I'm a software engineer, musician, and installation artist.
I worked at Bell Labs and AT&T for 20 years in New Jersey,
and for Network Appliance in Silicon Valley for 9 years.
I'm interested in programming languages, algorithmic composition,
networked collaboration, atypical controllers,
event-driven graphics generation, and realtime video processing.
I've been inspired in recent years by something described
in this quote by Larnie Fox:
"There is a yet unnamed art movement that may prove to be of some
significance, and Burning Man is close to its center. It often manifests
itself as circus, ritual, and spectacle. It is a movement away from a
dialogue between an individual artist and a sophisticated audience,
and towards collaboration amongst a big, wild, free and diverse community.
It is a movement away from galleries, schools and other institutions
and towards an art produced in and for casual groups of participants,
more akin to clans and tribes, based on aesthetic affinities and bonds
of friendship. It is a movement away from static gallery art and formal
theater and towards site-specific, time-specific installation and
performance. It is a rejection of spoon-fed corporate culture
and an affirmation of the homemade, the idiosyncratic, the personal.
It is profoundly democratic. It is radically inclusive, it is
a difficult challenge, and it is beckoning."
What are people doing here?
Placeholder for future content.
What have I been doing?
January 2021
I'm currently reimplementing the window system I did in KeyKit, this time using Go. This page contains pictures and a description of how I used it in a composition back in 1997. A demo of the window system can be found in my recent talk about KeyKit.
December 2020
I've packaged up a standalone version of the Space Palette software, allowing someone on Windows with a Sensel Morph and Resolume 7 to play with it (visuals only). While my eventual goal is to use Go for everything, the current implementation uses Python for the GUI, C++ for the Freeframe plugin, and Go for the realtime engine. See https://github.com/vizicist/palette.
November 2020
Photon Salon 2020 Sketch #4 - Live visual music using the Space Palette Pro. Everything you see and hear was produced live by finger-painting on pressure-sensitive pads (the Sensel Morph), with the gestures directly generating both the music and graphical output simultaneously.
August 2020
Photon Salon 2020 Sketch #3 - Live visual music using the Space Palette Pro. Everything you see and hear was produced live by finger-painting on pressure-sensitive pads (the Sensel Morph), with the gestures directly generating both the music and graphical output simultaneously. A version of this video that shows me playing it can be found on Facebook.
July 2020
What The Festival memories - No touching, and outdoors - a perfect interactive art installation for COVID times. This video is from What The Festival, east of Portland, in 2015. I love the careful exploration at the beginning. I'm grateful to have these memories.
July 2020
Photon Salon 2020 Sketch #2 - Another live visual music performance on the Space Palette Pro. Everything you see and hear was produced live by finger-painting on pressure-sensitive pads (the Sensel Morph), with the gestures directly generating both the music and graphical output simultaneously.
July 2020
Photon Salon 2020 Sketch #1 - Live visual music done with the Space Palette Pro. Everything you see and hear was produced live by finger-painting on pressure-sensitive pads (the Sensel Morph), with the gestures directly generating both the music and graphical output simultaneously.
August 2019
I went to Burning Man for the 17th time. I camped in Illumination Village with a few friends (Melissa, Brad, and Raphael), and we set up a Photon Salon with both the classic Space Palette and the latest Space Palette Pro, whose software was significantly enhanced over the summer. Here's some photos and videos of the Photon Salon in Illumination Village. On Saturday night after the burn, I had an unexpected and amazing opportunity to bring the Space Palette Pro over to the PlayAlchemist camp and project onto their Grand Pyramid for 30 minutes on Saturday night at 11pm, right after the Man burn.
Another June, another SubZERO Festival in San Jose. The Photon Salon this year contained both the old classic Space Palette and the newest version of the Space Palette Pro (whose software is continuously evolving). Here a video snippet: https://photos.app.goo.gl/uDuQFPN4a4oAek4E7
April 2019
The Photon Salon meetup at my house was turned into a memorial for Fred Lakin.
March 2019
I attended Synthplex in LA, and did visuals with the Space Palette Pro to accompany Doug Lynner's modular synth performance.
