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Kutztown U Computer Music & Visualization Conference
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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 8:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

smokris wrote:
Acoustic Interloper wrote:
how colors appeared to eyeballs at the event


The existing projector is color-disc DLP, right? (I remember seeing rainbows as I flicked my eyes across the room.) Over time the gels in the spinning color disc may fade (from saturated to transparent), resulting in lower saturation, so one relatively-inexpensive option might be to check the color disc and replace it if it's out-of-spec.

Thanks, Steve. These are exactly the kind of recommendations I was hoping to get out of the post-event debriefing. With as much time as Phill's & my courses and students take up, our philosophy for the event was basically, "Throw a bunch of stuff up against the wall and see what sticks." Now for the postmortem.

The current projector's information is here. The Technical Downloads tab includes the attached color wheel guide. Also, Phill and and I went through the user manual and set up for maximum brightness, and made sure it was off "bulb saver mode." The bulb has about 800 hours of life left. But, we didn't get into tweaking color at all. We now have impetus!

Quote:
Another option would be to replace that projector with a 3-chip / non-color-disc projector. In my experience those tend to produce more vivid colors.


Do you have any recommendations for projectors to look at?

Budget and time constraints being as they are, I think the color wheel recommendation is the track for us to follow, at least right now. That, and getting some practice with the fine tuning the color setup options. Of course, we have to make sure there are no conflicts with the standard planetarium shows. But, changing a color wheel and adjusting some settings for an event such as last weekend's sounds like a good idea.

I am also soliciting feedback on improvements to the sound system, e.g., because of the pops and amplifier cut-outs, see for example Bill's comments above. There will be some budget for improvements, especially if I can get this funded as faculty research for an end-of-2015 grant. I often have success with those. We have to be informed before we shop, so your expertise certainly helps. thanks

I plan to distribute a brief on-line survey within the next 2 weeks to solicit feedback on the event. Besides using suggestions directly, it should help in obtaining funds.

You realize that the logical endpoint of improving the audio & visual systems will be another event to which I will invite Project Ruori. It will happen two years from now at the earliest. I missed having time to go hiking in May and early June, but it was well worth it. You have been warned. Cool

Incidentally, let me know your preference for visuals versus performance for the Zero Input Mixer set at electro-music 2015. I wouldn't mind getting a little more use out of the visualizer we used for it this weekend, and I was glad to have you in the collaboration. From the "VJ" side of the room, it looked and felt like shooting sonic/visual fireworks into the sky.

Thanks for all your work.

Dale


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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 8:22 am    Post subject:
Subject description: SURVEY
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All,

If you attended the June 13-14, 2015 event in Kutztown's planetarium, Pretty Please complete this short survey by end of June 30, and pass the survey link on to anyone who attended whom you do not see here. Ideally I’d like a response from anyone who attended the event. Thank you.

I have created a SurveyMonkey survey for the June 13-14, 2015 Kutztown University Computer Music & Visualization Conference at

HERE IS THE SURVEY LINK.

Equipment and free dorm rooms for the event were sponsored by the KU Professional Development Committee (thanks to KU!). Data obtained from this survey will be part of the event report for that committee. If you attended in any capacity, I ask that you please complete this survey by end of June 30. There are only 10 questions, mostly suggested by the survey site for events. The last 2 questions allow you to make text suggestions. Please include the day(s) you attended, Saturday and/or Sunday, at the start of your answer to question 9. All collected information is anonymous. Thanks!

Make sure to click the Done button on the survey to save your responses at the end. Thanks again.

Dale

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smokris



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PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 9:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
we didn't get into tweaking color at all


As MOB and I discovered at EMAVL last month, the projector's software color configuration can make a huge difference (beyond what the attached computer's software color configuration can do) — maybe that alone could compensate for the dark-reds issue.

I noticed in the Barco F32 spec sheet that the projector has a variable iris; you opened up the iris all the way, right?


Acoustic Interloper wrote:
Do you have any recommendations for projectors to look at?


I have a lot of experience using a couple of projectors (I used to own 2 x Optoma EP739, and I now own a single Sony VPL-FH30 which I've used at Greenkill the last few years), but I don't feel like I know enough about the breadth of the market to provide a well-informed recommendation (beyond my anecdotal experience that 3-chip projectors reproduce colors better than color-disc projectors, and my vague notion that Barco projectors are typically regarded as top-of-the-line).

Oh, one thing that worked flawlessly was the HDMI connection between the computers and the projector. Did you use an HDMI repeater, or just a well-shielded cable? (I'm thinking about switching to HDMI for Greenkill, so I just bought a 40' HDMI cable, but it doesn't work at all without a repeater, and even with a repeater it glitches constantly.)


