THE LEXICON

Analog mixture of oil, water, and alcohol manipulated inside of convex bowls designed to create movement for the oils. Typically, an artist will dye the oil and the alcohol/water separate colors to create a multicolored style.

The live projection of an organic liquid mixture that moves inside bowls manipulated by an artist.

An experience of a visual artist who is manually producing by hand and "from scratch" all of the visual elements of a show.

An experience of a visual artist who is manually producing the visual effects from scratch and by hand but utilizing modern digital equipment.

Digitally rendered visuals made kinetically on equipment that have been circuit bent or simply designed by another to produce a modulation of a source image.

Synesthesia in a nutshell.

Feeling something from within your soul and expressing it without thinking but intuitively.

Sudden and without forethought.

Feedback loops philosophically speaking is anything that thinks about itself or emulates itself infinitely. This causes a repeating of the thing over and over again into space and time. Example: take two mirrors and face them toward each other and then put your hand between the mirrors and look into one of the mirrors to view your hand going into space infinitely. The hand is the source material and the mirrors are creating the feedback loop.

When you take a source signal (input) and feed it back into itself (output). This input to output creates an infinite manifestation of the source image. Example: take a camera as applied for the input of source imagery and plug it directly into a TV as the display of output source. Now direct the camera to point directly at the screen and you will see a repeating pattern of the internal feedback loop it creates. This can be modulated into millions of ways depending on angle, distance, color, lighting, interference, and effects you adjust to the feedback loop.

Lots of video mixers have an input and output signal based on their time based corrector and internal settings that can be modulated with a feedback chain. To do this you just plug one end of a cable into the input jack and the other end of cable is plugged into the output jack. Click the channel for output to the channel you plugged the input into. Voila, you have yourself a feedback signal you can add effects to now!

Foreground images are typically whatever shapes are moving about in the image and the background is some static image with various colors or lack thereof to key out for another image on a different channel.

Scientific term in chemistry where the atoms in a substance have a specific arrangement where they vibrate and when you introduce a disturbance to those atoms in the substance through an external force whether it is chemical or through energy (movement) you break this surface tension to change the balance of those atoms that vibrate within the substance. At rest it creates a new pattern of outlier form.

Breaking the surface tension of liquid for example by introducing a new liquid of different compounds or chemical makeup or by blowing on the liquid or shaking the container it sits inside of.

Raking the surface reminds me of suminagashi or marbling art where someone uses little combs or whatever they want to change the flow of the ink that sits over the surfactant liquid.

Introducing air through pumps or by mouth to a liquid substance to change its shape or its flow.

Foundation or the under-current.

Clear, see through.

The density/saturation of an image.

Color is seen better through light, therefore glass holding dyes and some other contents helps the viewer see the hue of the color and if projected can also assist with magnifying the image to a larger scale.

Keying means you are bringing forth a different selected channel in a video mixer to the colors in an image you want to clear out. Hence you are "keying" it into the original image. When we key out black it means it takes out all the darkest hues in a source image and replaces those regions with the other channels source imagery. This applied to the lightest hues as well for white keying. This is known universally as "Luma keying" in video.

Chroma means colors you assign. Chroma keying follows the same line of thought for luma keying except you key out the colors you assign to it such as Green/purple for example. It's more specific to color sets.

White or black empty space in an image, think of a background in an image.

The foreground, this is the subject of the image really.

Oil that are best used for liquid lightshow is mineral oil (paraffin) or baby oil: higher viscosity = thicker and more difficult to emulsify with alcohol | lower viscosity = lighter and easier to emulsify with alcohol.

Isopropyl alcohol: 70% best used for squish plates, 91% best used for heatslides or for thicker oil. Dilute alcohol whenever necessary to invoke less suction and therefore more easy flow of movement.

Oil dyes for the oil, water color dye for the alcohol and water (they usually just mix together) best dyes are light fast!

Use color theory, light colors in contrast with dark hues; example is yellow with red or purple with lime green.

Density of an oil.

Atoms are arranged tighter together and not moving as fast.

Temperature effects everything in a lightshow. Hot temps can make your hardware crash or your liquids move faster. Cold temperatures can create more density making oil for example stick to the bottom of your plates.

This is really how you produce a desirable effect out of any analog lightshow. Chemical reactions = movement.

Improvisational experimental yet conducted and directed. Look up "strange attractors" and you'll find a new rabbit hole to fall into.

Candy dishes or design plates can be interesting to look at when projected and manipulated with movement and out of focus slightly.

Great to use for flat squish plates, or blow plates, or explosion plates.