January 2019
I restarted the Photon Salon meetup at my house. It lasted 4 months, this time.
I gave a talk about the Space Palette Pro at the San Francisco Electronic Music meetup group. Here's a very nice video recording of the talk: https://youtu.be/_iIkmtXZFcU
October 2018
I did visuals with LoopyCam *and* the Space Palette Pro for the Looping Festival event at Anno Domini. Here's a nice video of one of the sets: https://youtu.be/mXyr4Wcgq8o.
I brought the latest version of the Space Palette Pro to the South First Friday art walk and street market in San Jose. Here's pictures and video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Tp1iAwJK22nRVAfw9
September 2018
I went to Burning Man for only a few days, this year.
August 2018
I installed a Space Palette at Two Bit Circus in Los Angeles, where it resided for 7 months or so.
Another June, another SubZERO Festival in San Jose. The Photon Salon showed both the old and new Space Palettes.
April 2018
Cathy Thompson, my best friend and partner in life for over 40 years, passed away on April 21 after a 16-month battle with pancreatic cancer. An album of memorial photos can be found here.
February 2018
I started having some Photon Salon meetups at our house to provide opportunities for visual instrument experimentation.
January 2018
The Building Bridges Art Exchange brought their Synaesthesia show to the huge LA Art Show, and included the Space Palette.
December 2017
I brought the Space Palette Pro to another Exploratorium's "After Dark: GLOW" event, where it was displayed in a very nice setting with a large screen and seating for an audience.
November 2017
Three in one place! Two of the original Space Palettes and one of the new Space Palette Pro were displayed for almost a month at the Artechouse in Washington DC. While it was a royal pain to ship them, it was a wonderful opportunity and experience.
October 2017
Bill Wiatroski and I joined forces to do visuals at the Robotspeak anniversary show in San Francisco. I had a new HDMI video mixer which allowed us to mix our visuals together. I used the Space Palette Pro to do visuals ony - the music was provided by modular synth performers.
October 2017
While in Washington DC to see the Lumia show, Louie and I checked out a new technology-focused art space called the Artechouse, where they were showing interactive visual art. I showed them videos of the Space Palettes, and the next thing you know I'm planning on shipping three Space Palettes to Washington DC to show there.
October 2017
And then there were two. I built a second Space Palette Pro using Appleply wood for a better finish. It's a bit thinner, too.
October 2017
I went to Washington DC with Louis Brill to see the amazing "Lumia: Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light" show at the Smithsonian. It was incredible - so good that I visited it three times.
October 2017
I brought the Space Palette Pro to the Synaesthesia Dance Experience at the Actors' Gang in Culver City.
September 2017
I brought the Space Palette Pro to the Venice AfterBurn event in Venice Beach.
September 2017
I installed a Space Palette at the Building Bridges Art Exchange in Santa Monica, as part of their "Synaesthesia: What is the taste of the color blue?" show.
September 2017
Two Palettes in one place! I brought both the original Space Palette and the new Space Palette Pro to the Institute For The Future in Palo Alto.
September 2017
I brought the Space Palette Pro to the lobby of the Wiltern Theatre in LA for the "Easy Rider Live" show.
July 2017
I brought the Space Palette Pro to the Touch the Gear event of the Outsound New Music Summit.
June 2017
I brought the Space Palette Pro to Sensel in Mountain View, to show them what I've done with their amazing Morph.
June 2017
Cathy and I took a short vacation to San Diego, checking out the zoo and taking a Segway tour of Balboa Park.
June 2017
For SubZERO 2017 in San Jose, the Photon Salon included both the brand new Space Palette Pro as well as the LinnStrument-based UniLooper.
May 2017
The first prototype of the Space Palette Pro is operational.
May 2017
I brought the Space Palette to a fundraiser event at the Exploratorium.
April 2017
I helped Joel Davel by doing video at a Grey Area memorial event for Don Buchla.
April 2017
I participated in the LAST Festival at the SJSU Hammer Theatre Center in San Jose.
