Experience with Whorld + ArKaos

[jelco]

Just as a small notice, I'm new here. I haven't even been lurking for a very long time before registering just five minutes ago, and my experience isn't a lot either. I've been VJing (or at least pretending to be doing something like it) at parties at my own high school for roughly two years now, equal to something like 10 gigs.

I used to work with Resolume since I found it's interface to be intuitive and it had great functionality. But when I started searching around on the net looking for footage and tutorials for creating my own, I bumped into other names quite a lot, especially ArKaos. So after having seen the name for the hundreth time I decided to give it a try and downloaded the demo. I have a Creative Prodikeys PC-MIDI (basically a computer keyboard with a MIDI keyboard extension) so I could immediately try out it's MIDI functionality. I hadn't even tried it for five minutes and I was sold. Resolume is now long gone from my hard drive, and ArKaos is in my opinion one of the greatest pieces of interface design and functionality I have seen to date.

Another piece of software I have used a lot since I first got around to trying it is Whorld, an open-source application which is largely based on the 'sacred geometry' mindset. It's nice to experiment with on it's own, but if you decide to use it for real VJ uses it becomes tiresome to change every slider with nothing but the mouse. Because I was already quite in love with Whorld by the time I had seen the Behringer BCR2000 at a shop I decided to buy the thing and I have since thought of it as one of the best purchases I ever made.

Cutting to the chase, there was a Valentine's Day-themed party last Friday, and I did my first gig ever with both Whorld and ArKaos. I had acquainted myself quite a bit with both applications, and had configured my BCR2000 to work with ArKaos as well as with Whorld. Two footswitches to make full use of the BCR2000's potential, and I was ready to roll.

Before I move on, I just want to make a note: The photos I am about to show you don't depict anything near professional. My setup has no visual mixer, no visual synthesizer or anything to that extent for the simple reason I can't afford it. The two projectors used at the gig are not mine, they're my school's property. The screens are 4 x 3 metres, made by my friend's parents with his help.

The following pictures are my own selection from the 500-odd photos my friend took Friday night. You'll notice that these pics were largely intended to picture the whole show, not my own product in particular. So you'll have to excuse me for not having any really decent pictures in close-up, save one or two.

Pictures were taken by my friend Maarten van Dis.




That's all done with Whorld. Here's some ArKaos products:



(The thing to the right is a giant inflatable heart of 3 metres high we made especially for the gig.)

The total of 3,5 hours I divided into blocks of 30 minutes to in turn perform with Whorld and ArKaos. The biggest surprise to me was this: performing with Whorld was much more interesting to me than it was with ArKaos. Instead of just taking footage and performing effects on it, Whorld allows you to create the footage itself in real-time. This also means seamless transitions from one 'clip' to another which can look like complete opposites when compared.

In short, both softwares were great to use, but Whorld certainly gets most of my praise. It is a piece of software you just have to try. It is absolutely one of the reasons that made this gig the best gig we have done so far.

Jelco
a.k.a. VJ JV

PS: If this isn't the correct forum, I apologize. I'm not completely sure, but this forum seemed to fit the best of all.

[videoswitchboard]

nah- wrong forum mate.
the rule is,
your first post MUST be something like-
" hello, i've just bought a laptop and i'm VJing my first gig tomorrow,
how do i plug the projector into it?"


thanks for the review-

keep them coming.


dav

[jelco]

I hope you understand my confusion as to whether that post was a positive or a negative message.

Jelco

[asterix]

positive - he means there is a forum about gig reports etc but your talking about software which is fine
Glad your having fun and getting good reviews. Are you making much of your own content yet?

[jelco]

OK, I'll keep that in mind for the next time.

No, I'm not making my own content yet, but I just got my hands on Adobe After Effects CS3, so I will definitely give it a try sometime.

Jelco