 1200W hard edged moving light – 12.000 field lumens and the brightest digital light on the market today.

In video mode, the DML-1200 features a fully sealed DLP engine which delivers full color DLP quality video with SXGA+ (1400 x 1050 pixel) resolution. With a light output of 10,000 center lumens, the DML-1200 is the brightest digital light on the market today.

An internal optical dimming mechanism ensures smooth, accurate intensity control from 0 to 100% ensuring that that your fade to black is a true black, not video black (grey).

Being digital, lighting designers are no longer limited to static, pre-selected patterns and colors. Any image, static or animated can be created and projected. All images are generated by the onboard media player, controlled by DMX512 or artnet protocol, from the lighting console.

With its brightness, unlimited image selection and the ability to seamlessly switch between video projection and light mode, cue by cue, the DML-1200 provides designers pure creativity at their fingertips delivering a truly unique show for every event, client and purpose.

The DL2, awesome.  It’s 6500 lumens.  The DL1?  I’ve used it a bunch, not a lot, but it’s 5500 lumens.  We’re talking twice a DL1.  It makes me wonder how all of the concert goer experiences I had in the early part of the 21st century would have been with 10,000 lumens of video.  Wow.

That’s pretty awesome, Barco.  So now my imaginary dream rig has some of these and some Bad Boys.

Go check out some video on this monster.

I took a bunch of pics of the ShowPix at LDI this year.  I have to say, that fixture is B-R-I-G-H-T.  It’s pretty fast (in my humble opinion) and I was impressed with it.  I spoke with a guy from BARCO who told me that they have released a digitizer for ShowPix and StudioPix now, which allows you to spread your fixtures out in the program and send your images and video across your array of fixtures.  Excellent!

FYI:  All of my images are © Jim Hutchison and Alive Lighting.  Please don’t use without my permission.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Imagine a world in which a device existed that could coordinate all worlds of production (INCLUDING AUDIO), not control mind you, but coordinate - communication between gear and systems, systems helping out systems, and systems watching out for other systems to help systems do their respective jobs.

Now imagine a world where a device like this is in R+D, and a working model already exists.

Cast is developing Black Box - a project between several companies that is going to revolutionize our industry and our markets.  I’ve talked with Gil Densham a few times now, and I finally had a chance at LDI to see the Black Box in action.  Cast is shooting for a fully capable production model in September of 2009 (don’t hold me or Cast to that date, as the universe is the universe).  There are several companies that are teaming up to get this thing a kickin’, and everything depends on the coordinated efforts.  Patience, young camper, patience.

Gil explained Black Box to me with a very simple couple of scenarios - let me list one now.  Scenario 1, a moving screen.  Imagine a projection screen on a motor system that moves the projector around the stage, and a director who wants that screen to do different stuff every night.  There is an image being projected on that screen, and as the screen movess, the image needs to be constantly updated with reference to keystoning.  That image on the screen might also come in contact with some moving lights as it moves.  What happens when all of this stuff happens?  Anyone who’s programmed a DL-1 or DL-2 knows that this would be some pretty incredible progrtamming to do this live every night - how do you correct all of the keystoning on the fly?  How do you douse the moving lights that cross the screen’s path?  This is where the Black Box concept comes in.

From Cast’s press release about the Black Box concept:

BlackBox is built with special hardware and proprietary software to be an all-in-one, bi-directional high-speed communications nerve centre which enables all control devices to instruct or receive instructions from each other. Live, realtime input in all forms is received by the BlackBox, which acts as the brains - running an ultra high-speed hybrid version of wysiwyg that works with a special new wysiwyg file version (that CAST is working on now). BlackBox receives and converts live positional data about any or many moving objects, selected or deselected for tracking as required from one or several sources, applies its brain power and speed to establish the exact 3D positions of those objects, then computes instructions in XYZ, yar, pitch and roll terms, and then shoots out moving positional information to whatever control devices need it. So moving lights, set pieces, cameras etc. are synchronized and tracking the action of those moving objects - all in live realtime, all in true 3D.

These are exciting times, kids.  Exciting times.  More on Black Box to come.

After installing a 1GB video card to do some amazing WYSIWYG viz, I realized that I still hadn’t figured out how to control the visualizer in iTunes 8 yet.  There isn’t a lot of info posted about the controls for the visualizer (which you reach by pressing CTRL+T, by the way), and I knew there was a way to control the parameters.

Lo and behold - when you press Shift and ? (in order to accurately type a ?) you are given the glorious help menu!  iTubes 8 Viz control is as follows:

? Toggles the help screen
M Changes the mode
P Changes the palette
I Displays the track info
C Toggles auto cycle (which is on by default)
F Toggles freeze mode
N Toggles nebula mode
L Toggles camera lock

Experiment around with these, you can actually get some pretty great video FX for your favorite tunes.  Stand by, because I’ll be writing a review of the Arkaos VJ software soon - that’s like DMX-able visualizations in a box!

Philips has produced a beautiful LED lamp in its LivingColor line of cool stuff.  Four high output LED’s make up the source - two red, one blue, and one green.  Philips designed this fixture with a color picking remote, complete with intensity and chroma controls.

It’s certainly not cheap, but it’s not unreachable.  I couldn’t find a US price, but it’s £99.95 in London.  So what, that’s about $1200 US dollars?

Tony Ariawan, a digital illustrator, created this and other images in a series called “Stop Haunt me Every Day.”  Tony utilized Photoshop CS2’s Warp Transform tool - something that myself and other commenters were almost completely in disbelief over.  Check out the rest of his work.