January 2017
I brought the Space Palette to the Worlds Fair Nano in San Francisco.
January 2017
The Space Palette's month at the exploratorium ended with another "After Dark" event.
December 2016
I installed a Space Palette for people to play with at the Local Color artist collective in San Jose. It was there for 6 months.
December 2016
I brought the Space Palette to the Exploratorium's "After Dark: GLOW" event. The Exploratorium folks liked it so much that they asked to keep it there for the rest of the month.
November 2016
At the LoveTech Resurgence event, I brought UniLooper for people to play with in the Jam Lounge, and performed a couple sets with LoopyCam.
October 2016
I performed with LoopyCam at Binary Society's season-ending concert in San Jose.
October 2016
Cathy and I took a trip to the east coast and enjoyed all the fall color.
Burning Man - my 15th year in a row. As in 2014, we camped in Illumination Village and set up the Photon Salon on the Esplanade. In addition to the Space Palette and Deeje Cooley's tappr.tv dome, I brought my UniLooper installation. Here's an album of photos and videos.
August 2016
Issue 8.3 of Content Magazine included an article about me and the Space Palette. I brought the Space Palette to their "pick-up party" for the issue. The picture that Daniel Garcia took of me now graces the splash page of timthompson.com.
I brought the Space Palette again to UnScruz, the regional burner event in Santa Cruz. This year it was placed inside one of the buildings, so it could run 24/7.
April 2016
This was my fourth year bringing the Space Palette to Lucidity, where it had an excellent location just outside the Branches Gallery. Here's a few videos: video 1video 2video 3
December 2015
I demonstrated the UniLooper and gave a talk about my artwork for a school assembly at the Head-Royce School in Oakland.
Two Bit Circus brought their wonderful STEAM Carnival to San Francisco this year, and I again brought the Space Palette for kids and their parents to enjoy.
I brought the Space Palette to Chillits, where it was installed inside a huge teepee - a great setting. I also did several hours of LoopyCam to accompany the chill-y music.
September 2015
For my 14th year in a row at Burning Man, I decided to take a vacation from doing installations, and went as a (gasp) spectator. I used my newly-acquired 1990 Chevy G20 van and only went for half the week - got there Wednesday and left Saturday. Because I didn't have a project, I had time to check out the artwork more. It was a good year for art.
August 2015
I was honored to have the Space Palette included in the month-long exhibit Technological Mediations at the Art Works Downtown gallery in San Rafael, CA.
I brought several installations to Maker Faire 2015 - my booth was called Casual Instruments for Music and Visuals. It was the first Maker Faire appearance of the furniture-quality Space Palette, and the first public appearance of the UniLooper instrument that uses the new LinnStrument controller.
I brought the Space Palette and LoopyCam to the weekend campout/gathering of UnScruz, the Santa Cruz regional Burning Man event.
April 2015
For the third year in a row, I brought the Space Palette to Lucidity Festival. It's one of my favorite festivals, because of the intimate atmosphere and woodsy setting.
March 2015
There's now a Space Palette semi-permanently installed at the KALEID Gallery in San Jose. It's operational and available for anyone to play whenever the gallery is open.
February 2015
The Space Palette was installed for a couple of months at the BHuman Social Innovation Center in Palo Alto. I gave a talk on my artistic work at their opening.
I brought the Space Palette to the fabulous Anne and Mark's Art Party at the Santa Clara county fairgrounds.
August 2014
For Burning Man 2014 our sub-camp (Space Palace) within Illumination Village created another Photon Salon - this time it included a dome with Deeje Cooley's tappr.tv, and the first Burning Man appearance of the new furniture-quality Space Palette.
August 2014
The Space Palette ended its six-month appearance in the REBOOT:music exhibit at the San Jose Tech Museum.
July 2014
I helped Olenka Villarreal find installation artists for the Magical Bridge Playground in Palo Alto.
"Make your own Space Palette" is the name of a workshop I ran at the San Jose Tech Museum, as part of the Reboot:music exhibition. I polished up a new release of the MultiMultiTouchTouch software, and taught people how to use it.
