Digital Media Design

This is a blog to show James Lashmars research, study and progress for his Multimedia Design (BA) Degree. Holism is the theory that a whole, is greater than the sum of all its parts. My reading of Deleuze emphasises contingent holism and suggests that Deleuzian multiplicity should be seen micro-holisticaly. That is to say, music contains multiple instances of holism in the form of genres, with each genre having different conditions around its own emergence and also possible sub genres. FourScreen is my final project - an installation exploring holism with music providing a visual interactive experience. \ Visit my folio * iamneuron.com \ Visit my personal blog * blog.iamneuron.com

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Throughout my time at University, I have continued to learn motion, animation and 3D design amongst other things. I also have a very keen interest in music and I love exploring the link between sound and visuals. When writing my dissertation, I explored the history of music video and discussed the idea of it becoming a ‘hot media’. I also explored the idea of holism within music. Holism is the theory that a whole, is greater than the sum of all its parts. Regarding Deleuze, contingent holism suggests multiple forms of holism. Music contains multiple instances of holism in the form of genres, with each genre having different conditions around its own emergence and also possible sub genres. fourScreen is my final project which is an installation exploring holism with music using a visual interactive experience. This project essentially builds on my dissertation, which can be found here : http://scribd.com/doc/91366611/James-Lashmar-The-Evolution-of-Music-Video . The interactive aspect of this allows the user to participate in the music video itself allowing the music video to become a 'hot' media. The way that the viewer is displayed live in the music video occurs at almost an atomic level, displaying the user in a system of squares, further expanding on the holistic concept. Created using Processing, Cinema4d, Premiere, After Effects, Soundbooth, Mocha Pro and Ableton Live. The project in total came in at just under 82,000 frames at 5120x720, that's 4x wider than 720p HD! Usage rights to 'Circling' have been granted by Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet for usage of the track in this project. Visuals were all created by myself. Talent within the installation : Louise Fisher & Hattie Scanlan Talent filmed with the installation : Danni Wright Processing code written by myself and my tutor Spencer Roberts Talent and install filmed myself using a Canon 5D MKII with a 50mm 1:4 lens and a Nikon D7000 with a 10-24mm 1:3.5-4.5 lens.

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fourScreen - Digital Sketchbook This is my digital sketchbook containing info about my project from the start through to the finished end product. You can view it on scribd here. You can also buy a copy of this as a real book, professionally printed from the fantastic people at Blurb! I bought one myself to have alongside the installation, its great! Check it out here

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fourScreen by James Lashmar preview - 'Four Tet - Circling' Music Video This is a preview of my final project based around the concept of Holism, essentially trying to visualise Holism within music in relation to my dissertation, which can be found here : http://www.scribd.com/doc/91366611/James-Lashmar-The-Evolution-of-Music-Video Created using Processing, Cinema4d, Premiere, After Effects, Mocha Pro and Ableton Live. The project is around 95% complete and has a few issues to iron out: Firstly and most noticeably a sync issue between clients, allowing the screens to play out of time. At the time of shooting not all of the 3D frames had rendered. A couple of 3D things did not render (most noticably one of the strings on the left screen), i'll need to try fit these into a future composite. Also need to fully composite, this was VERY quickly put together. Camera tracking / visualisation needs flipping horizontally and also tweaking to give a nicer effect. A full render producing for each machine. Currently at half resolution using draft settings. The project in total came in at just under 82,000 frames at 5120x720, that's 4x wider than 720p HD! Usage rights to 'Circling' have been granted by Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet for usage of the track in this project. Visuals were all created by myself. Talent : Louise Fisher & Hattie Scanlan Processing code written by myself and my tutor Spencer Roberts Talent and install filmed by myself using a Canon 5D MKII.

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fourScreen update! Ok while all the 3D has being rendering it was time to touch up the Processing code that utilises the GSVideo library to tap in to the videos pixel data. This still needs a little more tweaking but you can start to get an idea of how it is working using the inbuilt iSights (webcams) of the iMacs. I cant wait to get this up and running across all four macs with the final video!

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I'm pleased to announce that i've been shortlisted for the Big Chip 2012 Little Chip Student awards! You can see the shortlist here

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Fragmental Chaos

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Organic Geometric Murmation An experiment to create a 'flocking' effect transition between geometric shapes in Cinema4D.

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So Cinema4D allows you to isolate select frequencies and bandwidth. This is done via a small graph which when coupled with a track with a lot of frequencies can make life quite hard to isolate certain noises. So I had an idea. I decided to load up Ableton Live. I've produced different sounds that correspond to those in the Four Tet track Circling and output these as full length tracks so that they lineup to 'Circling' in Cinema4D. I can then clearly isolate these sounds to drive visuals that look like they are reacting to Circling. This is a little bit of a cheat but it's just a workaround as i would be able to do this if i had the original parts from Circling. This also gives me a little more flexibility too. The sounds that I have made are produced using a synthesizer with a LFO. An LFO is a low frequency oscillator. This allows me to produce a sound with a nice fluid waveform that fluctuates. This allows for a more interesting results when it is driving the visual side of things.

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Here's a render of the coral inside yet another cloner with another wind system added along with a few random effectors within the whole hierarchy with an area light. 32 minutes render time and that's without GI!

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Coral Test Today I have been experimenting with the MoSpline generator mixed with a Spline Wrap all within a Cloner object. I have then applied a wind field to the MoSpline for animation. This is then all cloned again to produce the 6 individual 'coral' There is also a third cloner to clone a sphere which is at the centre of the 6 coral. Only 2 pieces of geometry were used here, an oil tank and a sphere. the oil tank has a taper applied to it which is then in turn cloned. mograph cloners and mosplines with spline wraps are uber powerful! I can then take an aspect of this, lets say wind speed and using xpresso, plug that in to a sound effector. So for example, on a beat hit, the wind speed ramps up, visually giving a more dramatic effect that is audio reactive. Cool or what?

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Quick project overview An early overview of the project in 3D in Cinema4D

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Is that a Four Tet song you are using for a test animation?,

Yes, Four Tet - Circling. I have been granted full rights to use the track too.

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Sound Effector - v2 This is a little test of the sound reactor functionality for my final project and special study surrounding moGraph.

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fourScreen - w.i.p Ok, so using and application called 'Processing' I have managed to create a server with 3 clients running across these 4x27" iMacs. These visuals are not my work but are simply a proof of concept being tested. This video is 4x wider than 720p HD!! Next I will be using Cinema4D with Thinking Particles and Sound Effectors to choreograph my own visuals to the track 'Circling' by Four Tet. I also plan to utilise the iCam in each of the 4 iMacs to adjust the video in some form depending on the movement of those watching the installation.

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My initial learning curve using thinking particles in cinema4d with mograph....So much power!! Rendered multiple passes into a 32bit single exr image sequence and composited in nukeX.

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DANDAD Moving Image Brief I finished this a few weeks ago and have been waiting to show the world since! Now that the entry date has passed here it is. The brief demands your idea of a creative station focussed around their desktops. In isolation HP desktops are a simple box, but when used with software providers and groups of creative's, they become something more. My first thoughts were what are the things that designers can't live without; coffee, sketchbooks, wacoms and pens. Then I had the idea of the cloud and the thought of ideas coming to life when people are connected and empowered with software resulting in this explosion of colour.

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My new VFX Showreel for 2012! Please reblog/like/share/tweet!