Acoustic Interloper wrote:
I am also soliciting feedback on improvements to the sound system


Bill's PA advice sounds good to me.

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
the logical endpoint of improving the audio & visual systems will be another event […] You have been warned.


Popcorn time


Acoustic Interloper wrote:
preference for visuals versus performance for the Zero Input Mixer set at electro-music 2015


I had fun participating in that. In general I'd like to do more collaborations (I often miss out on collaborations at these events since I'm frantically running around preparing visuals for upcoming sets). It was nice that it was the last event and I had nothing to worry about preparing for after it.

Being my first time doing ZIM, I spent most of the time going "eek!" wondering whether the runaway feedback spikes were something I was doing. And Andy Koenig brought up a good point about my shady conceptual purity — my ZIM setup was a laptop where I had rigged one channel of my audio interface to feed back into another channel, and I made sound by amplifiying and filtering that feedback. So there was no input on my signal chain (aside from the electromagnetic interference on the analog side of my audio interface), but I did use some signal generators to modulate the filter parameters. Have I blasphemed? What exactly counts as the Input which should be Zeroed?

So, if we settle on a compatible philosophy, I'd be happy to participate in ZIM at Greenkill either aurally or visually. If I'm not doing visuals, your visualizer, or maybe Jaymie or another Ruorite could.

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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 10:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

smokris wrote:
I noticed in the Barco F32 spec sheet that the projector has a variable iris; you opened up the iris all the way, right?

Not sure. We met the Tuesday before the event so Phill could show me how to rotate the image 180 degrees, we verified bulb life (we had originally planned to change the bulb, but it had > 800 hours left on it, and we didn't want to increase risk by changing it), verified the brightness and contrast. Looking at the manual now, there is a *lot* we could have done with color just from the projector setup menu. Also, the subject of color wheels never came up, so that is on the agenda for study. With a laser projector coming and the need to stay compatible with open source planetarium software, I think a new projector is impossible. But, all of your suggestions about color wheel & projector settings are things I plan to work with in there before next time.

Quote:
Oh, one thing that worked flawlessly was the HDMI connection between the computers and the projector. Did you use an HDMI repeater, or just a well-shielded cable? (I'm thinking about switching to HDMI for Greenkill, so I just bought a 40' HDMI cable, but it doesn't work at all without a repeater, and even with a repeater it glitches constantly.)


I had tried a cheapo Radio Shack HDMI switch so we could send source from either the middle of the room, or from our side tables, but it didn't work at all in last Friday's setup.

What we actually used was just a straight HDMI 50' cable from laptop to projector. HERE IS THE CABLE WE USED. I read vast numbers of customer reviews for this and at least six other cables. I am very happy with its performance. I tested it out at home during the preceding week, would have been disappointed if it had left us down. This, two 50' SVGA cables, and a 50' 8-balanced-line audio snake were the non-dorm-room part of the grant. I plan to buy another of these HDMI cables, next time I have funds. HDMI worked for lower-than-full-resolution display settings in the planetarium that did not work correctly with SVGA.

Michael wrote yesterday:
Quote:
A three-channel active HDMI switch (not one of the low-end models) would be nice for the VJ's. Switching between groups of sets was not a problem, but switching within a group could have been a problem if any issue had arisen. This would allow us to quickly test the more transient VJ's setups quickly.


That's on the list.

Quote:

Popcorn time


Laughing

Quote:
I had fun participating in that. In general I'd like to do more collaborations (I often miss out on collaborations at these events since I'm frantically running around preparing visuals for upcoming sets). It was nice that it was the last event and I had nothing to worry about preparing for after it.

Being my first time doing ZIM, I spent most of the time going "eek!" wondering whether the runaway feedback spikes were something I was doing. And Andy Koenig brought up a good point about my shady conceptual purity — my ZIM setup was a laptop where I had rigged one channel of my audio interface to feed back into another channel, and I made sound by amplifiying and filtering that feedback. So there was no input on my signal chain (aside from the electromagnetic interference on the analog side of my audio interface), but I did use some signal generators to modulate the filter parameters. Have I blasphemed? What exactly counts as the Input which should be Zeroed?

So, if we settle on a compatible philosophy, I'd be happy to participate in ZIM at Greenkill either aurally or visually. If I'm not doing visuals, your visualizer, or maybe Jaymie or another Ruorite could.


