TXT:: I have a lot of 'thank yous' to send out. Unfortunately, I've been really slacking on the e-mail department. Just when I thought I had it covered, i get swamped with even more mail.

The first big Thank You goes out to Thomas Merkle of Bitplant for sending me an astonishingly generous Gift, a soundart Chameleon. This device (even though I can't make it work because it's not MacOS compatable) is a 24bit DSP engine that you program yourself. When I say program, I mean hardcore programming...this is not something for code-whimps like me.

Version02:: I met up with my friends and attended the first year of "Versionfest". It's a bit hard to describe but the basic idea of versionfest is a gathering of technology capable artists who are using audio, video and computing technology as a medium for their creative projects. The event took place at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.

The event was organized by the people of OVT Visuals. Two members of OVT pictured here are (Left & Middle) Brien Rullman, and Brian Dressel. I guess it's not necessary to say, but Brian is also a fellow Reason User.

Also pictured is Stuart from the UK group Hexstatic. After the last performance on Saturday Night, we spent some time hanging out in the bowels of the Museum talking about music and media stuff.

Hexstatic is working on a new project for Ninjatune which uses a lot of Reason.

Stuart has a different approach to creating tracks. He said he starts with the video media first to create the foundation tracks, then starts applying the music elements afterwards.

Pictured here is their rehearsal where they tested out the video system with their track "Deadly Media".

This was the first opportunity I had to see my friend Casey Rice perform. He had a crazy rig set up using a Nord MicroModular for his music composition. He then had a laptop linux server to a network on stage. The audio signals from the mixer was routed to a powerbook running a Max/MSP patch that sent messages over the network using Matt Wright's OTUDP objects. Case had ti book on the network which received those network messages to drive and synchronize the video ASCII art seen in the picture

The data from the OTUDP Max server was sent over the network to the other machines running Max/Nato patches being run by Jordan and Chris. Messrs. Rullman and Dressel helped setup the video switching and monitoring system that handled the projection of the visuals on the Auditorium Screen.

John Herndon, Jordan and Chris are here on stage. Jordan Benwick is half of the team who created the very cool "Regulator" Mod for ReBirth. Jordan and Chris were the VJs for the evening

John Herndon, running a Reason song for his set on his powerbook. Actually John was running a lot of stuff and even got up for a moment to do some fancy mixer work during the middle of the performance. Something crashed his system and he had to improvise :-)

Side note: John has given me the thumbs up to make a Refill from samples of his drum kit. These are stereo samples unlike the ones found in the "u_gene.rbm" Rebirth Mod.

John McEntire and John Herndon (yes the guys from Tortoise) showing that their talent is not limited to live instruments. John M was performing some of his work on his Powerbook with Jordan's video was synchronized over the stage network.

Click on the image link to see Jordan's video stuff being projected on the screen.

There were so many powerbooks....

It was a pretty slick setup in that Networking technology was being used as well as audio and video technology.

TJ Cathey is setting up his Nato video performance with Shea Ako's Max/MSP composition.

Here's a shot of Chris Clepper's video stuff. He was the only one who didn't bring a tibook. Instead he brought his dual G4 1GHz Quicksilver to run the video stuff. That sucker is fast :-)

Chris' Video accompanied Johnny H's Powerbook performance.

Shea and TJ, who are part of this circle of friends in the Chicago area put on a Max/MSP + Nat0 performance that was simply brilliant.

Shea had built this water drop apparatus that sends beat signals to his Powerbook. The bulb of water started with a fairly quick tempo then eventually slowed down until the peformance ended when the bulb was empty. Each time a drop of water hit the sensor, a blue led in the water container would illuminate. The visuals and music were synchronized to this rather unconventional conductor. It was really quite amazing!

John Herndon was in the middle of finishing a new EP. Naturally, Casey was engineering the session. I dropped by to check out SOMA studios.

Pictured here is Jordan, looking cool next to the wall of synths. Click on the image to see a larger picture of this impressive arsenal.

Soma has a great setup, and if you re interested in doing a serious project, I would highly recommend their facilities.

PropDrop v.X: Yes, a version of PropDrop for MacOS X is now being developed. You can thank Franck Stauffer (aka EPRS) for the coding, and for doing it for such a "reason-able" fee. It's pretty amazing what some people will do for Gear :-)

Unlike PropDrop V2, v.X is a Cocoa application for MacOS X only. Besides fixing type creator codes for Reason, ReBirth and Recycle Files, there is also the option of setting type/creator codes for MP3s and other audio file formats for your MacOS X applications.