For more on the creation of the new VISP visual app, there’s a terrific story by creator Michael Creighton at Adobe Edge: Building a visual performance app with Adobe AIR, Flex, and Flash The advantages of this combination are potent for visual development: File system API (so you can easily manage video clips, generative sketches, […]

Working on digital visuals for choreographer Grisha Coleman’s echo::system, I got to try some new techniques for running visuals. These were necessary experiments, so naturally we had some things that worked well, and some that didn’t. (For more on the piece, see the project site; warning: auto-playing audio via Flash!) Two particular pieces of gear […]

One of the wonderful things about music in general is that basically anything can become a musical instrument — digital, electronic, or otherwise. The barrier to entry is neither skill nor means, but will. (or is that general craziness?) Musician and builder Eric Johnson surprised us at the last handmade music get-together in Brooklyn with […]

Sampling and remix culture is the future, right? Not if you ask a lot of music lovers at the moment. The guest for the CDM Random Rant of the Week is our friend Liz. It’s an issue I suspect has troubled some readers here, especially as music technology is equated to the sample/remix culture (especially […]

Kids get hands-on with the music, touching materials found on-location at the installation site. Eat your heart out, Microsoft Surface! Musicians are taking up interactive tables as new ways of making their creations physically accessible, so listeners can reach out and touch the work. Etiquette is a new interactive installation at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, […]

MP3s, bad because they have less music in them. So much less music, in fact, that your brain loses the ability to feel emotions listening to them. Okay, sure, over-compressed MP3s sound awful, especially at lower bitrates. But get ready for some strange psychoacoustics here, folks. Producers howl over sound cut out by MP3 compression […]

So, you’re really hot patching synths in Reaktor. You’ve done some interactive music in Max/MSP. You think you’re really awesome. Fine. Go up against 5VOLTCORE and their knife-stabbing robot. They stake more than a reputation on this — they tempt fate and put their hand in the way of an evil robotic arm with a […]

In Toshio Iwai’s world, THX 1138 is way, way cooler. Fans of radical exploration in instrument design have watched the Tenori-On since 2001. The instrument, designed by composer / sound artist / visualist / interactive designer Toshio Iwai, is part sequencer, part sampler, but with a novel, integrated interface using a grid of buttons. And […]