DigiSynth creator, Matt Polak, lives in the northern Ohio area and invited me to come down for a few hours to shoot the breeze, talk tech, and check out the new DigiSynth 3 software he and his group had been working on. For those of you not familiar with DigiSynth, it IS truly a new way to control lasers and generate laser imagery from your computer. DigiSynth is based on concepts derived from analog audio synthesizer equipment, with pattern building blocks you can 'patch' together by drawing wires between their input and output ports. There are many categories of building blocks to choose from: oscillators, sequencers, filters, colorizers, modifiers, and control surface I/O, each with unique uses and capabilities.
If you're like I am, inexperienced with traditional analog synthesizers where black boxes are literally patched together with audio patch cables, then it can be a little hard to imagine how one would go about creating laser artwork from such a system virtualized into a computer. I was skeptical that a beginner, someone lacking an intuitive knowledge of the math of oscillatory patterns would be able to create anything good with such a system, but this visit has changed my perspective. Not only is it relatively easy to create interesting and beautiful patterns with this software, the time it takes to get the hang of it is likely less than that taken by someone learning a timeline-based software for the first time. By starting with the most common building blocks and patching them together, it's almost impossible to not get something beautiful out, and each time you sit down to make something, you wind up with something new and different that would be nearly impossible to create with other software available on the market. As it turns out, what I thought was a weakness of not having a structured environment is actually one of its great strengths.
Forget what you know about frames, boring X-Y-Zoom-Spin animation, and traditional 3-oscillator abstracts. Although you can use these as blocks, the heart of this software begins with a continuous analog output stream, always flowing to the projector, that you 'bend' in time, X,Y,Z, and color with the building blocks available in the patch builder. Using the software and trying out different blocks in different interconnecting ways to generate patterns is actually a joy, partially because your laser (as well as the sophisticated preview screen) is projecting the entire time, giving you feedback with every change and tweak you make. You literally build shows and artwork on the fly with continuous output to show you every change in real-time. Generating patterns with synchronicity is straightforward due to the built-in synch ports among blocks and intelligent octave stepping and de-tuning features in the oscillator building blocks. Tweaking these patterns in real-time is simple through the use of commonly available MIDI control surfaces, as well as mouse input. Once you have interesting patches built, you can sequence them and layer them in the timeline editor to create a show.
One of my favorite things about this software is that while using it, one will be creating things literally no one has ever seen or imagined before. Not faint shadows of common things, or outlines of virtual 3D objects, but a full-on optical assault of color, pattern, and beat that is worthy of a paid ticket. This is why it won so many awards at the ILDA conference, and I expect it will continue doing so.
Unfortunately, one of the big drawbacks, at least for us as non-professionals, right now is the cost. Unless you're a pro or planetarium operator, it'll likely be out of you're budget, but if you get the change to see a DigiSynth show, don't let it pass by. Matt, I'm going on record asking for a demo at SELEM 2011. From what I saw, we'd be really missing out without it.
http://www.youtube.com/user/DigiSynt.../1/pjNuhgjwYYQ
http://www.youtube.com/user/DigiSynt.../3/rNAh30bLlx8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA6eL3xOAOg&feature=fvsr