Matt Roberts

CYCLES FOR WANDERING

Cycles for wandering is a project that mixes a pleasurable bike ride, real-time image manipulation, locative media and user participation to create a short experimental video. To create a video a participant simply takes a five to ten minute bike ride. The bike is equipped with a GPS and video camera that records images and movements of the rider’s trip. A computer, mounted on the bike, uses the information gathered from the GPS to make decisions on how to manipulate the images taken by the camera. When the rider returns from the trip a DVD of the video made is created for them.

Recipient of Transitio Award, Transitio_MX 2007, Mexico City, Mexico
Cycles for Wandering Featured in Wired
Cycles for Wandering Featured in New York Times and Wall Street Journal

TRANSFERS (2004)

Transfers is a project exploring real-time generation of art and user participation in a mobile environment. Transfers allows a passenger of a taxi to generate a unique piece of art by giving the taxi driver directions. As the taxi moves through the city the passenger will experience a real-time manipulation of live exterior video and audio taken from a camera and microphone mounted in the taxi. The taxi is also equipped with a GPS that feeds an onboard computer data such as speed and direction. This computer is running custom audio/video manipulation software and uses the GPS data to make decisions about how the live video/audio feed is manipulated and seen by the passenger. The manipulations of the live feed is displayed on two LCD screens and heard through the cars stereo system. As the user tells the driver where to go the passenger becomes both performer and viewer as they experience a unique piece of art generated by their decisions. The software also records this performance and at the end of the drive the passenger receives a CD with a QuickTime movie file of his or her recorded performance.

Supertudo, TVE Brasil, Rio de Janeiro 2007

LA MEDIA NARANJA PROJECT – Electronic Güiro

Electronic Güiro
This project converts a metal güiro, which is normally used as a percussive instrument, into a video instrument. The güiro is modified with an arduino to create a link between the instrument and a computer. Every rib on the güiro becomes a switch, when a rib is struck a signal is sent to advance a video clip one frame. A musician can play the instrument as it is normally played, however in this case the performer produces video as well as audio.

La Media Naranja Project

La Media Naranja Project converts traditional music instruments, used in the Americas, into audio/visual instruments. The instruments can be played as they are normally used; however they also control real-time video manipulation and playback.

MPG: MOBILE PERFORMANCE GROUP

MPG: Mobile Performance Group is a collective of new media artists interested in finding new ways to present art outside of traditional venues. MPG disseminates their work by using mobile technologies, real-time video/audio, custom interactive devices, and other new technologies that allow artist to engage the public. The group has performed throughout the country and participated in several international new media festivals including Conflux, ICMC, NWEAMO and ISEA. MPG is part of classes taught, by faculty Matt Roberts (Founder and Creative Director of MPG) and Nathan Wolek (Music Director of MPG), at Stetson University’s Digital Arts Program. For more information please visit http://www.mobileperformancegroup.com

You can find more information about the group at

http://www.mobileperformancegroup.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobileperformancegroup/
http://www.youtube.com/user/mobileperformance

EVENTS

Using custom video and audio software instruments in real-time. Matt Roberts and Nathan Wolek present a meditation on the Florida Landscape, which is realized as an improvised new media performance.

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DropBox- The Soft Bits (2002)

Using only materials found in the “virtual” scenes from the Disney film “Tron” (1982), DropBox creates a multimedia database of 3D landscapes, animated characters and synthetic sounds. After organizing the database according to various formal characteristics, DropBox creates a new interface to the computer world of “Tron” via a real-time performance employing original software instruments. “The Soft Bits” stretches and expands the world of “Tron” into beams of colored light and staccato digital pulses–a meditation upon the primary language of our technology.
DropBox

Matt Roberts is a memebr of DropBox which is a performance collaborative organized in 2001. Using video and audio software instruments in real-time, the duo micromanages original and found material via loops, non-linear equations and other processes.

DropBox- Alpha Beta Disco: Goddard Remix (2002)

DropBox “flattens” Godard’s film “Alphaville” (1965) into a static multimedia database containing every scene, line of dialogue, sound effect and orchestral score cue. These materials are organized according to character, location and formal qualities. A 45-minute real-time performance/remix is realized solely using this database.

DropBox’s live performance represents an alternate, spontaneously improvised, non-narrative interface to Godard’s original work reproduced as a film.

DropBox relies on a primary improvisational tool “the remix” while performing with software of their design. DropBox blends elements from the “Alphaville” database with an abstract formal logic, rather than pursuing a narrative drive. DropBox cuts and pastes, overlaps and overlays, compresses and expands, filters, re-sequences and links multimedia data into new musical/visual formations.

DropBox

DropBox – Duct Tape (2003)

Using only Duct Tape as material, DropBox pulls, rips and stretches the tape to create a real-time performance. Above is a document of a performance for the SubTropics Festival at PS742 in Miami Florida 2003.

DropBox

(2003) A NEW MOVIE

conner

This application uses mouse movements to create a new edit of Bruce Conner’s “A Movie”(1958). “A New Movie” maps each x/y position of the users screen and assigns each position of the screen to an edit point of “A Movie”. The application watches and records the users mouse movement over a chosen period of time. When enough data has been collected the application will re-edit the original version of ”A Movie”. The user can then view the re-edited version, which keeps the original soundtrack in place but rearranges the visual track according to the users daily mouse movements.
For more information on Bruce Conner and “A Movie”

SOFTWARE

Download Application (Macintosh)

SCREEN SHOTS

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CONNER TIMES TEN (2004)

First in a series of applications made in homage to Bruce Conner, “Conner Times Ten” is an application that creates new images using Bruce Conner’s film “Ten Second Film” as its source. Conner’s “Ten Second Film”, which was made for the 1965 New York Film Festival but never shown during the festival because it was believed to be too “risky”, was made from ten film strips each 24 frames long. Using only multiples of 10 and 24 the application “Conner Times Ten” randomly chooses a frame from Conner’s “Ten Second Film” and new images are made from this frame. These new images are never the same or repeated in the same sequence.

Software

Download the application (Macintosh Classic)

Movie