Used specifically to create a liquid seal where you direct the vacuum of liquids to move in a specific way that interprets the music. You pulse the liquids by lifting and pushing down on the liquids with the top glass plate. You can spin the whole dish over the stage of your projector to make the whole 2D image spin around in circles. These are used for the "classic" liquid lightshow pioneered by Glenn Mckay, Joshua White, and most of all Bill Ham. Clock face glass is sourced off of old clocks from thrift stores or antique shops. Best to find a pair of clock glass that creates a nice balanced seal. Usually the top plate is smaller than your base plate so you can fit plenty of liquids inside the base plate.

This is the classic style of a liquid lightshow using two clock face glass bowls or plates that fit inside each other. The base plate holds all the liquids and the top plate squishes that liquid to the base plate and creates the seal. This seal allows you to move the oils around in different shapes and sizes. Every time you move the liquid around you are breaking the surface tension of the chemical make up of the liquid mixture. Every time you drop a new additive into the mixture you are changing its chemical composition.

Shallow depth typically so it's easy to manipulate.

Squish plate glass usually goes up to three plates for a color combination of 6 hues.

A/C powered fans, tubes for blowing air by mouth, paper towels or rags for cleaning off liquids, miniature glass wiper.

Splodascope, drop tank.

A slim liquid filled tank that connects to an air pump allowing airflow to pass through the bottom and create a multi-colored liquid effect for capturing or projecting.

Glass slides that contain a seal of liquid dyes such as water color or oil dye that are then placed in front of a hot lamp illuminating the image. These liquids will then boil from the heat at a gradual pace and create a colorful effect that is sporadic and interesting.

Oil wheels are glass disks encasing liquids such as colored oils and alcohols that are also heated up with an internal lamp of a projector and move similar to a lava lamp as it moves at ½ rpm mounted to a motor rotator. The effect is slow moving liquids that slowly spin with the motion of the motor.

Is all about how to adjust the ISO settings, the angle at which you are capturing liquid light from, the distance at which it captures from, the ambient lighting is important, a light source for the liquids is also important. These all play a fact in getting the image right.

When you clear oil (baby oil or mineral oil) into a bed of water the oil floats on top and then you dye the oil with different colors and move those pigments around by blowing on the surface of the water with a straw or hose. You can get a marbling look out of it that is quite unique and pretty.

A chemical reaction that is awe inspiring when alcohol ink makes contact with glycerin or mineral oil. It creates an expansion and then a contraction effect that reminds me a lot of explosions.

Mineral oil, 70% isopropyl alcohol, water. Start by adding the isopropyl alcohol, then pour in the mineral oil, and then add a little bit of water last. Dye the water with water color and then lastly dye the oil OR put more water and isopropyl on the top plate and dye that with a different water color. Then emulsify your mixture with movement of slow pulses.

Place the slim water tank filled with distilled water in front of the gate of the slide projector or the optikinetics solar 250 projector and then drop water dye into the top of the tank and watch as the dye slowly drops through the tank and branches out into mushroom-like shapes. The image is then projected upside down because of the projectors optics so these shapes rise up from the bottom on the projection.

This is a technique you conduct when you have a petri dish filled with dark oil and you need to expose light through so you take a spray bottle and spritz onto the oil 91% alcohol which causes the oil to open up in fractures and expose the water/iso mixture underneath. If you dye the water this can produce a cool look.

Straight above down into the middle of the plate and zoomed in to capture all of the liquids in frame without glare and without anything else in the shot.

Macro is for going into the liquids really deeply and wide is just capturing more out of the scene. Wide angle lens is probably better used for capturing the stage performers live.

This signal flow can start from several sources and flow into the brain of the video switcher through its channels where it will then flow outward to the output device (tv or projector) its important that the signal chain reminds trackable and organized or things can get confusing for the artist.

Originally used in broadcast news and for concert halls. A visual artist uses them to live mix any video source in real time and add effects to the video to create a modulation of the output hence advancing the style of the visual aesthetic.

Video synths are simply generating visuals through raspberry pi computer chips and potentiometers that allow the artist to shape and form the image in real time using the instruments of the synthesizer. The feedback synths I have just take a video signal and they create an internal feedback loop in the device of the image to luma key in.

Cyberpunk, sharp edges and glitchy textures on the contours of the image.

Graininess and film pops are always really interesting to look at in old film footage and I love using that aesthetic for certain music atmospheres that are more harmonic and jazzy.

This is just a savvy way to manipulate video signals by short-circuiting the motherboards of video or music devices to create glitch effects.

