The team behind DMX Remote app Luminair have just released a new free plug-in for Apple’s Quartz Composer called Pixelnode. Pixelnode enables lighting and multimedia designers to turn Apple’s Quartz Composer into a powerful live media-server, controllable via DMX lighting consoles. Luminair application for the iPhone enables you to wirelessly control, view, record and manage intelligent DMX lighting fixtures, consoles, media servers and other software directly from your iPhone or iPod touch.

Although slightly expensive, Luminair is targeted at lighting and multimedia professionals who work with DMX equipment and since all of the work is computed on the device, user’s don’t need to go through a computer or console to operate, just an Art-Net interface.

Guys at Synthe FX were kind enough to send us a promocode for the iPhone app and we got a chance to have play. If I remember well, Luminair was one of the first if not the first iPhone app in the appstore (Aug ’08) to offer over the air control of hardware. The app interface is as impressive as the images below show and an in depth tool providing multiple levels of control.

Quartz Composer is an application for Mac OS X that provides a visual programming environment geared towards live-performance and installations. We have already mentioned few projects that use Quartz Composer. If you are familiar with the work of vade, you’ll see that endless source of possibilities QC can offer. Whether Luminair is a tool for artists as much as professional lighting designers remains to be seen. For now, the price tag may deter some especially as there is no demo application to download. What is certain is the team at Synthe FX have put a lot of effort to create a very sophisticated DMX lighting control software for a mobile device.

For a full set of features and app capability see the beautifully designed Luminair website.

If you’re looking for DMX support in other environments, here’s an open source project: http://code.google.com/p/simple-dmx/ (via createdigitalmotion.com)

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.5.6
Cost: $99.99
Developer: Synthe FX

Created by Anton Marini aka vade, v002 Rutt/Etra plugin brings emulation of the classic Rutt Etra raster based analog video synthesizer to Quartz Composer.

The original Rutt/Etra machine was one of the first voltage-controlled video special effects systems and video synthesizers named after Steve Rutt and Bill Etra who designed it.

The Rutt Etra machine allowed the patching of different video sync rate oscillators to control, offset and famously “z-displace” the resulting video, an effect most memorably demonstrated in the work of the Vasulkas. (see video at the bottom of this post)

v002 Rutt/Etra plugin is an attempt to capture some of the beauty of the original hardware. vade notes it’s almost impossible to emulate an entire Rutt/Etra, as modern graphics and computer systems make fundamentally different assumptions from analog video systems. This plugin for is work in progress in attempt to make it as faithful as possible to the original but still exploring new possibilities.

The plugin comes with handy collection of example patches taking you through the basics to more complex examples. Note that to use you will need Mac OS X 10.6 (Quartz Composer 4.0) or 10.5 (Quartz Composer 3.0) with Apple Developer Tools installed (for Quartz Composer editor).

Plugin Page for Download + More Info + More examples here.

Anton Marini aka vade is a Video Artist and a Freelance Video Engineer / IT Consultant. To find out more, visit vade.info

Inspired by the brilliant use of an early 80′s concept in the recent OKGo ‘WTF’ video (see below), Mehmet Akten aka memo created this little open-source demo in Processing. It works in real-time with a webcam.

You can download the source here.

Memo writes: I tried to keep the source super minimal and as easy to read as possible. For better results, you can try running an erode on the subtracted image, do a contour analysis and smooth the edges slightly. It also helps to run it in front of an empty wall with stable lighting, and ideally a webcam which has manual exposure / shutterspeed / gain etc.

If you are looking for a QuarzComposer version of the same, Vade made one and you can download it here.

See also how the original OKGo video was made here and the King of Pop’s version from over 3 decades ago here

Inspired by the recent post on Skytopia, Tom Beddard created a 3D Mandelbulb Ray Tracer as a Quarz Composer and Pixel Bender plugin that will allow you to generate very similar 3D Mandelbrot fractals. Unlike many other 3D fractals the Mandelbulb continues to reveal finer details the closer you look. This implementation was written as a Pixel Bender filter then ported over to QuartzComposer as a GLSL patch to enable animation. The scripts run on the GPU which makes real-time interactive exploration possible.

