Let’s get this out of the way: musicians are not a “niche” group. Recording has done some damage to the popular practice of live music, but still, you’ll find an astonishing number of people play instruments and sing. (New pop culture phenomena like Glee, the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, and the resurgent TV talent show […]

Sound technology pioneer Bob Moog’s birthday is May 23, and just about the whole Web will be in on the celebration. Play Google like a Minimoog: Google’s Doodle, the image you see on their homepage, is one of their best yet: it’s a fully interactive, playable Minimoog synthesizer. You can even record and playback little […]

Here’s how interfaces normally break down. You’ve got your conventional, tactile interfaces, like a knob. You’ve got your touch interfaces, which lack tactile feedback (you touch them, but they don’t push back). You’ve got your gestural interfaces, which have you waving your hands in the air without touching anything and without any tactile feedback. (They’re […]

Artists these days are always grasping for ideas to involve fans. In a video for j.viewz’ “rivers and homes,” fans literally get in on the act. Give the video above a moment – after a more conventional intro, it shifts to a stop-motion sequence made from photographed stills of the film. Some 2000 photos, printed […]

Abstraction and geometry have their expressive qualities, but architectural projection as a medium need not always go that route. VJ Sauve’s work “Homeless” is poignant, warm, and personal, crafted from hand-drawn and hand-painted media, transformed into digital animation, then projection-mapped in a way that seems to bring São Paulo’s alleyways and streets alive. Characters dance […]

Abstraction and geometry have their expressive qualities, but architectural projection as a medium need not always go that route. VJ Sauve’s work “Homeless” is poignant, warm, and personal, crafted from hand-drawn and hand-painted media, transformed into digital animation, then projection-mapped in a way that seems to bring São Paulo’s alleyways and streets alive. Characters dance […]

luanna is a beautiful new application out of Tokyo-based visual/sound collective Phontwerp_. Amidst a wave of audiovisual iPad toys, luanna is notable for its elegance, connecting swirling flurries of particles with gestures for manipulation. I imagine I’m not alone when I say I have various sample manipulation patches lying around, many in Pd, lacking visualization, […]

Benga’s latest video was released early last month and made the blog rounds, but it’s worth considering as we continue our ongoing thread on visual music and how sound can go from invisible to tangible. A stunning video whets fans appetite for the upcoming Benga full-length Chapter 2, constructing a wave shape in physical form […]

Photos courtesy John Tejada. From his home in LA to the global scene, John Tejada is a planet-navigating techno ambassador and one of our favorite electronic musicians. He’s one of a handful of artists successful today who has managed to cross eras, whose experience isn’t just of this moment but who has touched the evolution […]

Composer/artist Ryoji Ikeda has been on a roll lately, mounting massive immersive audiovisual experiences. His aesthetic talent, in crisp blacks and whites and SONAR-like pings above oceans of glitching noise, is in spinning operettas of data. The latest project, which closed at the start of this month at Berlin’s Kraftwerk, pulled apart the data from […]