Interview: Mark Wherry, Man Behind Hollywood’s Digital Musical Instruments, Hans Zimmer Collaborator

Computer innovator Alan Kay famously said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Mark Wherry is doing as good a job as anyone of inventing that technology. Powering scores from the latest Batman films to Inception, working closely with Hollywood’s leading meastro Hans Zimmer, the work Wherry is doing really does […]

Ableton Posts Nearly Hour-Long Live 9 and Push Preview Event from Berlin

Can’t get enough Live 9 information? In cased you missed it, here’s a nearly hour-long presentation. It’s notable for Ableton founder and CEO Gerhard Behles talking about what matters in an instrument, then “discovering” that Push fits in a backpack, for Dennis DeSantis doing a beautiful job of showing what really musical workflow looks like, […]

From Light and Cardboard, Digital Sculpture: 74R505

74R505 – M4kin9 0f from michaelias on Vimeo. It’s surprisingly beautiful, sometimes, this point where light meets substance. So, saying “projection mapping” suggests something other than what we really want to do, which is to sculpt with pixels. Here’s another example of that zeitgeist’s ouvre, from Austrian artists participating in the Schmiede “creative playground” last […]

Universal Everything, Ongoing Beautiful Work with Digital Form, New Studio Tour Documentary

Tai Chi / 5 Video Artworks / Framed Gallery, Tokyo from Universal Everything on Vimeo. Universal Everything is a design shop that continues as a standard bearer for expressive digital forms, a high water mark in electronic expression. Founded by the UK’s Matt Pyke, the creative team now spans England and Holland. From top, two […]

Ableton 9 Live: More Tools For Starting – and Finishing – Music [First Hands-On Details]

Ableton today has revealed the details of Live 9, alongside new hardware called Push. The software update brings new ways of transforming sound into MIDI, new and improved devices for shaping sounds, tools for automation that work inside clips and with curved interpolation, a new Browser, and a number of interface and usability enhancements. There […]

Ableton Push: Integrated, Touch-Sensitive Hardware Control for Live [Details]

Now, Ableton is doing its own hardware. Sure, Ableton’s logo was on the Akai APC40 and Novation Launchpad, and yes, “engineering by Akai” is stamped on the Push. But make no mistake: this is really the first Ableton hardware, and it shows. Push is a grid controller with extra keys and encoders for navigating features. […]

An Open Source Video Mixer, Inspired by DIY Space Exploration

As many ponder the fate of hardware mixing, mixing in software continues to advance. And in a reminder of just how many different applications video mixing can have, here’s a fascinating article about a new open-source Linux-based video mixing tool called Snowmix: Copenhagen Suborbitals Release Snowmix, an Open Source Video Mixer [The Power Base] What’s […]

Sneak-Thief’s Sneaquencer is a DIY Monster, Dream Hardware for Performance [Open Source Music]

You can dream of something, you can complain about it on forums, or you can do it. Sneak-Thief, aka Michel Morin, is a doer. And what’s great about him is that he doesn’t just produce geeky, obsessive hardware – he has the musical chops to match. He can wrangle his own hardware, coding in C, […]

Step Sequencing from iPad, with Koushion + Ableton Live [Video]

Part of the utility of the iPad is its power to transform into whatever you want it to be, the black, empty screen fitting any role you happen to need in the studio. Our friend Chris Stack shows off the combination of Ableton Live with the Koushion step sequencer on the iPad. Koushion is capable […]

Mapping, Beyond Projectors: ArKaos Adds Serious Plug-and-Play Pixel, LED Features

It sounds like the computer system on a Bird of Prey on Star Trek, but Kling-Net is at the heart of where VJ and media server maker ArKaos – and a lot of the live visual world – is headed. Forget the phrase “projection mapping,” and think “video mapping” and “pixel mapping.” Yes, projectors will […]