There are quite a few controls including: power: the power n used in the fractal equation, maxIterations: higher values will reveal more detail when close to the fractal surface but increases calculation time, bailout: the ‘escape’ threshold for the fractal iteration, bounding: the radius of a bounding sphere around the fractal that is used to speed up the ray tracing, epsilon scale: increases the number of steps in the ray tracing process and will help bring out fine details, phase: change the θ and φ phases, and many more..

See images gallery and on Flickr.

For Pixel Bender open the Mandelbulb.pbk file with the Adobe Pixel Bender Toolkit or copy it into the Pixel Bender Files folder in your Photoshop CS4 installation directory (you will need to have installed the PB plugin for Photoshop first).

3D Mandelbulb Ray Tracer

See also Fractal Explorer Plugin for PS and AE [Mac, Windows]

Glitch pattern generator is the latest app by David Szauder we mentioned few days ago (Curly Code). Currently in it’s second alpha only, the app lets you generate some glitch-patterns from your webcam or from existing quicktime mov files. Built using QuarzComposer, there are a number of options including pixel size, height, line offsets, and few effects including one by vade.

Credits: Kineme GL tools, Vade’s movie loader (saved the project) and glitch (for glitch effect) and Toneburst’s reflect (for symmetrical player).

Only for Mac OSX, you can download the app here (bottom right column, BOX Share) and have a play. Wonderful stuff..the video below is me playing with the camera. See more pictures here.

CurlyCode is a 3D, realtime drawing application built using Quartz Composer, with several effects (some audio reactive), shaders, and postFX-s. Created by Berlin based David Szauder as a media art project and a non commercial software, CC is the realization of David’s way of thinking and visualizing. Primarily designed to be used in BlackandWhite or greyscale only, CC is built to be operated with an external tablet, keyboard or an iPhone interface (no details av).

David writes about inspiration:

When i started my deeper adventures in the world of generated forms and structures, one of my idea, lets say desire was to build an application up, with the ability of freehand drawing in a 3 dimensional space, to animate those drawings, using as a performance platform or just to render some nice looking stills out.

curly code is currently alpha 1.2 and most recent update included SuperSpline instance, as one of the drawing modes. Unfortunately there is no download link on the site which make me assume this is a private alpha only. If you would like to try the QC app, you should get in touch with David directly via his site.

For more information visit the development blog at: pixelnoizz.wordpress.com/category/curly-code

For more examples see flickr.com/photos/curlycode/

There have been many ‘projection’ projects recently but this morning I came across 1024. Created by Francois Wunschel and Pier Schneider (2 founders of EXYZT group), 1024 works on the interactions between 1024 Dimensions: Space, Sound, Visual, Light, Body, Architecture, City…

Mostly built with Quartz Composer + custom plugins.

Here is a selection of their work. Not all projection, some LED installations but nevertheless all quite jaw dropping. For more, see 1024d.net + their blog + vimeo

Created by Simon Strandgaard, Graphic Designer Toolbox is an alternative graphics editor. Instead of manipulating graphics directly as you do in Photoshop, in GDT you build blocks for bitmap and vector manipulation. Not too dissimilar from Quarz Composer, GDT allows you to create generative artworks using visual object based programming. It’s all created realtime, non destructive and easy to learn.

You start out with an empty grid, insert a Photo building block, combine with many other effector blocks and adjust the parameter. The great thing is that you can create assets. In other words, you have made this cool web button out of a few building blocks but at some point you need a variation of this button. All you have to do is to copy it and adjust a few parameters. Within seconds you have your new button.

Whilst i haven’t yet had a chance to play with the app properly, it does nevertheless sound like a great way to remove yourself from the traditions of thinking about image graphically and more about construction. If the process is as important for you as the final outcome, you should definitely give Graphic Designer Toolbox a go. A demo version is available and the full version will cost you $42.94 (€29.95).

Graphic Designer Toolbox