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Workshop: Introducing POPs a New TouchDesigner Operator Family
The introduction of POPs to as the Berlin Day 1 workshop was a bit of a surprise attack – (almost) nobody knew what they were there for. We announced it as “some new stuff in TouchDesigner” and started to lure a good variety of people in.
A year ago we had conceived to have a surprise release event for POPs as we had been developing it since July 2022 and thought it would need another year to evolve into a state where we were ready for people to test drive it. And that certainly happened – thanks everyone for banging on it and contributing.
The POPs dev team including Vincent Houze, Malcolm Bechard and Greg Hermanovic, and for a while David Braun and recently-joined Guillaume Lussier. It was originally thought of as a GPU particle system but it quickly went well beyond that.
Big shout-out to our very important alpha-testers who helped to push the development and bring their deep knowledge to the table, and to Keith Lost, Idzard Kwadijk and Roy and Tim Gerritsen for their brilliant assets and contributions to the workshop.
Day 2 of the Event took place at HOLON and was the first of two days of presentations on an impressive range of timely topics from our community stars. This part of the conference was live-streamed and video recordings of the presentations can be watched on our YouTube channel and complete artist bio and talk descriptions can be found on the Event webpage.
Simon Alexander Adams, USA | The Art Of TouchDesigner Games (40 Min)
Stanislav Glazov, DE | Puristic Stable Diffusion Integraion Into TouchDesigner Using The Internal Python (20 Min)
Chagall Van Den Berg, NL | B.A.B.Y.: Real-time Motion Capture In An AV Performance (20 Min)
Mickey Van Olst, NL | Zen And The Art Of TouchDesigner-tools (40 Min)
Greg Hermanovic, CA | Introducing Pops, A New Feature Set In TouchDesigner (20 Min)
Harvey Moon, USA | Sustainable Systems (20 Min)
Soyun Park, NL | Teaching TouchDesigner Beyond Practicality (40 Min)
Watch video recordings of the first day's presentations here
Following the daytime programming at HOLON the first evening's festivities adjourned to Studio11:11, an innovative immersive club experience in Berlin featuring a 16,000-pixel-wide screen spanning 270° of the club's interior. Media artist MXZEHN, co-founder of the NODE Institute partnered with Studio 11:11 to offer a course focused on exploring diverse techniques and aesthetic concepts for delivering live visuals that merge cinematic grandeur with playful improvisation, even at challenging resolutions. While this workshop took place online, participants were at the venue to show their work - the results from the course - and invited the community for this amazing evening of live visual performances, music, camaraderie, and refreshments.
Notable also is that Mickey Van Olst designed the custom TouchDesigner framework and authoring tool to allow people to plug in their components, connect with input devices, schedule things and generally run the show. Watch the recording of Mickey's presentation to learn more.
Big shoutout to the VJ team: Linda Nicolai, Raquel Fernandez Caamano, Javier Martinez, Stella Speziali, Raul Leal, Arianna Rattazzi, Nancy El Azzi, Nicola Bisset and Nicola Carpeggiani for the inspired visual performances and to the brilliant Studio 11:11 team Friederike Schultz, Till Harter, Linda Nicolai for this stunning venue and night.
The second day of prensentations at HOLON saw another stellar lineup of diverse presentations which can all be viewed on our YouTube Channel.
