Break Opera,projection
A monthly night with no VJ rig in the building. I built
the reactivity offline in TouchDesigner and rendered it
as a ten-minute loop. It behaves like a live set
and it isn't one.
1 / What it had to do
A monthly night at Tempio through 2024, and the venue
had no VJ setup at all. No rig, no way to play live,
and no budget arriving to change that. Whatever
went on the wall had to look like it was responding
to the music and had to be a file.
2 / The idea
If you cannot be live in the room, be live in advance.
Analyse the audio offline, let that analysis drive both
the cutting and the effects, and record the result.
What comes out behaves the way a live set behaves
because it was made the way a live set is made —
the only thing missing is that it happened earlier.
3 / How it works
A Switch TOP in TouchDesigner cutting between videos.
Audio File In feeds audio analysis, and the analysis
drives the switch as well as the effect parameters,
so cuts and changes land where the track lands.
The output is recorded and the recording is what
plays on the night: a ten-minute loop.
- Audio File In
- Audio analysis
- Switch TOP
- Effects
- Record
- Ten-minute loop
4 / What HAPPENED
Ran monthly through 2024. It is also the reason the argument for a real rig was easy to make once the venue could see what reactive visuals looked like on their wall, the difference between a rendered loop and something played live became obvious to everyone.