Projection Mapping for a Cause: Obscura’s Cube of CO2

CO2 Cube from Obscura Digital on Vimeo. It’s an older project, but no less timely: speaking of Obscura Digital’s work, they’ve also employed projection as a way to illustrate in tangible terms a serious issue. You’ll hear climate scientists speak in terms of metric tons of emissions. But because we can’t see those emissions, and […]

With Just One Contact Mic, Any Surface Magically Becomes a Gestural Instrument

Look around the room you’re in. Drum your fingers against some of the objects around you. Now imagine that you could turn those touches into any imaginable sound – and all you’d need to play them is a single contact mic. And we’re not talking just simplistic sounds – think expressive, responsive transformation of the […]

United Arab Emirates Architecture Brought to Life with Light; Behind-the-Scenes Details

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Projections from Obscura Digital on Vimeo. Illuminating the facades of United Arab Emirates mosque and historical architecture with extraordinary imagery, Obscura Digital transformed these structures with visuals both decorative and cultural. It’s a visually-rich celebration of Arabic and Emirati culture, and one of the developers – absurdly-prolific artist and geek virtuoso […]

Straight Outta Slovenia: PIXXELPOINT Documentary Video on Digital Media Fest

PIXXELPOINT 2011 from aljoša abrahamsberg on Vimeo. Via Aljoša 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 […]