I’ve been a fan of legendary DJ Qbert for as long as I remember. He was the first legendary DJ that I remember admiring, and I bought several of his scratch records like Super Seal Breaks, Hee-Haw Breaks, etc. and still have them. He is a member of Rocky Steady Crew, founder of Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Thud Rumble, and Turntable TV, several times World DMC champion and awarded America’s Best DJ in 2010. DJ Qbert - Wikipedia. In 2001 I watched his movie, “Wave Twisters” and was blown away by the concept, artwork, and animation synched exactly to scratched music, it is amazing.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I created “PlayaVR” as a Virtual Reality Art Exhibit as an officially recognized world in the Burning Man Multiverse. I invited my friends, 3d artists, traditional artists, musicians and DJs to collaborate with me in TheJediz Art Camp, our collaborative artistic expression that we create as a free art exhibit each year, that will always be available and downloadable. Fortunately, my friend and brilliant electro producer from Miami, DJ Wreck, aka Salim Rafiq, aka Gucci Bass, was finishing the album with DJ Qbert and they included several tracks and unreleased tracks for PlayaVR. A few months later I met and spoke with DJ Qbert after a DMC event, about technology and music, and we immediately started collaborating. I’ve always wanted to collaborate with DJ Qbert, and the pandemic, and DJ Wreck, helped make that happen.
In 2021, we created a 3d AI version of DJ Qbert in Unreal Engine with the help of Miguelangelo Rosario and integrated it into PlayaVR2021. Later in 2022, I created a 3d music video for DJ Qbert’s “Spacewhip” song, and updated PlayaVR, so that we in essence had one of the world’s first Immersive, Interactive Music Videos as a freely downloadable app. It’s immensely more entertaining than just watching a music video, you can play any part of the music video below while listening to the soundtrack, which makes the materials and objects react to the audio. Try it out here: PlayaVR — Mn8XR
DJ Qbert / Thud Rumble / Turntable TV
Early this year in 2022, DJ Qbert announced his newest album, a 3 Vinyl set with artwork by renowned Brazilian artists “Os Gemeos”. Mn8XR and Insectula created a series of 2D animated videos to help with promotion and preorders and to show our different 2D/3D animation techniques, including facial camera tracking applied to 2d illustrated faces.
Qbert New Album! 3 record set! (Pre-Order) Art by OS GEMEOS! – Thud Rumble
DJ Qbert connected me with his fellow Rock Steady Crew artist East 3. After talking to East 3, we started to collaborate on some Augmented Reality clothing designs with Section9 AI and Insectula. As a test, we used East 3’s BBot illustration. This is just a test, and we are still working on the ideas for AR designs, shirts and record sleeves. We have some ideas that will be a creative convergence of art, music, and technology. Stay tuned!
What’s next? We hope to develop the DJ Qbert AI to be the first AI DJ and MC, using cloud-based AI, a library of scratch and voice recordings, Audio Spectrum Analysis for beatmatching, DSP for quantizing, all using Unreal Engine as a platform and real-time streaming video content to accompany other DJs, musicians, video streamers, and content producers with a realtime AI DJ Qbert that can be integrated into your live shows or video streams. Currently, it’s just a dream, like my first VR games and apps, but I am persistent if nothing else. I’ve been talking to an audio engineer who thinks setting up a DAO - Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) Definition, might be the best way to find some programmers and developers to work with me to create this. Let me know if you are interested in being involved. I am sure it’s possible with Unreal Engine’s new features.
Dj Qbert at Sunshine State of Bass - Miami Music Week 2022 / WMC