mut.ant - music to animation toy

Year: 2003/2004
Tools: Director 8 + some Dirctor-Xtras

mut.ant is an image-synthesizer. It enables the user to generate and manipulate moving images live. Several modules for image-generation and manipulation can be assembled to a wide varity of effect-chains. The parameters of each module can be controled via mouse + keyboard, midi-instruments or with an audiosignal. By using midi-devices several people can work collaborative on the same visuals as a "live visuals"-band.

 

mut.ant was my diploma thesis at the university of applied science augsburg, germany in 2003. The software is completly written in lingo (!) (Marcomedia Director) with the help of some Xtras for MIDI-support and audio FFT.

 

Unfortunately it isn't running anymore because of those Xtras. They were only available for Mac OS9, which I don't use anymore.

If I find the time, I will port it to a modern and more performant language some day. I still like the concept behind the software a lot and it was always big fun playing around with it.

 

mut.ant is not a VJ software in the traditional sense where you can load your clips and trigger them to the music. It's more an experimental construction-kit, where you take some very simple image sources and process them in subtle ways.

 

In 2003 I was not very good in documenting the work and so there are only a few small clips left, which you can see here. The first one is an explanation video, that shows some functions of the tool (only in german, sorry). The other three videos show some example output of mut.ant. (sorry, for the bad quality)

 

For the multimedial textperformances Beat Speak and wordyrappinghoods mut.ant also came into operation.