Andy was dinging me for impurity as well. What matters is the piece and its performance, not purity of essence. In last year's ZIM composition based on Wolfram's classification scheme for cellular automata and other complex systems -- 1 static, 2 cyclic, 3 chaotic, 4 complex region of non-repetitive structured behavior -- my instruction especially for region #4 was CHEAT! In the ZIM workshop on Saturday I referred to Captain Kirk's cheat-to-beat for the Kobayashi Maru, for which Jeremy dePrisco knew the actual name. Cool Any philosophy is "compatible philosophy." The music is the thing.

I try to start a piece using strictly feedback through the mixer to see how far I can go with that, but I never limit myself. I had a Roland VG-99 guitar synth in one of my 3 feedback paths and had practiced twice with it, but in the heat of the moment I was able to get more interesting sounds out of the two "pure" channels. I hardly used the VG-99.

Mosc seemed thrilled with our ZIM, by the way. He's always missed it at electro-music for various reasons.

I would love to have you in the ZIM ensemble again. I'll bring the waveform visualizer that we used along. If another Project Ruori member wants to run that, I can show them at the ZIM workshop on Saturday. They are certainly welcome to use other viz software with which they are familiar if they prefer. I have always enjoyed your visuals for ZIM sessions of past years.

Have a good weekend.

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 12:45 pm    Post subject: Blasphemer! (Not...) Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

smokris wrote:
So there was no input on my signal chain (aside from the electromagnetic interference on the analog side of my audio interface), but I did use some signal generators to modulate the filter parameters. Have I blasphemed? What exactly counts as the Input which should be Zeroed?
While I'm no expert, I did participate in the ZIM performance at Greenkill last year.

Firstly, no one needs to be concerned with "purity." (My people had enough of that BS in the '30s and '40s of the 20th.) Therefore, it's OK to put an effect into a feedback loop even though that is not considered "pure." Using something to modulate its parameters is sort of the point of having an effect in the loop. So you're OK on that matter.

Secondly, the only mixer (audio) inputs that should be used are the ones fed a signal from one of the mixer's outputs, either directly or via an effect. All other inputs ought to be at minus infinity gain, which many call "zero" since that is how much signal such a channel would pass.

As Dale said, it's the music that matters. Just have fun with it and color outside the box as the mood suits you.

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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2015 12:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

For my set on the webcast tomorrow I was just feeding some incoming, externally-created signal to the mixer and then using feedback through the mixer as an effects processor on that incoming signal. You can tune the feedback so that when the incoming signal pushes it past some threshold in the feedback dynamics, it transitions into a region of funky non-linear effects. When the incoming signal falls back below the threshold, the mixer contribution decays away.

In the parlance of Zero Input Mixer, this practice is know as One Input Mixer, or OIM, although I prefer to think of it as WHIM. It is also very good. It is the next level, in fact.

According to the Buddhist Heart Sutra, there is no purity, and there is no impurity. So there's that. Cool

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 20, 2015 2:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

This was a most wonderful event! The music was fantastic and the graphics and video presentations were magnificent. Thanks to everyone who came and participated. The zero input mixer concert at the end was incredibly enjoyable. I, for some reason, have missed all the zero input mixer concerts at previous electro-music events. I won't miss another one.

Bravo!

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smokris



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PostPosted: Sat Jun 20, 2015 6:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
color wheel & projector settings are things I plan to work with


Great. For calibration, I'd recommend testing with graduated color bars such as those on http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ (Contrast, Black Level, and White Saturation pages), or some other input signal where you know exactly what the 24bit RGB color values are. (Mac OS X's built-in Digital Color Meter.app may also be useful for checking what the computer is outputting.)

If you calibrate the projector with the input source's color profile set to sRGB (on Mac, System Preferences > Displays > Color > sRGB IEC61966-2.1), the visualists can each pick that color profile and hopefully minimize fiddling during the show.

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
HERE IS THE CABLE WE USED.


Cool, I think I'll return my cable and get one of those.

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
fluoridation


Thanks, Dale and Bill, for your thoughts. Looking forward to ZIM at Greenkill.

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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 7:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Thank you, Steve. The planetarium is a side job for Phill and me. He is its director, but we have heavy teaching loads, he does research with students into mass transfer within multiple star systems, including managing and running the observatory, also community and campus outreach with that. I am currently doing research into synchronized data visualization & sonification with Emily Hoch, using as our primary data set temporal work pattern data for programming students that we have automatically collected (with consent) and analyzed / reported (without experimental visualization or any sonification) over the last 2.5 years.

As a result, your sharing of your expertise, and Michael's sharing of his, is invaluable to us, both in anticipation of future events, and in working with our students in the planetarium. We'd never have time to acquire your level of expertise in this area. As it is in my courses, improvement in these projects is an incremental, ongoing process. I am really looking forward to seeing what we can achieve using your suggestions for color improvement. I will keep you posted on results.

