Pikilipita's ultra-hypnotic PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance VJ kits

My shameful admission: I have wasted more time today than I'll willingly fess up to watching this video on repeat, completely transfixed by nothing more than: pulsing circle, moving checkerboard, strobing Hello Kitty, shifting rainbow bar, strobing Hello Kitty backward, file browser, sunburst heart. And again, and again.

The video is a 2-player live demo of Clément 'Pikilipita' Cordier's PS24VJ, a custom-coded homebrew kit for 'video jockeys' to import their own graphics and video via a USB stick, and cut and manipulate from each to each using the standard DualShock controller, and -- in the hands of its creator, at least -- it's way more mesmerizing than it should be.

Interestingly, PS24VJ is the third iteration of Cordier's tools that span back to both a Game Boy Advance version, where you're limited to his built-in graphics but freed up by its pocket size, and Pikix, a later version for the Linux-based Korean handheld GP2X.

Cordier is selling PS24VJ as donation-ware (contact him with an offer), and custom-flashed GBA carts appear to still be available alongside standalone ROM files (Pikix is available as a free download), and, just as I'd hoped, he notes that he's eager to work on an iPhone version with networking capabilities for multiple VJs to mix at once.

PS24VJ: VJ software for Playstation 2 [PIKILIPITA, via Digital Tools, the best blog I've discovered in weeks]