May 2014
I performed with LoopyCam at the REBOOT:music Live! event at the San Jose Tech Museum. I did two sets, accompanying Daniel Berkman and Onyx Ashanti.
April 2014
Lucidity is one of my favorite festivals, near Santa Barbara in a nicely wooded campground. Paul Sable-Snibbe and I went and installed the latest version of the Space Palette in the Lucidity University tent.
March 2014
The latest version of the Space Palette is a furniture-quality instrument, thanks to a collaboration with Paul Sable-Snibbe. It uses a monitor in a matching wood frame, rather than a projector. It is now installed in the San Jose Tech Museum, as part of the Reboot:music exhibition. Here's a video that shows me explaining it.
February 2014
Cathy and I took a trip to Australia (our first) and had a great time in Sydney and Melbourne. I brought the portable version of the Space Palette and gave a talk to the OpenLAB group in Melbourne, here's a video of the entire talk.
January 2014
I attended the Laptop Music Meetup in Mountain View and showed an early prototype of what would become the UniLooper.
June 2013
I displayed the Space Palette in the art gallery of the TV of Tomorrow conference.
June 2013
I gave a talk at CCRMA on my exploration of 3D input. Here are the slides.
I took the Space Palette to the Pinnacle Electronic Music Festival in Apple Valley. I got some more experience with the tent I'll be using at Burning Man this year, particularly in dealing with hot air inside the tent.
April 2013
I set up the Space Palette in a sun-blocking tent at Lucidity 2013 so it could be used during the daytime. The outside wall of the tent was white, so I used it as a projection screen for using LoopyCam at night. This video shows clips of both.
February 2013
I participated in the SOURCE Interactive Arts Festival on Maui, setting up the Space Palette in the MUSEarium - a gymnasium filled with art, including the amazing Colorbox. This video shows what the MUSEarium looked like with lots of projectors running. I did a little LoopyCam, gave a talk, and met a lot of interesting people.
I took the Space Palette to all three Bay Area decompression events - Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and the South Bay (Soulfire). Soulfire was special - the Palette was installed in a large yurt for 2 days and nights. This meant that it was acoustically isolated, and could work even during the day. With chairs and space for an an audience, it saw a lot of use from a lot of very good players, many of whom did not previously consider themselves musicians. I am now routinely fooled - someone who appears to be a good musician (by the way they play the Palette) will turn out to never have played an instrument before.
September 2012
I participated in the Decibel Festival in Seattle, giving a talk about the Space Palette and joining a panel session on new musical instruments (with Roger Linn, Moldover, and Randy Jones). I also showed the Palette at Jigsaw Renaissance, a hacker space in Seattle.
September 2012
I performed interactive video projections for Claudine Naganuma's piece Freedom House. I used a variation of LoopyCam, consisting of a handheld security camera and a Korg Nanokontrol2, to control video effects in realtime as I pointed the camera at the dancers. The resulting visuals were projected by three projectors onto silk screens suspended above the sides of the performance space, with the audience surrounding it. Here's a review of the show.
I gave a talk about the UI aspects of the Space Palette. Here are the slides.
October 2011
I performed with the Space Palette at the Y2K+1 LoopFest in Santa Cruz. Here's a video showing my entire 30-minute timeslot - first there are a few minutes of intro/explanation, then 15 minutes or so of a musical performance, and finally some informal but interesting discussion with audience members. The audience was almost entirely composed of musicians - i.e. other people performing at the 3-day LoopFest. I really enjoyed seeing their instant understanding of what the Palette was doing, and discussing their questions and suggestions. This is by far the best video explaining and showcasing the Space Palette, to date. It's only the second time I've attempted a public performance with the Palette. Unlike the previous performance at the Controller Battle (which was more of a demo/teaser), I think this performance qualifies as something reasonably musical. The explanation at the beginning and the discussions at the end are quite informative and cover a lot of ground. Big thanks to the folks at https://sequencer.de for recording this.
October 2011
With help from Dinko and Claudine, I took the Space Palette to Decompression in San Francisco. Here's some video clips of it.
