While I'm documenting the internals of Touch Designer for those who might be interested, I thought I would show the network I threw together fairly quickly that allowed me to record all three channels of portrait (9:16 vertical format) video from my new video piece entitled 'Incantations' into a single channel HD video for online venues.
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| Setup to record the three channels into one. |
Here's an inside look at my GLSL pattern processing network developed under Touch Designer to process video clips. Touch Designer is a visual creation interface where components of various sorts are connected together to perform operations. On the left side of the screen, four GLSL patterning components (that I developed with Claude AI) are feeding patterns into various levels of compositing and HSV manipulation. At the bottom of the screen, a video file is being played into the system. (There are various nodes that I use to adjust resolution, aspect, and format - portrait or landscape - of the incoming video clip.) After that, there are two keying pathways (chroma or luma) which feed thru their own set of signal manipulations. On the right are the final compositing and mixing stages, as well as the record function and the output to second monitor window.
Note that the configuration is intended to be dynamic with the ability to disconnect, insert, connect and reconnect various nodes as desired before recording a final processed output.
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| Network Processing A Dark Goddess Clip (full clip posted previously below) |
Every node in the network has optional control settings to fine tune functionality. Below are two control panels for one other the GLSL components I created.
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| Pattern Controls |
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| Colorizer Controls |
I processed some clips of fire offerings / fire prayers with multi-layered compositing from several of the Touch Designer-based GLSL psychedelic pattern generators I've been developing.
Here are a few full length nudes (9:16 aspect ratio) processed with multi-layered compositing from several of the Touch Designer-based GLSL psychedelic pattern generators I've been developing.
Here are a few more samples of multi-layered compositing from several of the Touch Designer-based GLSL psychedelic pattern generators I've been developing.
Incantations is a new three channel video piece (10:00 run time) that makes use of lots of the processed video clips I've been building up in the studio over the last year. In particular, it is based upon my favorite Prayer Wheel footage showing a close up of the rotating mantras on the wheel's surface. The very nature of the prayer wheel when intentionally rotated spreads its mantra (Tibetan glyphs on the wheel itself) outward, envisioned as a spiral flow of blessings into the environment at large. This is the underlying prayer incantation, often accompanied by ritual chanting or music.
A series of visual themes came into focus in roughly three groupings:
Maya - delusions of the world: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Mind
Dharma - path & practice: Ritual, Mantra, Meditation
Karma - cycles of life: Death, Bardo, Rebirth, Redux
As I worked on a range of variations of these themes, I realized what would be really interesting would be to present the footage (set into a vertical aspect ratio as determined by the original prayer wheel footage) on a series of side-by-side vertical monitors. Thus, there could be simultaneous variations and visually repeat rhythms across the channels not possible on a single channel display. The basic presentation configuration is three HD display panels side-by-side, visually mimicking the way multiple prayer wheels are often mounted side-by-side in a temple compound so that a visiting perambulator can walk past the row of prayer wheels and simply activate (turn) each in turn. Although the digital displays don’t offer that level of hands-on interactivity, a complex meditational space can still be achieved.
In order to present the 3 channel video in this online context, I recorded all three simultaneously as one HD program.
This program is too large file-wise and really deserves a higher definition encoding than provided by Blogger. So, please view the complete program on my Vimeo site:
Incantations - https://vimeo.com/1146248666
Recently, Eric Souther (Philosophical Tools on Patreon) released his latest Touch Designer TOX network for video processing called "VectMandala" - here is a sample of something I generated using it:
(turn up audio)
Here are more samples of multi-layered compositing from several of the Touch Designer-based GLSL psychedelic pattern generators.
Here are more samples of multi-layered compositing from several of the Touch Designer-based GLSL psychedelic pattern generators.
Here are samples of multi-layered compositing from several of the Touch Designer-based GLSL psychedelic pattern generators used in combination.
Another project I've been working on is the development of some GLSL shaders (in Touch Designer) with the help of Anthropic's Claude AI. (Use of an AI coding assistant is another whole subject best left for discussion over a bottle of beer...)
I got interested in seeing what sort of psychedelic procedural patterning could be created after coming across trippy artwork by @848elle on Tumblr (848ellie.tumblr.com). She's making use of an AI rendering engine (not sure which one) to create wonderful multi-faceted patterning. A few samples of her work appear below.
Over the last few months, I've been working on a custom Touch Designer network inspired by the Dave Jones Frame Buffer (which I first was introduced to in the 1980's during my residencies at the Experimental Television Center). Although I started with a focus on the core functionality his device provided, of course I couldn't help myself from adding extra features as I build out the project.
(More details on the DJFB project later. For now I simply want to show a couple of interesting processing presets applied to some found footage from Ancient Aliens of a Native American Bird Man ritual dancer.)
Creating a series of variants for the Mayan Underworld sequence for my River Styx video piece. Using various custom tools in Touch Designer. Footage from Palenque archeological museum originally shot on 8mm videocam and upscaled/de-interlaced.
[Turn sound on ]
EchoFold is a new Touch Designer TOX processing network released by Eric Souther (Philosophical Tools on Patreon) which is like a 4D frame buffer on DMT. The abundance of controls available for modifying the spatial geometry and temporal stream allow for lots of creative experimentation and surprises. Also, the TOX provides a wide supplement of CV (Control Voltage) inputs as well.
Here are several examples of the TD network in operation:
More work samples exploring Eric Souther's (Philosophical Tools on Patreon) new Touch Designer TOX (processing module) named "PixaVex". (Several samples below utilize two PixaVex TOXs in the processing network - one providing the wavefield, the other creating surface texture variants on the figures via modified Rutt-Etra like extrusion.)
