Ambient visuals?

[syzygy]

Has anyone ever done any ambient visuals?

By this, I don't mean just visuals for ambient music - I mean visuals that are ambient in the same sense that ambient music is ambient - that try to affect the mood in a very subtle way.

I thinking of visuals that would make good use of colour and movement to influence the mood without drawing attention to themselves. I was also wondering about the possibility of gradual lighting changes in synch with colour changes in projected visuals.

The difficult part, of course, would be the same as with ambient music - keeping it ambient while still suceeding in influencing the mood.

Anyone got any experience with this sort of thing?

Dan.

(SyZyGy Visuals)

[fluchtpunkt]

one of the first things that will probably come to mind for all those living in the german-speaking parts of europe is the space night (http://www.br-online.de/wissenschaft/spacenight/) of the 'bayrischer rundfunk' BR (bavarian television).
several years ago, instead of displaying a testscreen overnight BR broadcast earthviews from orbit & other 'space'-footage, accompanied by a soundtrack. the 'space night' proved to be a tremendous success & today many tv-stations have copied (i don't actually know if the BR came up with the idea themselves or copied it somewhere else, too :) ) the concept, sending arial views, trains on tracks, what have you overnight.
...
i've attempted doing ambient visuals, before - but the results always turned out to have a much too high level of energy i found. having seen a few great installations of 'ambient' visuals lately (for some bizarre reason there's loads of people doing video-installations but only very few vjs here in zurich...), i realized that one very important thing in such ambient visuals - and in stark contrast to stuff you play on the dancefloor - is they really can't be calm, subtle or minimal enough.

[Amukidi]

I've done 2 or 3 sets for Roger Eno, as you say, it is a real challenge to keep the balance right! I mostly resort to using still images then manipulate the colour settings in "Flashmixer" which actually gives the effect of subtle movement. My belief is that this will really test the mettle of a VJ - any fool can throw all the paint at the canvas and set it flayling about the screen like a leper in a wind tunnel! Subtlety has the habit of exposing weaknesses in your palette - always has, always will. My preference is to work for more ambient artists - now, Roger AND Brian together.....that would be a cool gig!!!!

[Anyone]

wow! Brian Eno, the grandFather of Ambient...
you should be proud of such an achievement, Jaffa!

In regards to the ambient question,
I've done a few sets with vJo in galleries and chill-outs,
I really enjoyed the challenge actually...

the key here is sublety,
so if you're using something hard like color cycling,
use a close ranged pallette
(red to orange or blue to purple or even grayscale)
blur effects give also the advantage of softening the edges
when you cross fade between loops.
slow morphing shape masks work quite well also.

also keeping your video loops within the same theme helps a lot.

N

[Mattbot]

I do a lot of slower tempo abstract video works outside my VJ gigs and Brian Eno's video pieces have been a big influence. He has a great series of "video paintings" he made in the mid-eighties released on VHS as "Thursday Afternoon." I highly recommend it. They are in "vertical format" and the box instructs you to turn your television onto it's right side for the proper viewing experience. It's amazing what the little things can do. Altering the expectations of the projected image, whether by drastically altering the aspect ratio, angle (or angles) of the projection surface, or by adding depth with multipal translucent projection surfaces can yield huge payoffs. People have been trained to focus on 4:3 screens with a laser like intensity. Take that away from them and you've already solved half the problem.

[disassembler]

Ghost effect in VDMX and fades on the mixer work great.

Even if the video's theme doesn't match the mood it will give you enough time to find another vid to mix that does.

Really slow violent movement is nice. Like car crashes and things exploding. But slowed way down. Oh and hit it with the ghost effect or blurring.

[syzygy]

Originally posted by Mattbot
They are in "vertical format" and the box instructs you to turn your television onto it's right side for the proper viewing experience. It's amazing what the little things can do. Altering the expectations of the projected image, whether by drastically altering the aspect ratio, angle (or angles) of the projection surface, or by adding depth with multipal translucent projection surfaces can yield huge payoffs.

I was thinking about that a while ago - using projectors turned on their sides and perhaps with the settings tweaked too to get tall thin projections that could sit either side of a stage.

Of couse, we'd have to turn all our monitors on their sides too...

Dan.

(SyZyGy Visuals)

[Rovastar]

Fluid dynamics works well for ambient stuff.

Try Smoke (http://www.geisswerks.com) turn particle off (T) and it will key like......what you say oh, that is, key like a bastard.

[wellREDman]

good to see your learning the technical terms rove we'll make a vj of you yet :)

[sensualVibrations]

I love to work for realxed spaces, cause this mood is most times realy missing in western cultures.

I agree with a post before, that its very important to work minimal and slow.
Specialy pictures with movement that are flowing - ying is working very relaxing. And i like to use material which stops the people from associating with theire minds.
add a magic chai and ---------------.

some examples of fitting material is to be found on http://reachme.at/sensualvibrations
and i attached a file

Alexander

[bluntfaktory]

i did live feed visuals for an internet ambient broadcast in Toronto about 3 years ago with a guy there by the name DJ Kresh for i think it was "radio1". however living in Vancouver one never gets the chance to do visuals for an ambient or chillout room as for some reason they stopped doing them about 7 years ago . :sad:

[Yetimon]

Originally posted by sensualVibrations
And i like to use material which stops the people from associating with theire minds.
add a magic chai and ---------------.


Magic chai? Is that chai made with mushrooms? :)

Hmm - has potential...

-y