Projector and Camera, A Little Closer: New, Magical Mapping Tools, 3D Scanning, and More

Visionary 3D scanning, computer vision, and digital media guru Kyle McDonald is back again with more tools that break down the boundary between the computer and the world. Kyle tells us he spent a great part of the fall in residence at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) in Japan. He worked with […]

How to Make a Music App for iOS, Free, with libpd: Exclusive Book Excerpt

What will you do with this blank slate? Photo (CC-BY) Yutaka Tsutano. Apple yesterday described their iPad as “this magical pane of glass that can become anything you want it to be.” So – how about making mobile devices into what you want it to be? With the help of author Peter Brinkmann and publisher […]

Pd, Everywhere: Free libpd Gets a New Site, New Book on Making Mobile Music Apps

Pure Data (Pd) is already a free, convenient tool for making synths, effects, and sequencers and other musical generators. But imagine stripping away all the things that tie it to a platform – UI, specific hardware support – so it will run just about anywhere, on anything, in any context. That’s what libpd, a free, […]

Music for a Place, as Central Park Becomes a Score, and Location Meets Recording

There was a time when the ability to record and playback music didn’t exist – such things were magical fiction no one had seen. So, the idea of playing one channel of recorded sound, then two channels, had to be invented. Artists hadn’t created something called an “album” until there were devices that played back […]

Hand Puppetry: "Fine" by Virgilio Villoresi is Literally Handmade Motion; Shifting Perspective

“Fine” is a delightful, poignant short film by Italian filmmaker (and CDM reader) Virgilio Villoresi. It tells, says its creator, the story of the “birth, life and death of a soldier, represented on a hand (mine).” No, there’s nothing especially digital about this – but also nothing stopping you from using this kind of minimalism […]

Hand Puppetry: “Fine” by Virgilio Villoresi is Literally Handmade Motion; Shifting Perspective

“Fine” is a delightful, poignant short film by Italian filmmaker (and CDM reader) Virgilio Villoresi. It tells, says its creator, the story of the “birth, life and death of a soldier, represented on a hand (mine).” No, there’s nothing especially digital about this – but also nothing stopping you from using this kind of minimalism […]

Dead Frogs Dancing: A MIDI-Controlled, Underwater, Reanimated Frog Ballet (Creepy)

Take MIDI remote control, electrical impulses fed to the twitching corpses of dissected frogs, and add water. What you get? Creepy-as-hell “zombie frog ballet,” in a work sent to us by a reader. The work of Shanghai, China artist LuYang (apparently now living in Japan), you can at least take comfort in the fact that […]

MeeBlip SE: Making Our Open Synth Hardware Better, More Available, Starting Now

The original vision of the MeeBlip was to make something affordable, something open and hackable, something anyone could get, something that could tell a story, and something we’d use to make some music. And since those are all goals of Create Digital Music, too, it’s a perfect physical compliment to what we do. For me, […]

Colored Cubes Light Up in Responsive DJ Stage for "The Paranormal Unicorn"

So, you probably think that you can bring out a massive array of colored LED boxes, have them pulse hypnotically to your music, and dazzle us, because we love color and light. You’re probably right. CDM reader Stefan Yazzie writes: A few friends and I created this audio-visual DJ stage to accompany our live shows. […]

Colored Cubes Light Up in Responsive DJ Stage for “The Paranormal Unicorn”

So, you probably think that you can bring out a massive array of colored LED boxes, have them pulse hypnotically to your music, and dazzle us, because we love color and light. You’re probably right. CDM reader Stefan Yazzie writes: A few friends and I created this audio-visual DJ stage to accompany our live shows. […]