The Rutt-Etra modular video synthesizer may be an early-1970s relic. But it’s an expressive visual instrument that seems even more contemporary and timeless today than when it first appeared. So it’s fitting that a new music video makes its intricate generated analog eye candy the star. Set to Nalepa’s track “Daytime,” the work – by […]

Photo: Marsha Vdovin for CDM. Remember when electronic sound gear hid in hulking, rack-sized cases? Korg’s Kaossilator series had already begun shrinking the desktop KAOSS Pad gear, but even the first-generation Kaossilator wouldn’t fit in your pocket, given its square shape and corners. (Well, unless you were wearing overalls.) The Kaossilator 2 and Mini Kaoss […]

processing to MadMapper via Syphon [Test] from espadaysantacruz studio on Vimeo. Wish you could get Modul8 to take an input from some other tool, so that in addition to playing videos, you could “insert” custom visuals as you play? Wish you could VJ with Processing – without giving up your VJ tool, too? Wish you […]

Music is deeply tied up with motion; seeing that in a machine is somehow satisfying. Soundmachines, from the enigmatically-titled Berlin studio TheProduct*, is an interactive physical installation made from optical turntables. By moving the “tone arm” – really in this case an optical sensor attached to an extended mount – you can change rhythms and […]

We’ve seen lots of fancy projection maps, sculptural creations, and elaborate architectural facades. But sometimes, you just want to get rid of those awful seams when using a couple of projectors. And that can make all the difference. Enter Blendy. This friendly, simple Mac tool sits between two visual applications and gets rid of those […]

Continuing our insight into this view into electronic music performance and art through the lens of BodyControlled in Berlin, we’re joined by guest writer Kristin Trethewey. Kristin, a Canadian-born video artist and curator, takes another look at LEAP and BodyControlled, on the eve of its second installment. She gets straight at the question of what […]

With a nod to the forms and shapes of analog-generated imagery, but fully digital, here’s another digital type project. Buchstabengewitter (perhaps translated “Letterstorm”), by Ingo Italic, uses generative patching to imagine type that emerges from three-dimensional clouds of geometry. It comes to us from the research laboratory at Letters are my Friend, the Berlin type […]

True to their roots in metal, stone, and wood, typography is generally imagined to be fixed in place. It’s hardly the sort of thing you’d imagine transforming in time, the way you would a musical utterance. Yet the Meek FM Typographic Synthesizer defies that convention. The 2007 project, designed by Rob Meek and Frank Müller, […]

Alex Nowitz for BodyControlled #2 from CDM on Vimeo. Electronic media artist Mario de Vega (Mexico City/Berlin) says his work plays with the creation of “unstable systems.” As part of the official Vorspiel, or lead-up, to Berlin’s massive Transmediale festival, here we get to visit two artists working with the materiality of live performance, drawing […]

“Wayne Gretzky and Spiderman are at the door, and they brought cake!” Speaking to the Eyeo visualization festival in Minneapolis, digital artist and designer Jer Thorp (aka blprnt) shows what’s possible with visualization and data as a medium. As the Data Artist in Residence at The New York Times and teacher at NYU’s ITP, he […]