I also want to figure out how to get photos that capture approximately what the eye sees. I have heard and thought of various explanations for why the camera images have such deeper saturation, including sensitivity of the CCDs, longer exposure time, and image tweaks being done by the camera. The Nikon D90 I used is capable of capturing in camera raw mode, and I can control most of its normally automated features. Figuring out how to capture images that look like what I see is another to-do. I will post some here when I get to that.

Next time I will also take steps to limit the amount of light pollution. There was a lot of that.

So, thanks for coming to Kutztown and for all your comments. Looking forward to seeing you at Huguenot.

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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 7:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

mosc wrote:
This was a most wonderful event! The music was fantastic and the graphics and video presentations were magnificent. Thanks to everyone who came and participated. The zero input mixer concert at the end was incredibly enjoyable. I, for some reason, have missed all the zero input mixer concerts at previous electro-music events. I won't miss another one.

Bravo!

Thank you, Howard. I was very glad to see you and Bill there. All in all, things went quite well. As for the few, ultimately corrected or in some cases correctable glitches, this was a workshop, both for the invitees and for Phill and me. We are learning a lot thanks to holding this event.

I am glad you liked the ZIM. I figured you would. The ZIM collabs over the last 4 years have benefited from incremental addition of new personnel. A more accurate term would be turnover -- John Driscoll and my son Jeremy were in the first year only, Adam Holquist and Jeremy dePrisco have done two years at EM and also last weekend, Joo Won Park and Bill Manganaro were away last year, Bill Fox and Jez Creek joined us last year, Steve Mokris has joined us this year after always doing our visuals at Huguenot, Bill M. has rejoined us this year. Smile There are fresh streams of musical ideas flowing through the ZIM collaborations. At the end of last year's performance I told Jack Tamul that I was considering taking a year off from the ZIM collab, and he told me emphatically this I must keep it going. Exclamation

Unlike previous years at EM where the pieces had 4 themed movements, this year the sole theme will be Tapestry, which is basically just arriving with a pocket full of planned sounds and weaving them, one or two at a time, as you listen to what everyone else is playing. ZIM is always sound sculpting, but this year collaborative sound sculpting is the only focus.

I plan to play around with "Mobius" ZIM this summer. Up until now I have had three modes of operating the mixer.

1. Feed a channel's output back to its input. This is basic ZIM. You can also do that with 2 channels and then pan so that they bleed into each other to get beats and other FX.
2. Stick whatever FX, hardware or software, into a feedback path.
3. Feed a non-mixer signal into the mixer and use feedback to treat the mixer as an effects box. For example, you can set the feedback so its FX kick in only when the input signal exceeds some threshold in amplitude.

Mobius would be:

4. Feed the output of one channel to the input of another, and feed its output to the input of the first. Of course, you could daisy chain more than 2. This gives you more EQ knobs etc. in the extended feedback path. I just thought about this for the first time yesterday.

You are welcome to bring a portable mixer to the ZIM workshop this year, or just show up & hang out. It will be a very informal workshop. Which reminds me, I need to write up something for Greg.

See you in September. Cool

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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Tue Jun 23, 2015 6:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Steve Mokris is posting video recordings of entire sets from the June 13-14, 2015 Computer Music & Visualization Conference in Kutztown University's Planetarium! Jaymie Strecker did a wonderful job of accompanying my Acoustic Interloper set "Transatlantic Reel" on Saturday afternoon. Thank you, Jaymie and Steve. You can watch more of the videos on Steve's Vimeo site.
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 23, 2015 6:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Here's the list of videos: https://vimeo.com/channels/kucmvc2015

(I'll be adding the rest of the videos to that channel soon.)

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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Sun Jul 12, 2015 10:08 am    Post subject:
Subject description: two recordings
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Here are recordings of two of the pieces in which I played, my Acoustic Interloper set near the start of Saturday, and the Zero Input Mixer set at the end of the event on Sunday night. Other ZIM performers were Jeremy dePrisco, Bill Manganaro and Steve Mokris. Thanks to Steve for posting the video that supplied this audio. Very Happy


TransatlanticReelKUCMVC2015.mp3
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Transatlantic Reel, Dale E. Parson, KUCMVC2015, copyright 2015 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to post with credit to the artist.

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ZIM_KUCMVC2015.mp3
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Zero Input Mixer, ZIM Quartet, KUCMVC2015, copyright 2015 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to post with credit to the artists.

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 Filename:  ZIM_KUCMVC2015.mp3
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