Oliver Ellmers, UK | TouchDesigner In Virtual Production (40 Min)
Aurelian Ionus, RO | Fluid Simulation In TOPs (20 Min)
Bileam Tschepe, DE | Imperfection And Digital Art (20 Min)
Keith Lostracco, CA & Idzard Kwadijk, NL | TouchPy (40 Min)
Weidi Zhang, USA | Interactive AI Art (20 Min)
Lyell Hintz, USA | Creating Tools For Other Artists (20 Min)
Volvoxlabs, USA | The Power Of TouchDesigner In Crafting Successful Multidisciplinary Projects (40 Min)
Simon Alexander Adams I Oliver Ellmers | Roy & Tim Gerritsen | Stanislav Glazov | Lyell Hintz | Ildar Iakubov | Aurelian Ionus | Idzard Kwadijk | Keith Lostracco | Harvey Moon | Soyun Park | Bileam Tschepe | Chagall van Den Berg | Mickey van Olst | Volvoxlabs | Weidi Zhang
Erik Eggeling | Colas Fitzmann | Jacques Hoepffner | Kohui | Ori Ben Shabat | Ronen Tanchum
And finally, big love and a MASSIVE thank you to Stefan Kraus, Harshini Karunaratne and Wieland Hilker of The NODE Institute not only for all the work you put in to help us realize this Event, but for everything else that you do year in and out to further the growth of our TouchDesigner community. A special shoutout to Wieland for all the care he puts in to livestreaming and recording the 2 days of presentations at HOLON. Being able to include the community around the world during the Event is so important and having the videos to share afterwards is priceless. Thank you all so much!!
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We would like to thank our partners who have made this event possible. We started planning the TouchDesigner Event Berlin 2023 about a month and a half before it was scheduled to happen and it could not remotely have happened were it not for our friends and collaborators in Berlin who graciously shared their time, expertise and resources with us.
The NODE Institute
We are enormously indebted to the hard work put in by The NODE Institute's Stefan Kraus, Harshini Karunaratne and Wieland Hilker who undertook all of the operations on the ground including the sourcing of venues, the procurement of equipment and setting all of that up, live streaming, ticketing on our behalf and countless other tasks.
The NODE Institute empowers the creative software community to share knowledge and growth.By hosting user meetups, workshops, webinars and online courses, the Institute functions as a hub for creatives at the intersection of art and technology.
The NODE Institute is run by designers David Brüll and Stefan Kraus with the mission to empower the visual programming communities.
https://www.facebook.com/thenodeinstitute
https://www.instagram.com/thenodeinstitute
MONOMANGO
It's not easy to find the perfect space (on very short notice) to stage an event like this and we are very grateful to MONOMANGO for accommodating us with their wonderful event space HOLON and for their warm hospitality in hosting the TouchDesigner Event Berlin 2023
HOLON is an interdisciplinary format for research and play. It uses virtual instruments to support knowledge transfer, collaboration, and connect people between the virtual and physical spheres.
MONOMANGO is a Berlin-based creative agency and production studio, comprising of visual designers, music composers, and creative technologists. Founded by Lois Kainhuber, Jan Weber and Olivier Fröhlich in 2006, the company has since realized international showcases for major brands. More recently, they established HOLON, an interdisciplinary event format, and immersive instruments, which combines real-time visualization with tactile human interfaces to navigate virtual spheres.
https://www.immersive-instruments.de
STUDIO 11:11
Studio1111 offers a groundbreaking immersive art and club experience in Berlin, featuring a 16,000-pixel-wide screen that envelops 270° of the club's interior. It is designed to serve as a playground for the live visual community and experimental audio- visual performances.
https://www.instagram.com/studio1111berlin
MONOPOL
In Berlin, there are still large, enchanting industrial sites that have remained inactive for years, anticipating a new purpose. Among these locations is MONOPOL – a former distillery situated in Reinickendorf, which has transformed into a beacon of audio-visual exploration and stunning light art in recent times.https://monopol-berlin.com/en
LED PULSE
The forward-thinking company specializes in crafting immersive light experiences to elevate human-machine interaction. In pursuit of this goal, LED Pulse's engineers and designers have developed the world's most advanced volumetric LED display, known as the Dragon O². This innovative technology seamlessly integrates with TouchDesigner, offering users a straightforward process for access and utilization.https://www.ledpulse.com
DEREAL Studio
A dedicated team of interactive media and audio engineers, visual artists, web developers and system designers, specialized in interactive installations, projection mapping and new media art that transforms both public and private spaces into immersive worlds.