Older Live Visuals Work

I was very active on working with live visuals performed alongside musicians from about 2005 to 2016. I played with acts like Hooray for Earth, !!!, and many smaller Brooklyn bands. I will return someday, but until then, here is an archive of some highlight projects during that time.

The Album Leaf - 2016 Tour Visuals

In August 2016, I managed to get in touch with one of my all time favorite acts, The Album Leaf. I’ve been a huge huge fan since their 2004 release In A Safe Place, so this was a wonderfully surreal experience for me. They needed some content for their upcoming tour in support of the album Between Waves and were interested in collaborating for some of their stage visuals. I made some new stuff and also pulled a lot of video out of my archives since it was a tight turnaround.

They took my content (and content from a few other visual artists they work with, like Michael Raines ) and matched it to each song for their set using Resolume. The set design was projection over several transparent scrims placed around the band, giving the abstract projection a more volumetric effect. The live set itself had a great shape of building from simple lighting cues to more detailed and textured video elements as the show went on. I really appreciated the opportunity to contribute – It was an amazing experience to see the band perform songs that I’ve loved for over 10 years with some of my video elements behind them.

Overflow - MFA Thesis Performance

Spring 2010

Overflow is the title of my MFA thesis presentation. It was a 5 piece 50 minute performance that took place in the Troy Gasholder House on March 3rd, 2010. Each piece explored a different relationship between sound and image in a live context. The music/visual relationships range from the visuals representing the music ("Building a still"), to having the visuals be the conductor of the overall musical action ("Trip[tych]"). The five pieces were:

1. Building a still (featuring an arrangement of Bon Iver’s song "Woods")
2. Free Improvisation
3. Trip [tych]
4. Scouter
5. Overflow
The participating musicians were Kyle McDonald, Ryan Jenkins, Will Rogers, Caitlin Morris, David Rhoderick, and Jesse French and Lisa Rogers.

Visual Performance Software

2005-2016

My primary visual performance system was built in Max/MSP/Jitter while I was an undergraduate. I used it and enhanced it for almost 10 years for tons of different projects.

The primary focus of the project for me was to make visuals as much like a physical instrument and as performative as possible. This was a tall order back in those early days, but I utilized a lot of different gestural MIDI controllers and performed very regularly for years.

My thesis describes the 2008 era system in considerably more detail.

Sound To Video

Fall 2007/Spring 2008
Max/MSP/Jitter

Sound to Video was an experiment involving using sound analysis to add live visual effects to input audio. Using Tristan Jehan’s "analyzer~" object, I looked at the rhythm, loudness, brightness and noisiness of the incoming audio. Using the data from that, I ran it through many complex algorithms to test for different thresholds. I was looking for prolonged periods of music being quiet vs. loud or chaotic vs. simple. These algorithms would then trigger different video effects or jump cuts in the visuals.

Everything was calculated in real time, so all I needed was a sound file or microphone and a source video and I would get a sort of instant music video.