October 2011
For First Friday in San Jose, I set up the Space Palette in the parking lot next to the Art Glass Center on Market Street. Both sides of the parking lot had nice blank walls, so I projected onto both of them.
September 2011
I drove to Venice (California) to participate in the Venice Art Crawl. I set up the Space Palette at the 811 Art Crawl location, run by Dogtown Artists United. There were lots of artsy people there, and the Space Palette was well-enjoyed.
September 2011
I participated at the SF MusicTech Summit in a panel on DIY instruments. I set up the Space Palette in the main gathering room for people to play with.
September 2011
This was my 10th year in a row at Burning Man, but the first time applying as a theme camp - Multi Multi Touch Touch Camp. We hosted the Space Palette installation, which people loved - check out the video clips.
I added procedural graphic output to the Space Palette, using Processing, and showed it at the Nexus fundraiser.
July 2011
I participated in a panel discussion on a Santa Cruz Community TV show hosted by Denise Gallant: "In the Loop - Art & Technology". The show focused on Burning Man art with four artists, including me.
I had a good night at SubZERO in San Jose, installing Space Palette for people to play with as well as projecting LoopyCam on the side of a building.
May 2011
I had a fantastic time at Lightning in a Bottle. Space Palette was set up in the LoveTech dome, and was mobbed almost constantly. Comments heard repeatedly: "I'd love to have this in my living room!" and "We're a band!"
May 2011
The latest version of my Kinect-based musical instrument is much larger, and is now called "Space Palette". Here's a video showing it in operation.
April 2011
I participated in the Stanford DIY Musical Instrument Tailgate Party by bringing my MultiMultiTouchTouch controller. It was a great way to discover exactly how much shade I need in order for the Kinect to work outdoors. Answer: a lot.
March 2011
I gave a talk at the Kinect Meetup on the first version of my Kinect-based musical instrument. Here are the slides.
March 2011
After seeing Mark Mosher perform, I invited him over to my house to demo the first version of my MultiMultiTouchTouch controller, and ended up giving an interview and demo for the 'Modulate This' blog.
January 2011
Along with many other LoveTech artists, I participated in the Sea of Dreams - a huge New Year's Eve party in San Francisco. I created an auxiliary control panel (pictured) that made it possible for other people to control LoopyCam effects. The panel also turned out to be very convenient for me, particularly when the camera was mounted on a tripod rather than being handheld. With thousands of people in wild attire and dancing continuously, the environment was a perfect one for LoopyCam.
November 2010
At Prairie Willow House (another name for our home), we hosted a screening of the Punto y Raya Festival Best of 2009. These wonderfully creative abstract visual music animations from around the world are more than a little inspiring.
October 2010
I performed LoopyCam visuals with a number of artists at the Y2KX 10th Anniversary International Looping Festival in Santa Cruz. David Tristram joined me, using ElectroSlate. Here are a couple of YouTube videos from the better sets.
September 2010
I participated with members of SHARE San Jose in the AbsoluteZERO street fair that was part of the 01SJ Biennial in San Jose. These are some video samples of the evening.
September 2010
I went to Burning Man for the ninth year in a row, again camping with my friends Claudine and Dinko. LoopyCart was successfully used for several nights.
August 2010
I developed a new version of LoopyCam, making the hardware controller more flexible and the software more portable. The controller now includes an LCD display and keypad. To use the new LoopyCam at Burning Man, I built LoopyCart - a mobile projector and screen on a trailer. Its first appearance was on First Street in San Jose, at the August "First Friday" event.
June 2010
The Looping Lounge at Anno Domini was part of the SubZERO 2010 festival in San Jose. Some excellent musicians performed, and I had a great time using LoopyCam. The images were also visible on the street, projected on the large screen above Anno Domini's door. I got a number of good recordings, shown here.
May 2010
I organized the "Experimental Music and Art Zone" at Maker Faire 2010, with exhibits from several dozen Makers, and a stage used for a dozen performances and demos. I brought the Monolith 2.0 controllers - you can see a couple of ladies playing with them in the picture here. I also brought LoopyCam, and used it to enhance a number of the performances.