Aiming a camera at the stage where the projection is landing and capturing the performers and routing that as input in a video mixer.

Any video through an RCA or AV cable usually at 480/576i.

Reduces artifacts from low resolution video and provides higher level quality above RCA that allows the image to send brightness and color on two separate wires that gives it a more sharp clarity.

You convert to hdmi through your RCA to HD converters. They usually can take an RCA input to HDMI output (upscaling).

This is when you take a lower resolution image and amplify it to a higher resolution format. This doesn't mean that the image will look higher quality though it just means it moved up in the resolution formatting.

Lowest resolution compatible with RCA or S-Video; usually people glitch images through circuit bent devices in this format. It makes the most sense this way.

Higher formatting video close to full HD but not quite. 720P mean the resolution is 720 pixels in length and a progressive scan.

1080 pixels in length, higher quality, image clarity and sharpest. Progressive scan. The standard for modern video content.

1080 pixels in length, higher quality, image clarity and sharpest. With interlaced scanning, lines of visual information are alternated as odds and evens. Only half of a frame's visual information is broadcast at a time i.e., the even lines will be displayed on a viewer's screen, then the odd lines will be displayed; not simultaneously.

The delay in signal from a source when it passed through the data transmission vessels to the output.

Transforming the interlaced video into a progressive video signal by merging the odd and even lines inside the frame to produce a smoother image that removes the flickering or combing artifacts from the interlaced video.

Hands on control can provide a more in sequence and in tempo movement of visuals versus having an automated image sort of match the tone or atmosphere that the music is creating.

Putting my hands or an fx filter lens in front of my MiniDV camera to play with the feedback coming from it when pointed at the projection/tv.

Human error can often stimulate the most interesting and fun outcomes in a visual show because it introduces that there is in fact a person running this show and not a computer program like many assume.

Emotions are all tied into it. The evocative nature of strong imagery can derive a reaction from an audience member or the creator. I have had the most emotional responses to images of nature with my visuals because I am in love with our planet and nature reminds me of God.

Designating the projection to shapes and sizes that meet the background it is emitting onto. Mapping means you can adjust the frame size of the image and event break it up into several pieces to meet many backgrounds.

Scaling the projection up or down means making it larger or smaller to match the wall or surface it lands on.

This is super important because the closer the distance the more bright and saturated the light will be but conversely if the surface the light is projecting onto is further away it loses its brightness and its saturation of color.

Always the most ideal to project onto a white wall or screen. Sometimes in model atmospheres I will project onto a black sheet or black velvet curtain to create a natural mask for the subject to capture all the light only on their body and focus the image on the surface of their skin.

As I have learned it is never ideal to project images during the day. You need low ambient lighting. You also want to be indoors and if outdoors, the conditions to be clear skies.

Live shows bring the most fun out of what I do because I get to honor the performers and the audience by showing them to a unique visual experience. I think people usually respond well to my show and want to see more from local music concerts other than just music. The opportunity to do a live performance also gives me a shot at experimenting in an improvisational way rather than having a plan going into it. It also brings about serendipity to see the way the music and the visuals will jive with the audience.

The "look backs" are what I love to see; the moment an audience finds out I'm doing the visuals for the show and not a computer. They see something and go, "oh a guy is back there controlling all this!"

When the venue is too small to accommodate my gear or it does not have a back wall that permits the visuals to be seen as clearly. The biggest drawback is always the lack of space for me in front and opposite of the stage to do my thing.

I need at least 5 feet in length of space and at least 3 feet of depth to put my table and equipment down on the floor.

Documenting it means trying my best to capture on camera the best bits of a video I transformed with the help of video mixer fx, feedback, keying and blending modes. The documenting is usually taken from a video capture card and into OBS studio or through a neat little upscaler I have that captures video through recording onto a usb drive. Another capture method is just filming with my phone or a 4k camera the projections I do and then editing them or not at all for the final cut! Ephemeral art occurs most often in a live performance setting or sometimes in the studio when I get an idea to sketch up something to see how it will look and it doesn't quite make the cut for a video capture moment.

The cut: lots of movement, lots of colors, a powerful emotional response to the content, the uniqueness of the look. Not making the cut: usually when I get the inner feeling that I could do better and let something just sit and morph for a while through camera angles, brightness adjustment, contrast adjusting, etc. Usually it doesn't make the cut if it is lacking a strong emotional response to the music I listen to. I want the visuals to pair with the music really well. It has to be pretty synched up or capture the tone of the music keenly.