Happy Independence Day: The Legacy of the Computer is Not the Mouse

Oregon-born engineer, inventor, and thinker Douglas Engelbart has died. He’ll be listed in many outlets as, mundanely, the inventor of the computer mouse. Certainly, the demo of that technology in 1968 had a profound impact. But what’s stunning is that even at that demo, the mouse wasn’t the most impressive thing Engelbart showed. At the […]

Stepping Up the Groove: Wire and Flashing Light Stop Motion Animation, CC Success Story

Professor Kliq – Wire and Flashing Lights from Patator on Vimeo. It’s digital stop motion – wire, flashing lights, and paper are animated in a crazy-catchy groove in this latest animation from Paris-based director (and CDM reader) Victor Haegelin. Working with music by Chicago electro artist Professor Kliq (Mike Else), the track name is also, […]

Inside Strange Sounds, Gear, Made in America: Richard Devine, Make Noise [Videos]

The lust for new sounds can take many forms. It leads some to reduce, forcing themselves to stick to minimal choices to channel their creativity. It leads some to reuse and recycle, repurposing old gear. But it leads some into a quest for arcane racks of gear, spaghetti tangles of wires and flashing screens alike, […]

Micro microKORG: Cute Korg Promo Makes Synth Into Tiny USB Stick

Aw, kawaii! Wait… sorry, poor choice of words. Aw, how… uh… Korg! Yes, in case they hadn’t given us enough reason for adoration lately, the folks at Korg are now giving away cute little USB stick versions of the microKORG if you purchase a microKORG or microKORG XL+. And if that’s not quite your budget, […]

Take That, Pong: Table Tennis, Reimagined as Augmented Audiovisual Games

pingtime from videogram on Vimeo. The tables have turned. Forty years after Pong aped table tennis on Atari, we’re watching computers transforming the original game. The table tennis in Pingtime vibrates and warps with sound and projection in an “augmented” experience of the game. The project is immortalized by Bucharest’s Videogram – but we see […]

Begone, Mouse: The Latest Upcoming Ableton Live Touch Controllers [Gallery]

The “live” in Ableton Live suggests making musical decisions in real time – not slowly with painstaking editing, stopping and editing and drawing, but as you listen and work. But while the onscreen interface is built around the mouse, and the precision of the mouse, focusing on those settings in performance, DJing, or studio work […]

Hear the Gorgeous, Ethereal Vocal Music of Georgina Brett, and More Live Looping

London’s Georgina Brett is part of a generation of solo artists who use layered loops to build trascendental, rotating textures from repetition. Hardware loopers and effects pedals remain the preferred tool here for Brett as for many such artists. But Brett’s work is worth a particular mention for its ghostly, ethereal quality and thoughtful, delicate […]

Water Light Graffiti: Painting with Water, Transformed into Light, and Urban Communication

Installation Water Light Graffiti // par Antonin Fourneau // du 06/06 au 30/06 à Stereolux Nantes from stereolux on Vimeo. Perhaps digitality is necessarily about the ephemeral. That could explain the fascination with making “graffiti” using light and digital paint, participatory but impermanent. The latest twist on the meme comes to us from Nantes, France. […]

Germany to Detroit: Good Listening from DJ Koze, Juan Atkins [Mixes, Release, Reading]

Switch off that negative talk: vibrations between musical scenes continue to resonate and grow. Here we have two artists, each somehow evergreen and still blossoming, making the link from past to future feel secure. And speaking of good vibrations, I can think of no better way to get the summer vibes going this weekend than […]

Convertible PCs Could Transform Windows Music Software, But Many Models Won’t Stick

What if your computer could do what tablets do – without having to kludge together multiple devices? That question probably doesn’t keep ordinary people up at night. But with music makers unusually ravenous users of touch software, they might just be at the vanguard of new convergences of creative computing. Picture this scenario. Your computer […]