I gave a presentation to Guillermo Gallindo's class at the California College of the Arts, talking about my music, software, performances, and installations.
I played music with some members of SHARE San Jose at a press event for the ZER01 organization, held inside the still-under-construction new terminal at the San Jose Airport.
January 2010
I collaborated and performed with Michael Broxton at LoveTech SF. I used NthControl (my experimental Python-based controller using the Mimo USB-connected touchscreen) to control the musical parameters of an 8-channel MIDI looper. I played everything into the looper in realtime with a MIDI keyboard, using Spectrasonics Omnisphere for the sounds. The notes were also sent via OSC to a second laptop to trigger Python-generated graphics (derived from my previous Python visual music efforts) and further processed in amazing ways inside Michael Broxton's Phosphoressence software, controlled in realtime by Michael using two joysticks. To the right is a picture of our two rigs and a YouTube video of the performance.
January 2010
I gave a talk covering my music, software, performances, and installations at Expression College for Digital Arts. It took over 2 hours to cover it all - here are the slides I prepared.
January 2010
I gave a talk for the PyGameSF group, showing my recent experiments and evolving touchscreen interface, written in Python for use in controlling the parameters of a musical/visual performance.
December 2009
I took the Monolith 2.0 controllers to LoveTech and set them up in the interactive art area for people to play with.
My installation for Burning Man 2009 - Monolith 2.0 - was successfully deployed. Dinko Matkovic, Claudine Naganuma, and Leah Chubb helped to install it on Saturday and Sunday before the event opened. It was up and running on Sunday night, and worked well all week, day and night. Here's the description and pictures. Check out the youtube video to see it being used.
August 2009
SHARE San Jose participated in Starry Night at Villa Montalvo.
August 2009
With invaluable help from Dinko Matkovic on the physical aspects, Monolith 2.0 was finished in time to have a party at our house before dismantling it for its journey to the playa.
SHARE San Jose participated in the SubZero street fair in San Jose. Here's pictures.
May 2009
I'm busy working on an installation for Burning Man 2009 - an 11-foot high monolith with interactive music controls in the side. Most of the work is going into the physical aspects - designing a steel base that can support it in high winds without any guy wires.
May 2009
I did video work with LoopyCam in the This Here show at Temescal Arts Center in Oakland.
Another great jam with SHARE San Jose at Villa Montalvo. This video shows what was happening.
March 2009
I did more video work with LoopyCam in the This Here show at Temescal Arts Center in Oakland.
February 2009
At this month's SHARE San Jose jam, we experimented with transmitting live visuals done in Sacramento by Scott Davey. They were sent with ichat, projected, and then post-processed to produce a second projection. It worked very well - both sides of the connection could see and hear what was going on. There was a lot of other homebrew software and hardware in use that night as well - check out the video.
February 2009
I did video work with LoopyCam in the This Here show at Temescal Arts Center in Oakland.
January 2009
I did a solo performance of visual music at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco as part of the Music by the Eyeful series. I combined my latest two systems, taking the graphical output of Galaxy (a keyboard-driven version of Finger Painting with Planets) and providing it as the video input to LoopyCam. Two projectors showed the output of both systems simultaneously, side-by-side. Everything was driven from my playing on a MIDI keyboard. The performance was recorded - here's the youtube video.
February 2007
At my retirement party (I've left Network Appliance after 9 years), I was totally surprised and totally honored with a fire-dancing performance by Rebecca and Wolf from Nocturnal Sunshine. Click on the image to download a video of the performance.
January 2007
I participated in an event with the Double Vision group, at the Red Ink Studios in San Francisco. Here Wendy Marinaccio is dancing with my graphics in the background. Here I'm improvising graphics to Luke Dubois' music. I was using a new custom controller I built with three Fingerworks iGesture pads and a JLCooper CS-32.
