The Fairlight CMI, the ground-breaking digital synth created by Australians Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, is well known for its contribution to music. Think names like Peter Gabriel, Hans Zimmer, David Bowie, Herbie Hancock, Kate Bush, Bono, and … hang on, I’ll stop before this becomes a very long list. With tablet input and sophisticated sampling capabilities, the CMI holds up reasonably well against even modern tech, even if it cost as much as a luxury car. (See Keyboard Magazine’s 2006 write-up.)

But less known is the CMI’s influential visual sibling, the CVI — Computer Video Instrument. Introduced to the market in 1984 at around US$6500, the CVI also used a tablet interface, accessing not a hybrid analog/digital design for visual effects and digital painting in real-time.

You may not know the name, but you’ve seen the effects — the ubiquity of the CVI’s distinctive effects, unfortunately, also made it a cliche in 80s design. But the idea of making an integrating visual instrument is still meaningful today.

It’s not really worth reading about the CVI. It’s better to watch it. We’ve been following videos uploaded by co-creator Vogel onto YouTube, as well as from aficionados of the hardware from the VJ community, on our video sister, Create Digital Motion:

State of the 80s: Fairlight CVI Demo Video, BBC on "Tomorrow’s World"

Video: Fairlight CVI Video Instrument Development, Ca. 1984

Glitch, Synthetic and Real: Free Vintage Fairlight VJ Clips, Glitch in Jitter

 The Prevolt has put up some photos of his Ableton Live controller, dubbed Ambassador. I love that it shares a moniker with the AMC Rambler automobile, though I suspect that wasn’t intentional (pictured at right, photo: Ty Sonneil).

Prevolt describes the gear, which features analog-y, arcade-style hardware controls and a custom case:

This is what I’m using to control Ableton now. All arcade hardware, aluminum top panel by FPE, and a nice wood case courtesy of my man Michael Yates. It uses all key commands through a custom driver to handle playback, effects, editing, warping, UI, mouse clicks, scroll messages, and more, with a lot of tweaks (some strobe, some send double messages, etc):

Finished Ambassador Pics (blog for the Aux Armes VJ/DJ collective)

I got to look over Prevolt’s shoulder while he used the Ambassador in an epic music set in Austin at our SxSW party. It’s really remarkable: those controls may look like overkill, but he’s managed to map just about everything th Live software does to hardware control. To anyone who complains Ableton hasn’t yet done their hardware, this illustrates why that might not even be a good idea — Live users seem to come up with endless control schemes, all different.

Not to mention, with this controller you could get a little Street Fighter in between sets on nice, arcade buttons.

And yes, you even get a little trackball.

After the jump, the whole AV collective in action at SxSW’s closing:

I got to get up close and personal with the just-deliver Ohm from Livid Instruments. It’s a new MIDI controller with a 6×6 grid of on/off pads, two times four knobs + four faders (that is, eight total of each), lots of custom buttons, and a DJ-style crossfader with a lovely wooden handle. Price is US$750, but it comes bundled with Livid’s full VJ software, Union, for Mac and PC.

Livid is first and foremost a visual software developer, and the controller is unusually well-suited to visuals, so it was a natural for Create Digital Motion:

Hands-On: Livid’s New Ohm Controller, Custom Control Geared for Visualists

Music folks have been equally interested, though, which raises the question of how to use it.

As a DJ controller, or Ableton Live controller, it looks very interesting. You could use the 6×6 pads as clip triggers or sample triggers, then assign the mixing functions. In fact, while initially it appears to be short on knobs, the fact that you have eight faders means you could assign a combination of effects and mix levels to cross-faders — or just set up a basic two- or four-channel mix and focus on effects and other settings.

Readers were split on its potential when they first saw it last year, as you can see in comments. But I’ll be interested to hear how people actually using it respond. I was very impressed with the physical feel and handcrafted design in my hands-on — not enough to shake me from my own favorite controllers, but then, I think the future of controllers is more choice, not less.

And if you think you can do better than the Livid team, keep your eyes glued for the MIDI DIY. It’s the control board / brain of the Ohm, ready to be turned into any project you desire. (With 128 note contacts and 32 control changes, you can do something pretty hefty.) More on that when it ships. It won’t be for the first-time DIYer, but I know we have some advanced readers out there.

Audiovisual performance has a history stretching back through the decades — from the 90s Japan audiovisual scene to 60s Acid Tests and whole heck of a lot of other places. Heck, I’m fairly certain people were shooting up on morphine or getting happy with the opium and chilling out to magic lanterns and colored lights at the end of the 19th Century. But there’s a new excitement brewing globally around live music and visuals. That’s important, because it could push the scene forward — a critical mass of performers could pressure more venues into better projection, from avant-garde to club, and raise the level of chops and artistry in the medium. And you won’t even need opium.

The growing interest in A/V performance was part of what made us so excited about Serato’s VIDEO-SL, as seen in our exclusive hands-on with dj rndm. It’s unquestionably the best (well, even arguably the only) true, integrated DVJ tool in computer software form, certainly as far as digital vinyl control.

But curiously, one of the tools at the center of this movement isn’t really a DJ app in the traditional sense, has no scratching capabilities for audio let alone video, only limited video support, no live video triggering support, and no projection support. It’d be as though, collectively, the world decided in 1965 everyone was going to build flying moon buggies by first buying themselves Chevy Novas.

