Magnetosphere revisited (audio by Tosca) from flight404 on Vimeo.
At first blush, it seems absurd. At second blush, you may be blushing precisely because of how obvious it is. I thought about this possibility shortly after reading about the rumored new visualizer in iTunes 8. While not a revolutionary leap, consider the gap: most VJ (Video Jockey) software is hard to use but can produce spectacular effects. Their much simpler siblings, music visualizers which "read" the music to provide trippy animations which match what you're hearing, offer some of the same effects but with a limited degree of control — you may be able to cycle through visualizations at the touch of a key like MilkDrop can, but compositing and other fundamentals of a full-fledged VJ program are out of the question.
Why does this make sense? I'll explain: several years ago, it seemed laughable that Apple would enter the audio sequencer market — there were plenty of fine 3rd-party solutions, including Emagic's Logic line. Well, in 2002, Apple bought Emagic, and Logic went Mac-only. Further in the timeline, Apple took the guts of Logic and wove it into GarageBand, an easy way of making your own music, and the audio studio equivalent to what iPhoto does for budding photographers, or what iMovie does for aspiring filmmakers.
GarageBand's popularity has become such that it's led to expansion packs with more instruments, and even M-Audio introduced the iControl (later discontinued) with a look 'n' feel designed to match GarageBand's user interface.
Photo by sharl
Note that hardware controllers like Livid's much pricier Ohm greatly enhance your expressive abilities — instead of being limited to keyboard + mouse, a specialized controller lets you do so much more at once. I know this firsthand from the many audio-centric controllers I used, including the Kurzweil ExpressionMate ribbon and the Yamaha BC3 breath controller for realistic woodwind simulations!
VJing, not dissimilar to beatboxing, is still considered a novelty art form in young stages of maturation. VJing is enjoyed by far more than it's created by, compared to image editing, for the barrier of entry is comparatively high. Earlier, I observed the difficult usability of many VJ packages, and VJing also (eventually) makes sense for several reasons.
For instance, imagine creating your own tempo-synced shows that could be inserted in an iMovie timeline alongside your home clips! Or make a dazzling video for your new GarageBand-arranged track on the fly! While Apple has long had a reputation for tight interoperability in its hardware & software, missing links like this remain.
Underworld, electronic music group that understands the power of VJing
Also consider how VJing, for all its party-rocking fun, is still predominantly the domain of academic and experimental tinkerers, much as audio synthesis was before quick-start presets and cheaper gear gave way to mass-market acceptance — and consequentially, "easy music making" packages like GarageBand. There's a chasm, not just a technological one, but a combo involving social awareness and that unstoppable "cool" factor which made millions of kids want to pick up a guitar after seeing their TV heroes jam on one — a curious tradition that continues in facsimile format with smash hit franchises like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
With VJing as with DJing, the focus is spontaneous creation and mixing: I know the Final Cut line is capable of awesome special effects, but those apps' don't excel at improvisatory visual performances matched to music, with all manner of mathematically-based triggers and fractal algorithms.
I don't think Apple will enter the VJ market anytime soon in the next year, but should they see value in this field, it'd be a very rapid acceleration of adoption. In a world of participatory media where more consumers are "graduating" from listening to CDs to choosing the MP3 playback order on iPods to remixing existing songs into new mashups, I believe the parallel growth of interactive music visualization to widespread consumer enjoyment makes perfect sense.
What do you think?
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September 7th, 2008 at 6:38 AM PDT
'Who's awesome?' YOU ARE! Why would this information be of any interest to me? I am tone deaf and can not produce music in any form. At the same time the music consumes and vibrates through me. For 4 years I have been in touch with a young man in Scotland who makes music in his kitchen when he is not working at a bank. I intend to connect him with this info.
This visualization brings the whole of the universe through our eyes to our brains blooming into more Joy. Perfect sense!
September 7th, 2008 at 7:25 AM PDT
Nice!
Doing something like this would fit in with apple's media center market perfectly.
September 7th, 2008 at 7:20 PM PDT
wow - very nice! I've never seen a video so in sync and really enjoyed the Underworld video too - makes me wanna go see em live
I think you're right - there is room for VJing for the masses! some of the best VJ software I've seen is from Japan and when I was in Tokyo, there were having talks around music/video at the Shibuya Apple store - it can so happen.
let's keep standing - oh, i mean dancing