Diaspora is an attempt to build a social network that contrasts with the locked-garden vision of Facebook, one built on open source software, open exchange of information, and distributed – rather than centralized – communication. I already let slip that we’ll be rebooting our own social endeavor, Create Digital Noise, in the new year. But […]

What happens when projection mapping and stop motion come together and make sweet, visualist love? Watch “Suburbia,” the charming, percussive music video, populated by mysterious birds and aquatic dino skeletons, to find out. The ingredients: VJ app Vidvox VDMX plus easy Mac map-anything tool MadMapper. Robert Jarvis explains how he did the video for band […]

What happens when projection mapping and stop motion come together and make sweet, visualist love? Watch “Suburbia,” the charming, percussive music video, populated by mysterious birds and aquatic dino skeletons, to find out. The ingredients: VJ app Vidvox VDMX plus easy Mac map-anything tool MadMapper. Robert Jarvis explains how he did the video for band […]

You’ll find plenty of contact mic tutorials floating around the Web, but bassling (Jason Richardson) – working with a learned technique – has what I think is a really nice example, one that sounds really good. It’s easy to do, but unlike a popular tutorial (and one I’ve tried myself), you won’t wind up dis-assembling […]

When we last saw Onyx Ashanti, he was speaking of a grand vision to remake himself into a music-performing Tron. Now, the elements of that vision are coming together, with a crowd-sourced funding campaign that ends today, Friday. Update: Apparently after seeing this story, IndieGogo extended the funding deadline for five days, with the new […]

On US soil today, it’s Thanksgiving. I’m over 3600 miles away, myself, from the place that began as home this year in New York, but ready to celebrate a day off anyway as I take in Eindhoven’s STRP Festival and prepare for performing on Saturday back in Berlin. But whether you’re in the US or […]

Julian Oliver’s “Föhnseher” spies on images on a wifi network, then “broadcasts” them to that older, less “pull”-based medium, the analog television. Have a look at the demonstration, as made by fellow media artist Servando Barreiro. Föhnseher rises from the scrap heap of analog TV. Unlike other televisions, Föhnseher captures and displays images downloaded by […]

I tend to tune out when it comes to sample libraries, but here’s one that takes the scripting capabilities of Native Instruments’ Kontakt sampler to extremes. The Grid Machine line developed by Lindon Parker (Channel Robot) and distributed by LoopMasters brings to Kontakt the sort of grid-based, sliced-up sample manipulation we’ve seen in the monome […]

Exploring the connection of the mechanical to sound, UK-based artists Stephen Cornford and Paul Whitty make reclaimed tape machines into instruments. All images courtesy LEAP. In performance and art, sound and music constantly pull against the formless abstraction of the computer, to find physical expression and realization. In physical control, in tangible production, and in […]

Dig into humanity’s past, and alongside the earliest tools, you’ll find some of the earliest instruments. Designing objects for expression seems to be an essential part of civilization. Martin Kaltenbrunner, a co-designer of the Reactable tangible music interface, is also a professor in Interface Culture at the Linz University of Arts in Austria. There, in […]