Below are two Max Patches that use pitch and volume to manipulate a video image for use in Karaoke VJing. The two patches use similar effects to produce different outcomes.
Hateful Banana Karaoke:
Hateful Banana is a MSP Patch designed to manipulate a video image with data acquired through sound pitch and volume, and through manual inputs. It uses an cross fade between two separate videos in order to create a back and forth play between the two images. The immediate image seen is a dancing banana and the secondary image is a clip of a young man who writhes in pain from an excruciating amount of noise, to the point of covering his ears and an end result with his head exploding. Dominance between the two images is established through volume level. Low volume causes the banana to maintain full clarity. High volume increases the opacity of the suffering man until it dominates the video feed. Pitch controls the saturation of the suffering man which scales from low saturation to high saturation as the pitch rises. Pitch also controls some spacial orientation for the dancing banana with higher pitch dictating more erratic movement. Manual control through keyboard buttons A, S, D ,F and other are used to swap between different videos that have modified the spacial orientation and scale of the dancing banana. The result of the interplay between the video content is meant to achieve irony between the experience of “fun” and misery.
Creepy Doll Karaoke:
Creepy Doll is a MSP Patch that manipulates a video output by measuring data collected from sound and through manual controls. The video is a textural image produced through the cross fade function in Max. Two video feeds are sent int to overlay each other with the intent of modifying image dominance through volume. The two videos feeds contain various shots of a ventriloquist’s dummy, one consists of panning views over the dummy’s inanimate form, the other is a collection of shots with the dummy’s mouth animating for speech. The higher the volume causes the speaking dummy to dominate the video frame while a soundless environment loops through the montage of the inanimate dummy shots. Volume also controls the rate of speed for the speaking dummy video, causing it’s mouth to chatter more rapidly as the program reads higher volume. Pitch controls the color contrast between the two video images as well as a temporal blur effect to achieve better blending between them. Higher pitch rises the values for these effects to help distinguish the speaking dummy from the inanimate one while blending the two into a single texture. Manual controls through the buttons A, S, D and F swap out video feeds of various mouth gestures to create variety in the dummy’s expression. The result of the unified images pushes a disturbing organic yet inorganic texture.