November 2006
I participated in a fundraising event for the Double Vision group, at the DragonBar in San Francisco. The picture to the right shows my projected graphics on the wall. For this event, I used a new performance controller I built containing three iGesture Fingerworks pads and a JLCooper CS-32 slider/button box. Here's some pictures and a video (15 seconds into the video you'll see me, the new controller, and then the graphics I'm generating on the wall). October, 2006 I posted some videos showing keykit on youtube. You'll find a tutorial of keykit's GUI from 1994 (actually it was still named keynote back then), and another much more entertaining and geeky demo from 2002.
August 2006
I went to Burning Man again, and performed three times, including once on the Center Camp main stage. Three friends (Herb, Mark, and Claudine) joined me and shared our RV. To the left is the hardhat I decorated to wear at night. Pictures and videos are here.
June 2006
Cathy and I went on a 2-week vacation in China, with our friends Rick and Sue. Here are a LOT of pictures.
May 2006
Yet another show with Double Vision, this time a big 2-day extravaganza called "Evolutionary Patterns & The Lonely Owl (Mutation #2)" at the CELLspace performance space in San Francisco. I created two projector-based installations, each one controlled by a pair of driving controllers. One installation was the "Bouncing off the Walls" one I did at the Spectra Ball, but this time using driving controllers instead of the dance pads - the driving controllers were easier for the audience to figure out. The other installation was a purely-graphic one where people used the driving controllers to "paint" by driving around, firing and bumping into graphical sprites which leave trails as they bounce around. Here's a short video showing a bit of what the installation looked like in action, along with a bit of what else what going on during the show. Here's some larger and more comprehensive video from Friday night, video from Saturday night, and photos showing all the different things that were happening at the show.
April 2006
Another Double Vision group event - this time at the spectacular Spectra Ball in San Francisco. I created an installation using the old familiar dance pads - audience members used them to create a projected maze and fire bouncing balls into the maze. As the balls bounced off the walls of the maze, they would trigger bits of music coming from the corresponding walls of the actual room they were in. The name of the installation was (not surprisingly) "Bouncing Off the Walls". Here's a video of double-vision at spectraball - at 3:00 minutes in there's a segment showing my installation.
November 2005
I performed with the Double Vision intermedia performance group at Mad Horse Loft in Oakland. The event was called "Evolutionary Patterns & the Lonely Owl (Mutation #1)" and combined dancing, painting, music, video, and algorithms in an intense maze of installations that the audience wandered through and interacted with. My contribution was an interactive music installation using 2 Fingerworks iGesture pads which controlled a multi-color DNA-inspired "Game of Life" program (written in keykit and python) that generated music and projected graphics onto the walls. Here are some pictures and a video (at 2:00 minutes in there's a segment showing the graphics of my installation).
December 2005
An article about KeyKit, by Dave Phillips, was published in the Linux Journal last March - At the Sounding Edge: Introducing KeyKit. It's a very nice little summary of KeyKit for Linux users.
October 2005
I gave a talk at BayPIGgies, the Bay Area Python Users Group, about my Python-based audio and video projects. Here are the slides I used.
October 2005
I performed at the Y2K5 International Live Looping Festival with Herb Heinz - we called ourselves hoopla. We used hoops (written in keykit) to do MIDI looping, and used ergo (written in Python) to generate graphics from the MIDI. Here's an MP3 recording of the performance. I talk a bit at the beginning - skip to about 12 minutes in if you want the best music.
August 2005
I went to Burning Man again this year, but I didn't do an art installation. We took our 5th wheel RV, and Steve Klinkner joined us. Pictures and videos are here.
I went to electro-music 2005, met a lot of interesting people, heard a lot of great music, and gave an hour-long talk on keykit that was well received. Here are the complete slides from the talk.
March 2005
I've started working with Herb Heinz's group dud. I'm writing python-based software to do OpenGL graphics triggered by MIDI data from the drummer. See https://www.youtube.com/user/dudland.
August 2004
I went to Burning Man 2004. My installation this year was called Radio Free Quasar - an antique radio outfitted with a computer generating audio and a laser generating visuals. Check out the description and pictures.
December 2003
I stumbled across a review of my performance at the Works in September. It's at the bottom of this newsletter.
