You’ve seen the Disney version of going inside the computer and seeing what happens, via Tron. Adam Marks has created an interactive art piece that visualizes the functions of actual computer software; in the samples below, code operating in Firefox. calltrace At the center of the work is Valgrind, a Linux-based debugger and profiler. Call […]

Portable music player technology isn’t as simple as it once was. With digital music files have come new restrictions from the music labels on how music is played and transferred, as well as discussion of various specifications for connecting devices to computers. In a June 16 story on Platform-Agnostic Drag-and-Drop Music Listening, I suggested lovers […]

If you’re anywhere near Manchester, England, you’ll want to clear your schedule for 20-23 July (and thereabouts). The upcoming Futuresonic festival has been all over my inbox, and it looks really cool, especially since it supplements the usual talks and presentations with some very useful free workshops: Futuresonic: Social Technologies Summit The keynote is by […]

My first MP3 player, an original Creative Labs Nomad (one of the first MP3 players), was simple to operate. I took MP3s I’d ripped and dropped them on the device like a drive. So, what’s happened since then? Now music players have grown much more complex, deeply tied to Digital Rights Management. Some new Windows […]

By popular request, we’ve launched a new forum for Create Digital Music (and, soon, Create Digital Motion): Share Your Work – CDM Forums If you want to hear fellow CDM readers’ music, share your own, show off your crazy new interactive installation or VJ reel, look for collaborators to work on a song or to […]

In the digital age, you can pretty much output endless music, with endless resources at your disposal. So maybe it’s little surprise that music makers are looking for limiting factors — even extreme limitations, like one second duration or music produced from noise. When we ran a contest for one-second music a few months ago, […]

Fijuu2 is the kind of art that seems to have dropped in from a wormhole from the future. It’s tough to describe, a rotating three-dimensional world in which visitors can sculpt glitchy and resonating sounds, represented by fluid 3D models, all using a standard PlayStation2 controller. We got a chance to see some stills earlier […]

Apple has come through with Intel-based MacBook laptops (replacing the iBook), and the bottom line is, they’re a terrific bargain. As a portable music machine, unless you prefer bigger screens, it’s hard to go wrong with these computers. The only big downsides: black costs you extra, and like the mini before them, the integrated graphics […]