Project: VMX

Digital Twin: Artist, Venue and Acoustics

As part of our ongoing exploration of how XR technologies can enrich musical expression, we set out to build a complete digital twin experience—not just of a musician, but also of the venues they perform in. The project investigates how accessible and efficient it can be to create virtual performances that preserve both the performer’s likeness and the acoustic identity of real-world spaces.

Pothamus AB Live Immersive show

For this project, we collaborated with the Belgian post-metal band Pothamus to design a custom visual experience for a showcase of new material from their upcoming album, “Abur.” Our aim was to stay true to the band’s intense, ritualistic aesthetic, while using cutting-edge tools to create something both visually reactive and emotionally immersive.

Psychonaut AR Towards the edge

To demonstrate what’s possible with Augmented Reality (AR) today, we set out to build an immersive musical experience. Our inspiration came from the Gorillaz’s “Skinny Ape” AR performance, which debuted alongside their single of the same name. That experience showcased how game technology can be used to create new, engaging fan experiences.

For our own experiment, we were fortunate to collaborate with Psychonaut, a Belgian psychedelic post-metal band, who kindly allowed us to use their music as the foundation of this AR experience.

WITT AI generated visuals

If we equip artists with AI tools and a bit of training, how easily can they generate their own live visuals—without needing a technical background? To find out, we teamed up with WITT, an electronic music act and student project from PXL-Music.

XR Music Toy

XR Music Toy is a research initiative focused on experimenting with XR in the context of musical performance. Our goal? To prototype small, creative ideas that merge music and extended reality in compelling ways.

Interactive Musical LED Wall

The core idea behind Revibelize is to create brief, spontaneous musical encounters in a shared space. Designed for 5–10-minute interactions, the installation invites passersby to step in and become part of a reactive world, even if just for a few minutes.

Set in a surreal alien garden, the environment is watched over by a Gorillaz-inspired rockstar guardian—a visual character that adds narrative flavor and personality to the scene.

VMX Closing Event

After two years, our VLAIO TETRA Virtual Music Experiences project has been completed. We investigated which technology works in a music context and which does not, we gained valuable insights into possible future developments, we inspired players from the music industry, involved many students and shared our findings with you at home and abroad. First of all, we would like to thank you for your involvement and feedback throughout the process. On Wednesday, November 27, we will officially close VMX in Club Wintercircus (Ghent). We go over all the results again and present our final use case: a VR experience in which we take users into digital copies of two concert halls (each with their own acoustics) while they listen and watch a piano performance by the metahuman. version by Tom Beghin (Orpheus Institute). The researchers will explain the how and what in detail during this final event, and you can of course also test the VR experience yourself.

NIME 2024 Conference

The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression gathers researchers and musicians from all over the world to share their knowledge and late-breaking work on new musical interface design. The conference started out as a workshop at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in 2001. Since then, an annual series of international conferences have been held around the world, hosted by research groups dedicated to interface design, human-computer interaction, and computer music.

Immersive concert: WITT + Pothamus

AB is building the music club of the future together with PXL-Music and the DAE gaming school. For the WITT and Pothamus concerts, we are installing an immersive audio and video system in our AB Club for the first time.
With speakers at the front, back, left, right and at the top of the room, we imitate how we naturally experience sound, namely 360°. We also explore how artists can create visuals for a live set using artificial intelligence. Together with WITT and Pothamus we are creating an exclusive show that fully explores the creative boundaries of immersive audio and video. The result is a rich and intense listening experience.

Touchdesigner meetup 2024

=f(x) invites you to join us for the second edition of the TouchDesigner Amsterdam meetup at Amaze

Step into a world of creativity and collaboration at this year’s expanded jam session! Following last year’s success, we’re thrilled to offer even more opportunities for attendees to come together and create magic.

Join us as we dive into a day filled with inspiration and innovation, courtesy of Amaze Amsterdam, our gracious hosts for this gathering. Our journey begins at 1:00 PM with captivating talks by some of the brightest minds in the TouchDesigner community. Get ready for insightful presentations, including words from TouchDesigner’s founder and community manager, all in a relaxed setting designed for interaction and questions.

WebAR 101 by Niantic 8th Wall

This is a 5-hour workshop hosted by Niantic and our partners Stijn Spanhove and In the Pocket. During the workshop – Participants will learn about the 8th Wall platform, build and customize an 8th Wall project, and meet other local developers. By the end of the workshop, you will learn how to create, customize, test and deploy your own World Effects (SLAM) sample project that looks believable and immersive in the real-world. You will also learn how to easily add modules to their project and other 8th Wall features such as Shared AR Multiplayer, Payments API, and more.

Photogrammetry research by our interns.

During her internship in our research team, Hanne Yperman, a 3th year DAE student, was tasked to experiment with scanning in a person using our photogrammetry setup and documenting the process. Along with some fellow interns, she made this video explaining her findings.

Virtual Music Experiences

In the international music industry, there has been a significant growth in experiments with new technology in recent years. For example, hybrid concerts enriched by the use of AR/VR and LED screens, immersive music on streaming platforms and in concert halls, virtual concerts in so-called ‘metaverse’ game platforms, image and sound generated by artificial intelligence, silent discos, productions on radio and TV with virtual studios or avatars, and much more. The industry is increasingly reaching out to adjacent sectors such as the gaming industry and the IT sector to join forces.