Straight Outta Slovenia: PIXXELPOINT Documentary Video on Digital Media Fest

PIXXELPOINT 2011 from aljoÅ¡a abrahamsberg on Vimeo. Via AljoÅ¡a Abrahamsberg, an extended, 30-minute documentary of the PIXXELPOINT media festival reaches us, covering the happenings of this international digital media festival out of Nova Gorica, Slovenia last month. Not all in English, but more than enough English and images to look at. I also love their […]

Richard Lainhart, Prolific Composer and Artist, Dies at 58; Links to His Work

Richard plays Handmade Music in 2007; full video at bottom. I’m saddened to learn of the death of Richard Lainhart, the New York-based composer and artist who has been inseparable from the experimental electronic scene for many years. I knew Richard to be a gentle and imaginative soul, an inventive technologist, someone capable of dreaming […]

The 10 Most Popular Stories on CDMotion in 2011: Our Augmented World

In code and 3D models, in live visual performance and augmented architecture and dance, in VJ sets and futuristic 3D demos, shows and games, visualism extended to new ways of transforming perception. For just one slice of what happened this year, entirely by the numbers, here are the stories that scored the most page views […]

2011 in Music Videos, in One-Hour Megamix

Got an hour? A bit behind on your music video watching for 2011, or want to revisit some moments? Renier Mouthaan mixes together music videos of the past year, along with some news, in case you forgot which year this was. (I forgive you.) I’m always impressed by the completionist impulse in this sort of […]

2011 in Review: CDM’s Top 30 Most Popular Stories – The Envelope, Or Analytics, Please!

2011 has seen sweeping changes in technology and music, alongside the loss of titans Max Mathews and Tsutomu Katoh, two pioneers of our world. Some of these stories passed quietly; some with great fanfare. Here, we reveal those stories that attracted the greatest number of Internet eyeballs, a metric not necessarily of importance but certainly […]

Music in the Key of monome: From Samples, a Community Makes a Free Album

Keys open doors to creative music making in a community-led process. Photo (CC-BY) Cassie / Angelandspot. What an extraordinary thing an interface can be, a map to making music. A new community-generated album from users of the now-legendary monome grid instrument yields a variety of musical outcomes. The results are instrumental and lovely, breaking off […]

Melting Reality, Perception-Warping Projections, Stereoscopy from Apparati Effemeri

In a stunning, surreal set of tests, our friends at Bologna, Italy-based Apparati Effimeri are using stereoscopy and projection mapping to muck with the fabric of what you perceive in a garden or architecture. The results would make Dali go buy a six pack of beamers. There’s little to say other than to have a […]

Modular Mega-Roundup: Some of the Greatest New Stuff in Analog+Digital Eurorack for Musicians

In action, a Eurorack module by superb builder MakeNoise, with whom we caught up in March in a get-together in Austin, Texas. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Andreas Wetterberg. Modular music making is a throwback to the early days of electronic music, in which a spaghetti of patch cords is the price of open-ended sound creation. Fairly or […]

Shuffling, Slicing, and Glitching Audio, and Other Modular Max for Live Devices

For fans of slicing, dicing, glitching, reversing, and shuffling incoming audio streams, this Max for Live Device is for you. Shuffler 2.0 is the latest in a series of “modular” Max for Live devices from developer Isotonik Studios. Mappable to MIDI, the suite of Devices focuses on simpler tasks in ways that can be combined. […]

Inside Phaedra, the Analog-Style MIDI Sequencer for iPad

I’m not sure how everyone who owns an iPad uses it for music, but I find myself strangely drawn, more than anything else, to analog step sequencers. With MIDI connections – via a special interface or a standard USB MIDI interface connected via adapter to the tablet – you can even drive hardware. For me, […]