Delicate and dense, melodies and sounds from church contexts, found sounds of bells and voices, are set against crisp, sharply-solid, forward-driving electronic beats. And then, there are the visuals: an archaic architecture of mystical symbols and three-dimensional, evolving forms interpret the music in visual form. Swedish-born artist and technologist Eric Wahlforss, in other words, has […]
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Sculpting Sound with Maja Ratkje [Film]
The worlds of sound open to us as musicians seem limitless, endlessly unfolding in variety and possibility. So, even in a series of impressionistic moments from an upcoming film, it’s a delight to see composer Maja Ratkje play with sound. The Norwegian musician and vocalist, an improviser frequent collaborator with artists like Jaap Blonk, is […]
The Erasers: Live Cinema, Made Really Live, in Live Performance Theater Visuals
VJing or live visuals can quickly become simply re-purposed mixes of found video clips, a visual equivalent to a DJ mixing records. Generative and abstract visuals have been one response to that. But in the work of The Erasers, “live cinema” comes to mean really just that. Roving cameras wander the action, as players manipulate […]
FL Studio 10.5 Performance Mode in Beta: Bridge Arrangement and Live, Easy Hardware Control
FL Studio’s live performance functionality has been teased for some time online, attracting enraptured eyeballs and plenty of discussion online. Now, you can give it a try for yourself in the new FL Studio 10.5 beta. My prediction: it’s definitely huge for FL Studio die-hards, but it could also attract some “lapsed” FL users back […]
iZotope Iris: Paint with Spectra, Make a Real-Time Synth [Videos, Gallery]
Imagine working with sound design by painting with spectra, then applying those spectra to instruments you can play in real-time, and you’ve got the basic notion of iZotope Iris. The dream of combining graphics tools, a la Photoshop, with sonic ones has been in the minds of creative computer users for some time. Iris is […]
What if You Could Make Timelapse Out of Sound? Free Mac+Windows App, Made with Max
“Timelapse” usually refers to the process of sampling small bits of video or film and piecing them together to form a sped-up version of reality. (Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. Any recording involves sampling small bits of time. Timelapse simply plays back those samples at a rate faster than reality, so that instead of playing […]
A Magical, Ritual, Dream-like Theater: Kadambini, Audiovisual Live [Modul8]
Bart of art collective iduun shares his team’s latest audiovisual performance, Kadâmbini. It’s part live cinema, part music – object – theater, and powered by Modul8 with a fair bit of custom monome wizardry. The Paris-based artist tells us more: I’d like to introduce you our new work, Kadâmbini. It’s an audiovisual and cinema show. […]
Open Shruthi-1 Synth Evolves Deep Sound Capabilities, New 4-Pole Filter, Ice-White Case
Inside this compact white box lurks a lot of sonic power and technical prowess. Perhaps that explains why the newest version of the open source Shruthi-1 now sports a crazy-badass wolf dog cartoon with glowing eyes. Since its launch, the Shruthi-1 has gradually evolved new features, with a fairly sophisticated combination of hardware and extensive […]
A Small World, After All: Freesound.org Sounds on Earth, and an Ambient Musical Laboratory
Through the eyes of satellites, roving Google trucks, aerial imagery, and more, we have plenty of eyes on our planet. But what does it sound like here on Earth? In a Web application and accompanying art installation, the world turns as it echoes sounds recorded around the world on Creative Commons-licensed site Freesound.org. It’s stunning […]
Moldover vs. Traktor Kontrol F1, in Live Sampling-Mash Mayhem [Videos]
Matt Moldover takes on Native Instruments’ Traktor Kontrol F1 in a hands-on demo; NI reportedly gave him a weekend to see if the “controllerism” advocate could do something interesting with their hardware/software combo. The resulting video really gives some insight into what controllerism is all about: the fundamental notion here, whatever you wish to call […]