Hello everyone. I’m Kevin aka Afturmath. I am primarily an audio engineer, synthesizer freak, and sometimes even a musician (experimental techno and ambient). I currently live in downtown Jersey City, aka “West Manhattan”, but I will be moving to Amsterdam in early October. I was always fascinated with lasers and experimented with lumia and other diffraction effects using monochrome setups at home. I got into RGB scanning lasers in 2014 through my best friend who was running 2-3 projector live beam shows at pop-up trance parties in Washington, DC. I started as his only assistant, but eventually that progressed to backup operator and wrangling stagehands at warehouses with 5-11 projectors for techno and trance parties every 2 weeks or so for about 3 years. This was on “Big P’s” software v2 and v3 which was the latest version the last time I touched it.
We went to our first SELEM (X) in 2016 and have been going ever since. Anyone who has attended in recent years may know me as the resident DJ for Club SELEM. In 2017, I got a free X-Laser Sapphire RGB (800mW multimode/DPSS with ~15k scanners) from a friend so I could experiment on my own, and I started making abstract graphics with my Eurorack via the LZX Cyclops. In 2018 I got another free projector that a friend built with EMS-7000 scanners (advertised 60k but really around 50k). It is handicapped by an “analogo” 250mW RGB single-mode module with crazy offsets and exponential curves, but it works fine for home use and occasional solo performances. I haven’t yet replaced the module because I want to build a custom single-mode setup. I recently upgraded from the Stanwax ILDA breakout to the full ILDA interface V3 board so I could add an interlock and e-stop to feel more confident using it outside of my home (but still only at private events).
In 2019, I was Kickstarter backer #8 for the Neon Captain Radiator. Once I received it, I incorporated graphics to my live synth shows using the fast projector and pairing it with a borrowed projector at SELEM. You can see an example here where the main graphic is a borrowed X-Laser Mobile Beat Mirage, and the background is the homebuilt. The main graphic is about 2.5m in diameter directly from the Radiator, and the background is about 6m wide using the Radiator’s X/Y output into the Eurorack but generating new color channels from a mix of analog and digital oscillators. There are more technical details of the setup in the video description.
With my pending move, I wanted to get back into beam shows to start a new mobile laser show business, but I didn’t want to deal with big P and v5.x of their software. This Spring I picked up two OPT Laser PD5000 5W RGB projectors with DT-40 scanners along with two Ether Dream 4 DACs and started making my own beam cues and routing/switching workflow for an APC40 mk1 using Touch Designer. TD is very twitchy with the way it converts 3D objects to laser channels, and I kept struggling with frame drops causing dropouts on my Ether Dreams. When I saw the Liberation announcement on Photon Lexicon, it looked like exactly what I needed. The YouTube videos looked great, but I wanted to get my hands on it before committing to a subscription.
Dustin Derry from Stonewolf Studios was kind enough to sit down with me for a while two weeks ago at SELEM 16 for a 1:1 deep-dive. I was hooked! I picked up an APC40 mk2 this past week and subscribed this weekend. I have only been using the software for a few hours, but I am already making my own cues and FX.
After reading about the MIDI addition in v0.0.2, I plan to integrate Liberation heavily with Ableton Live for my own live performances. I hope to see more customizable MIDI support in the future so I can incorporate additional pad and encoder controllers, but I will use Bome MTP in the meantime. I also hope to see OSC support in the future so I can try out custom touch interfaces without having to pass through an OSC-to-MIDI converter.
For now I am experimenting at home, but I plan to bring this rig out to two unpaid gigs at private parties in the next 6 weeks. I am looking forward to adding more projectors and upgrading my subscription tier once I start picking up paid gigs in Amsterdam.
If you would like to see more of my content, I primarily post snippets on Instagram these days. I will be posting more on YouTube in the future, especially as I capture more videos using Liberation.