This project benefited from research and development I conducted as part of a bursary from The Arts Council of Ireland . The following is a brief write-up on the creative-tech side of a recent project I produced with Crash Ensemble , Ireland’s leading new music ensemble. The project: Crash Ensemble were premiering a new piece - Wingform - by composer and musician Barry O'Halpin as part of New…
This detailed guide shows you a tried and trusted way to live-stream theatre, dance opera etc. performances that is low-cost and high-quality. Some of what is covered here is Mac specific - namely the use of QLab for playback and queuing; and Syphon - an app that we’ll use to share video between applications. We’ll use OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) for streaming which is a brilliant option for…
This post is about the video processing and distribution side of a recent live-streamed stage production To Be A Machine , and its new German-language Austrian version Die Maschine in Mir . In a future post, I’ll go into more detail about the cameras, video capture and live-streaming. If a live-streamed theatre production about Transhumanism that uses 100+ iPads with custom app and media…
Who is this post for? This blog post is aimed at artist / designer types that use a reasonably powerful workstation most days but aren’t necessarily super tech-savvy, .e.g. film-makers, game-makers, 2D / 3D artists, composers, creative coders etc.; are likely Mac users that are starting to feel a little disillusioned with the Mac platform for such uses - and / or priced out - and are starting to…
Who isn’t obsessed with finding the perfect note-taking app? There must be a few people that aren’t but we’ll ignore them. I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t such thing, but I’ve found the closest thing for me in Joplin . This post should be interesting to you if the following ring any bells: you take a shitload of notes you do lots of different things, from making bread, to writing…
Often, it’s only when something stops working that you are reminded how much you use it and how important it is. Syphon - the open-source frame-sharing system for MacOS* is one of those things for me. *There is a similar frame sharing framework available on Windows called Spout / Spout2 . In my case, Syphon has never not worked - it’s so solid - but as I slowly work towards trying to use Linux…
This is a 🤓 post about equipment in theatre. Being a fan of Blackmagic Design equipment*, I had very high expectations for their new ATEM Mini switcher . Looking at the marketing material they’ve put together for this thing makes it clear how Blackmagic have done their homework in terms of how they’re pitching themselves and their products. Gone is the idea of the prosumer , replaced with a new…
I’ve finally found a great use for my Flic Smart Button! I’ll show you how to make this happen in this post. First, why? I recently acquired a 2018 Mac Mini to use primarily as a Qlab machine for myself and for hire - more on this soon. When it’s not out for hire, I’m using it for software development as my Hackintosh is stuck on High Sierra (so I can continue to run Blender 2.8 ) and my laptop is…