[Turn audio on]
More work samples exploring Eric Souther's (Philosophical Tools on Patreon) new Touch Designer TOX (processing module) named "PixaVex". In these sequences, there are actually two instances of PixaVex in the processing network - one TOX is creating the wavy field(s), while the other TOX is processing the video clip of the swimming figure using a Rutt-Etra like displacement extrusion effect.
[Turn audio on]
More work samples exploring Eric Souther's (Philosophical Tools on Patreon) new Touch Designer TOX (processing module) named "PixaVex". In these sequences, there are actually two instances of PixaVex in the processing network - one TOX is creating the wavy field(s), while the other TOX is displacing the head video clip.
[Turn audio on]
Eric Souther (Philosophical Tools on Patreon) just released a new Touch Designer TOX (processing module) named "PixaVex" - its reminds me a bit of a Rutt-Etra device, but can do a wide range of raster modifications including being driven by internal oscillators. It's a very cool processing network!
I took it for a spin with some archival footage from a visit (long ago) to a small startup company of a friend of mine Chuck Canon - Honeybee Robotics. Here are some examples of PixaVex at work with fairly subtle luminance 'Z' extrusion settings. [turn on audio]
In my previous post from a few days ago, I mentioned that I wanted to add sound effects to the Touch Designer analog video distortion network that I developed. Well, I did that -- and here are a few examples with manually-triggered tape speed distortion and white noise interference.
(I notice that the Blogger video encoder has really filtered / reduced the visual static noise in the uploads, so please take my word for it that the white noise is much more apparent on the processed source footage.)
I recently came across a FB Reel post by the artist VJ Kuru who does a lot of live performance work processing with his custom Touch Designer networks. In this post he mentions that he was able to create a video glitch network with only 5 TD nodes. (Actually, if you exclude the required video input node and the optional Null output node, he got his glitch effect with only 3 TD nodes...)
I was intrigued and so decided I would try to figure this puzzle out -- his Reel showed only the most basic info, but I could see the set of nodes he used, as well as his manipulation of the NOISE TOP's amplitude parameter. So that was my starting point. And after several hours of messing around, I finally found some (rather extreme) settings that essentially duplicated his shifting wavy bands of raster & chroma distortion effect.
This got me playing around with simulating other sorts of analog tape-like distortions. Over the course of the afternoon, I added vertical roll distortion, tape dropout noise, and static like from dirty VCR playback heads (or a badly tuned TV set). Here is a snapshot of the TD network I ended up with (obviously much larger than a 5 node solution...):
Then I tried adding audio white noise sync'd to the visual white noise but I found it too annoying recurring at the frequency of the visual effect. So I dropped that one. But, I still have one other idea for audio distortion to add in -- a tape transport speed irregularity that affects the soundtrack (but not the image). I'll probably get back to this in the next few weeks. We'll see...
Meanwhile, I'm sharing some examples (below) of my current retro analog video processing network based upon found footage of the Golden Butoh (Daidogei) Dance Troupe from Japan:
Here are a few more examples of processed footage using my retro analog video processing network described in my previous post:
Another very interesting and powerful tool available on the Mac is PhotoMosh Pro (now called Mosh Pro). While this is not a real time processing app -- i.e.: the work screen shows an approximation of real time effects, but any final patch needs to be 'recorded' (exported) explicitly to create an output file for further use...
What is nice about this app is that it has a huge range of effects (most of which have parameter adjustments that can be controlled manually or by LFOs and such), but presents itself as a stackable array of such processing steps (with processing order able to be swapped as desired). It's really quite powerful as you can see below in a few samples - including a Rutt-Etra like effect.
Eric Souther (Philosophical Tools on Patreon) has released a new Touch Designer TOX processing network based upon the 8 channel Color Mixer hardware device developed by David Jones. I initially encountered the color mixer while at my first Experimental TV Center artist residency in 1987 - and I immediately fell in love with the beautiful layering of multi channel video "slices", each of which could be keyed and colorized independently before being summed together on output. Eric's TOX network provides a nice emulation of the original hardware mixer.
The sample footage I'm sharing originates from my original video tape library documenting visits in the early 1990s to several Mayan sites including Chichén Itzá and Cobol in the Yucatan Peninsular of Mexico. Selections have been fed thru the Color Mixer processing network to achieve my desired look and texture.
Note that edited / selected segments of these raw processing flows will be used in my upcoming River Styx video: the specific section of the program deals with the Journey thru the Mayan Underworld (descent into flames and darkness) and the Voyage to the Ancestors (climbing the sacred mountain into the Sky realms).
It's not that I haven't been making stuff, but I've been unfocused in terms of posting stuff.
I've done a lot more Prayer Wheel explorations using the Signal Culture Re:Struktr app. I've also gotten much deeper into Touch Designer processing networks as well over the last few months. And I've done more work on my River Styx video script - including investigating / testing various text-to-audio AI services. So far, I'm leaning towards ElevenLabs voices...
So, next I'll be posting sample stuff in a somewhat chronological order next.
This new app from Signal Culture allows very interesting wave-form driven flicker-based transitions between two channels of video. In this example, a number of Signal Culture apps were used in tandem: Input Amp -> Proc Amp -> Frame Buffer -> Re:Struktr -> Syphon Recorder. (Turn on audio!)
This new app allows very interesting wave-form driven flicker-based transitions between two channels of video. Very powerful. In this example, sine & triangle wave driven flicker transitions have been increased to a fast rate and keying & color tinting features have been utilized. (Turn on audio!)
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