December 2003
nosuch.com no longer lives in a bedroom closet. It now runs on a virtual server maintained by globalservers.com. Bandwidth for downloading mp3s and other things should be greatly improved.
October 2003
Pictures of the lyre appear in some of the many photo albums of burning man and the decompression. E.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
October 2003
The world tour of the lyre continued on October 12, at the Burning Man Decompression event in San Francisco. Here's a bunch of pictures of the decompression event.
September 2003
I did a 30-minute performance at the Works gallery in San Jose. I used my usual controllers of late - wireless keyboard hung around my neck while simultaneously dancing on 2 dance pads. This time I used a new set of sounds, and a less-dorky strap to hold the keyboard (if it is at all possible to look less-dorky when you have a qwerty keyboard dangling from your neck).
September 2003
I took my big lyre (see below) to Woodstockhausen 2003. Here's a 40-second video of the lyre in action. The video is 6 megabytes, in mpeg format. The first 20 seconds show the lyre playing pre-recorded music, and the second 20 seconds show people dancing on the pads and generating their own music. See my Woodstockhausen archive for more details on Woodstockhausen 2003 and previous years.
August 2003
I took my big installation (Dancing Under the Stars of Lyra) to Burning Man, and people enjoyed it a lot. Cathy went with me and helped - I couldn't have done it without her. See lots of pictures and a video.
June 2003
I finally gave my talk/demo about KeyKit at the dorkbot-sf meeting. Here are the large number of powerpoint slides I used. The slides contain lots of good info, most of which I flipped through very quickly so I would have time to demonstrate things. Naturally, afterward I remembered all sorts of things I forgot to mention during the talk. It was a packed house. Here are some pictures of the dorkbot event.
Using a wireless qwerty keyboard and 2 playstation dance pads, I performed a diverse 20-minute set of music at 26Mix in San Francisco. Here's audio of the performance.
I participated in this year's Woodstockhausen 2001 concert. I wrote a piece called "Oops, I made a typo()", a real-time improvisation that I performed by typing on a computer keyboard. Here's a description, pictures, and audio.
July 2001
Cathy and I took a 1-week vacation to Mendocino and Seattle. Here are the pictures.
June 2001
On June 29, I sat alone in my room in San Jose, California, and played a live 15-minute performance at the opening of a new Internet cafe (The Jade Room) in St. Louis, Missouri. KeyKit was used to send the MIDI data in realtime over TCP/IP - from my Win98 PC through my Linux web server to a Win98 PC in St Louis - all three machines were running KeyKit. Here's the MIDI file containing the entire live performance. It's solo piano stuff, a medley of various compositions and improv. Thanks go to Chris Deckard for making it possible.
May 2001
Another (short) composition - DNA #1 - derived from some genetic algorithms I'm playing with.
April 2001
My latest composition - 23 Shots of Expresso - was played at the "Algorithmic Shorts" concert at UC Santa Cruz.
March 2001
Yippee! I've upgraded this server from a 233 Mhz Pentium II to an 800 Mhz Pentium III. Things should be quite a bit snappier.
Fresh Roast is a new Tune Toy. It's a more advanced application of Expresso, with drums and more musical output.
March 2000
As long as I'm dredging up things past and putting them on my web site, I figured I might as well include my original posting of the Stevie vi clone, which has evolved over more than a decade into the popular vim editor.
March 2000
While converting cassettes to MP3's, I decided to also do my Octave++ cassette from 1994, which contains two noteworthy pieces - Renaissance Ninja and Sunrise/Another Day.
March 2000
I dug out the five MMML Tapes that MMML members put together in the late 80's and early 90's, and decided to put them online as MP3 files.
March 2000
Life Forms is a new Tune Toy. It generates music using Conway's game of Life.
January 2000
I reworked my entire web site, giving it a fresh look and more useful front page. Power Flower is my latest composition, from the Rock Garden 1 project.
December 1999
The Rock Garden 1 project produced 7 final 'gems'. Hurray, I now have another composition for my next CD!
October 1999
Rock Garden 1 is a new collaborative project in the Composer's Quarry. The deadline for final compositions is December 1.
