Google Maps, Brought to Life, as Human Movement Occupies Digital Space

As ubiquitous in our lives as the digital landscape of sites like Google Maps can be, they’re in some sense private space. They strip our world of human beings (or freeze them in strange, invasive shots taken by roving vans), and put that space in the exclusive hands of private publishers. (Or, at least, one […]

From the iPad’s Screen, the Music of Human Boot Project [Tabletop]

Speaking of the iPad and music making, Japan’s Human Boot Project draw a music video release for their latest track directly from screen as they play, working in the app Tabletop. I really love the personality of the resulting sounds. There’s a rawness to their music, the dense downtempo jazz-inspired electronics, which you can enjoy […]

Analog-Digital Marriage: iPad Meets Guitar and Keys, MIDI Meets CV, Putting Music-Making Together

It’s good to get out of your studio now and then, as Chris Stack does here, hauling a few instruments (including the Minimoog) our for a live gig. Photo courtesy the artist. It’s a collision between a twenty-first century tablet and some of the most iconic analog instruments ever produced. It’s MIDI and digital meeting […]

Inside Koma Electronik, Boutique Maker: Studio Tour, Profile [Gallery, Audio]

Big or small, talk to many music gear makers, and you’ll find they’re in the business largely for love. But it’s still amazing just how many gear makers choose to go it alone. They build equipment in their flats and garages, hand-packing their creations and shipping it to a world of fellow musicians. Koma Electronik […]

High-Quality, Augmented Filmmaking as Kinect Meets DSLR; Musing on Raw Data

The Kinect camera is built first and foremost to be a three-dimensional sensor, not so much a “camera” in regards to fidelity of the visible image. But what if that data could meet the optics filmmakers want, in a single, calibrated image? The free and open source RGB+D Toolkit answers that need. It’s a combination […]

If Movies Didn't Play Forward: Toni Dove, R. Luke Dubois Make Gestural Live Cinema

What if film, rather than being projected from start to finish and proceeding in a straight line, could be reconstructed and performed? Every live visual performance involving video has more or less asked that question. But not every performance tries to convey a narrative in the process. Toni Dove’s Spectropia, coming this weekend to the […]

If Movies Didn’t Play Forward: Toni Dove, R. Luke Dubois Make Gestural Live Cinema

What if film, rather than being projected from start to finish and proceeding in a straight line, could be reconstructed and performed? Every live visual performance involving video has more or less asked that question. But not every performance tries to convey a narrative in the process. Toni Dove’s Spectropia, coming this weekend to the […]

Hands-on with Koma’s Analog Filter/Sequencer, Gate/Delay, in a Van, with Champagne

Koma’s stuff is good. Really good. So good, you might even want to watch a hands-on video where I’m juggling a camera in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other. Their stompable, playable analog effects show well even in the back of a van circling Musikmesse. How I came to see this […]

In the 70s, You Bought an Apple II to Code Crazy Graphics Yourself, So Why Not in 2012? [TV Ad]

Here’s a terrific vintage Apple II ad – one that might inspire some readers of this site to go eBay an Apple II for their next VJ gig. (Hey, it has analog video out built in, something a modern Apple … doesn’t.) Of course, what’s telling is that when this ad was made, in 1977, […]

Digital to Physical: From Blender to Paper Object – With a Lot of Elbow Grease

Export to physical object… Now, for many, that means some kind of fancy 3D printing that will soon revolutionize the world, bringing us into the realm of the matter-from-nothing science fiction of Star Trek. Well, or you could just do some work. That’s what artist Mike Greer documents in a lovely timelapse video, in which […]