That’d make no sense whatsoever, except the app in question is Ableton Live.

And suddenly, it’s a natural choice: Live is a favorite tool for slicing and dicing sound live, so why not visuals — even if only by transmitting MIDI to a dedicated visual app? There are a number of approaches.

The convergence of visuals and sound on virtual vinyl has been a long time coming, but it’s awaited the perfect tool for controlling both. Serato’s VIDEO-SL promised to be that tool. We’ve gotten the crossfader in the capable hands of dj rndm and Robotkid to find out for Create Digital Motion. Here’s what the results look like, mixing:

… and scratching:

The review isn’t without the odd caveat: for one, you’ll need to pluck down a couple grand to get the complete setup because the Rane mixer employed is required, though rndm ultimately says that’s worth it for the integration payoff. And available transitions and effects are limited in range and prefer to run on dedicated GPUs (think MacBook Pro, or a PC laptop with a dedicated NVIDIA or ATI card). But as you can see, the results are incredibly slick, and there’s no question video on vinyl now has a tool to beat. Check out the complete review and technical details on our visualist sister site:

Hands-on Review: Serato’s VIDEO-SL for Visual Vinyl Turntablism

Friday we’re pleased to co-host a party with trash_audio and vjkungfu.tv in Mid-City Los Angeles. If you’re in LA or visiting NAMM in Anaheim, you won’t want to miss this - Richard Devine headlining, terrific music and live visuals, and workshops.

If you don’t know the other two sites, by the way, trash_audio (featuring Richard, Justin, and Deep Element) is a fantastic blog that regularly profiles creative workspaces for music. vjkungfu.tv, helmed by VJ momo the monster, has in-depth video tutorials for live visualists; we hope to feature it more on createdigitalmotion.com in the near future.

Here’s the lineup:

1. MAKE + MINGLE. 8:00pm.

• Bring your own DIY music or motion creations and other hardware toys and geek out with an international crowd of hipster-nerdsters! All projects welcome (space first come, first served — think small, bring portable speakers if you can
• Put together free kits to make your own ribbon controllers without soldering
• Learn how Bryant Davis Place (future-tense-cpu) built his own DIY VJ sequencer for M8 using the Lemur multi-touch controller.
• Learn about the wonders of wireless MIDI sync in AV Performance with Acid&Bass&Momo producing a live remix of Karate Kid.

2. MIX + MASH. 9:30pm.

RICHARD DEVINE
The Deep Element
Justin McGrath
Liz Revision (Quantazelle)
Moldover
dj halon (Fake Science, False Profit)

Visuals:
Image8nineteen (Mat Hale)
Momo the Monster
Peter Kirn

Some readers on this site — wisely, perhaps — cautioned last year against doing a second "Create Digital …" site for interactive visuals, live visuals, and VJing. But to us, the connection between musical performance and technology and visual performance and technology is really essential. I’m pleased to announce that now, following a two-week sojourn on the Australian content, we’re finally kicking createdigitalmotion.com into high gear and lining up what we want the mature site to be. If you haven’t been reading lately, here’s a bit of what you’ve missed:

• Video scratching with Serato: At long last, one of the leaders in digital control vinyl has added video scratching as well as audio via a new plug-in called VIDEO-SL, now in beta; we’re planning our own test but already have one hands-on.
• We’ve got a big list of video and visual goodies we like. Is it a practical holiday shopping guide? Erm … bits of it are. It’s all drool-worthy, at least. And you’ll really want vintage, gigantic planetarium projections. Lay out some cots, and play that four hour ambient electronic set you’ve been working up.
• Want to learn this stuff yourself? vade has some nice online workshops and tutorials for working with visuals in Pure Data (Pd) and Processing. Both also work well for music, so if you want to dabble in custom-programmed audiovisuals (I swear, anyone can do it with some dedication!) this could be a good place to start. We’ve also got tips for inexpensive high-speed photography and not one but two CDMo tutorials on the free Quartz Composer tool in OS X Tiger and Leopard. See Keith’s report on what’s new in the Leopard release of Quartz Composer, plus a beginner-friendly tutorial for driving 3D cubes with audio courtesy VJ Kung Fu’s momo the monster. The latter should be ideal for whipping up some quick sound-driven visuals for your band; you can even host those visuals in the live music host Rax. Incidentally, our CDMo New Years’ Resolution: make more work, post more tutorials.
• Open jamming for visualists: Just as with music, the best way to practice your chops and share your work is to get out of your bedroom/studio and out to an open jam. We’ve got a full report on the Perth, Australia Plug and Play, an ideal example of how such an event could work, as part of their Byte Me! Festival I attended earlier this month. See the video below, and watch for more video soon - Jaymis and I are editing hours of video footage now.

Plug N Play - ByteMe Festival - Perth from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

If you want to keep up-to-date on Create Digital Motion, you can add the feeds for the site:

RSS Feed (or subscribe via email)

Create Digital Motion Flickr pool

We’re also posting weekend inspiration each week, back next weekend post-holiday break.

From the whole CDM team, very happy holidays. (Yep, New Year’s Eve is among them — we’ll be cracking on 2007-in-review!)

A team of artists has turned the Nintendo Wiimote into a controller for an adaptive, 3D sound environment. Claudio Midolo, Edgar Castellanos, Natan Sinigaglia, and Pedro Mari worked together on the project, and have posted extensive technical details if you fancy trying something like this yourself.