So, what does it do?
Our claim is “play video like an instrument”: basically, you can assign video-files to video-slots and trigger them like you would trigger audio-samples on a drum computer. The interface is a standard keyboard attached to the Raspberry Pi 5. You can also switch to live camera (connected to the Pi via HDMI-to-USB-3.0 dongles) or render your own generative OpenGL-shaders. All content is played on planes. You can scale the planes or position them for projection mapping, layer them on top of each other, blend/multiply/add them or add effects to the planes.
So far the technical side. But who is it for?
The project startet at ‘digital lab’ of university for theatre arts “Ernst Busch” in Berlin, Germany. Our students want to experiment with video on stage, but also want to focus on the stage play and less on the technology. The first idea for the VM-1 was to have a simple tool to play pre-produced videos and switch to live camera. In today’s version, the VM-1 grew beyond that and became a tool for VJs, musicians, video artists and visual performers as well. VM-1 team is Nils, software developer from Hamburg, Germany, and Julian, who is running bespoken lab. Let us know if you have any comments, thoughts or questions. We’re looking forward hearing from you!