Visually Remixing a Conversation: Visibox as a Visual Sample Player at NAMM 2026
How we turned an interview with Public Enemy's Brian Hardgroove into an improvisational multimedia mashup
Public Enemy’s Brian Hardgroove taking questions at NAMM 2026.
Last week at NAMM 2026, we did something we'd never tried before with Visibox: we used it as a video soundboard for a live interview.
Brian Hardgroove—bassist and bandleader for Public Enemy, producer, and longtime NAMM presenter—sat down for a conversation on stage. As he talked about his career, his collaborations, his journey from Hollis, Queens to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we had a massive palette of visual content ready to trigger at any moment: archival photos, video clips, album covers, tour footage, images of collaborators.
When Brian mentioned working with Slash on his first solo record? We pulled up a photo. When he talked about Public Enemy's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Video clip. When he discussed his immersive audio work with Sennheiser? Up came the NAMM panel footage.
This wasn't a slideshow. There was no predetermined sequence. It was reactive, improvisational, conversational—triggered live in response to where the discussion went. We were treating video clips and images the way a DJ treats a sample library: cueing them up, triggering them on demand, mixing them into the flow of the moment.
We were visually remixing the conversation.
The Concept: A Visual Sample Player
If you've ever watched a podcast or livestream, you're familiar with audio soundboards—tools that let hosts trigger sound effects, intro music, or funny clips with the press of a button. But what about the video equivalent?
That's the space we wanted to explore. Something that lets you trigger visual content reactively, jump to any clip instantly, and respond to conversational flow rather than following a predetermined sequence.
Traditional presentation tools assume linear structure. VJ software offers incredible power but is designed for concerts—beat-synced visuals, effects chains, projection mapping. Overkill for an interview.
What we needed was something in between: the reactive triggering of VJ software with the simplicity of a sample player. That's where Visibox came in.
Using a Stream Deck XL as our control surface, we organized dozens of clips across multiple Songs in Visibox—each Song focused on a specific area of Brian's career: Public Enemy era, production work, technology advocacy, personal history. Photos, video clips, album covers, each mapped to a button.
When Brian mentioned a collaborator or milestone, we could glance down and trigger the relevant visual instantly. And when the conversation jumped to an unexpected topic, Visibox's Find feature let us type a few letters to jump to any Song or Clip immediately—no scrolling, no hunting through folders. The latency was measured in milliseconds.
It felt like playing an instrument. And that's the point.
Why Brian Hardgroove Was the Perfect Subject
This approach wouldn't work for every interview. It worked spectacularly for Brian because of who he is and what he represents.
A career built on remix culture. Brian is a member of Public Enemy—a group whose sonic identity was forged by the Bomb Squad's revolutionary production approach. They built dense, powerful soundscapes by recontextualizing everything: James Brown breaks, sirens, speeches, news broadcasts. They took existing media and remixed it into something new.
Using Visibox to trigger archival footage during his interview placed us squarely in that tradition. We were remixing his life, his collaborations, his history—recombining it live in response to his words.
A multimedia life. Brian's career spans Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction with Public Enemy, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, production work for Burning Spear and Slash, NAMM keynote panels on immersive audio, partnerships with Sennheiser on spatial audio. Every phase had visual documentation. We weren't struggling to find content—we were curating from abundance.
A technology advocate who gets it. When we explained the Visibox setup before the interview, Brian's response was immediate enthusiasm. He understood what we were trying to do, and he leaned into it. He spoke in a way that invited visual illustration. He treated the visual palette as part of the performance.
That collaborative energy made the whole thing work.
Beyond Interviews: Where Else Could This Work?
The NAMM interview was a proof of concept, but the applications extend far beyond music industry conversations. Podcasters triggering B-roll and sponsor creative. Conference speakers jumping to demos based on Q&A. Educators pulling up examples the moment they become relevant. Streamers extending their audio soundboards into video.
Anywhere you're presenting live and want to respond to the moment rather than follow a script, this approach applies.
Simplicity Enables Improvisation
There's a reason we chose Visibox for this instead of traditional VJ software. Those tools are incredibly powerful, but their complexity works against the kind of reactive, conversational flow we wanted.
Visibox's design philosophy is simplicity as a creative enabler. The interface is clean. The MIDI mapping is instant. You don't need to understand effects chains or projection mapping. You just load media, assign triggers, and play.
That simplicity creates headspace for improvisation. During the Hardgroove interview, we weren't thinking about technical operations. We were listening to the conversation and responding with visuals. That's only possible when the tool gets out of the way.
A New Way to Think About Presentations
The most exciting takeaway wasn't technical—it was conceptual. We've spent years thinking about Visibox primarily as VJ software for concerts and live music. But framing it as a visual sample player for conversations and presentations opens up entirely new possibilities.
Podcasters, educators, corporate presenters, conference speakers—these folks aren't looking for VJ software. But they understand remix culture. They've seen mashups. They've watched video essays that weave together clips from dozens of sources.
Visibox gives them the tools to do that live, in real time, as a performance.
Brian Hardgroove's career started in hip-hop, a genre built on remix culture. It feels right that we used his interview to demonstrate visual remixing as a new approach to live presentation.
The tools we use shape how we create. Give someone a sample player and they make beats. Give them a visual sample player and they make something new. A live mashup. A real-time collage. A conversation remixed.
Want to try this approach yourself? We're working on a step-by-step guide covering how to build your own visual palette, organize clips for reactive triggering, and set up Stream Deck or MIDI control. Stay tuned.
Visit spaceage.tv to download Visibox and try it for free.