Off-Topic: Deadmau5 Eats a Giant Epic Meal Time Tower of Grilled Cheese

North America: it’ll kill you, m***********. Sure, you know what the United States can do to destroy your taste in Dubstep, and how it likes to roll without health insurance. And you probably think USA when you think fatally-unhealthy cuisine. But meet USA’s neighbor to the north, Canada. The country that takes cheese, fries, and […]

Two Visions of Instruments from Björk: An App with MIDI, a Gamelan-Celeste with MIDI

Sometimes, images and video can say far more than words, and it’s best to stand back rather than ramble on. (Cough, ahem.) From Björk this year has come two visions of how to make new instruments. The Biophilia software for iOS is an interactive rendition of the album. As apps, you have the curious separation […]

Moog’s iPad Synth Arrives, Looks Great, But is iPad (and Moog) Hype Crossing a Line? [Editorial]

Moog Music’s synth Animoog is out today. Synthtopia gets full credit for being first; James concludes with the question “time to buy an iPad?”: Moog Animoog – The ‘First Professional Synth For The iPad’? I’m looking forward to playing it and having some time to work with it, and fully expect to make some actual […]

Csound For Live: Powerful Sound Creation in Ableton, With or Without Any Coding

With great power comes great learning curves – or maybe not. Csound for Live, just announced this weekend and shipping on Tuesday, brings one of the great sound design tools into the Ableton Live environment. You can use it without any actual knowledge of Csound, without a single line of code — or, for those […]

In 36,000 Photos, Melting Ice Animations Set to Silky-Smooth Mimi Goese + Ben Neill Music

It’s hard to say enough good things about the music video for “Persephone” by Mimi Goese and Ben Neill, so let’s keep it short: 40 blocks of ice (25 L of water), in 40 timelapses of four hours, are strung into some 36,000 photos of stop-motion animation. Stop motion might just rest on its visual […]

In Max 6, Big Banner 3D + Animation Features for Jitter, Alongside Usability Improvements

We’ve been waiting for some time to learn what was next for Jitter, the 3D, matrix data, animation, and video side of Cycling ’74’s Max 6 graphical multimedia development environment. (Phew!) The wait is now at its conclusion: Cycling has released details of what’s changed, as well as an extended video sneak preview above worth […]

Dot, a Winner-less Video Game, Sports Spare, Lovely Retro Audiovisual Art

At first glance, the visuals seem mysterious and almost intentionally obscure. Then, as you watch the dance of pixellated artwork in “Dot,” you see moments of strange, lonely beauty. Brazilian-based audiovisual artist and regular reader Henrique Roscoe (aka vj 1mpar) writes us to describe his work: This is an audiovisual performance with synchronized sounds and […]

A Look at the Enduring Berlin Scene, in Latest Lovely Resident Advisor Film; Hope

In August, the Resident Advisor film on Detroit gave us a chance to reflect on that city’s cultural response to economic catastrophe. To talk about a city that has seen sweeping change and challenge, it’s difficult to beat Berlin. Resident Advisor released the third installment of this series in September, but I missed it as […]

Max 6 in Public Beta; For Home-brewing Music Tools Graphically, Perhaps the Biggest Single Update Yet

Above: Cycling 74’s just-released video highlights enhanced audio quality; our friend, French artist protofuse, has a go at working with the beta and showing off the new user interface. (See C74’s official take on the new UI below. Max 6 in Public Beta; For Home-brewing Music Tools Graphically, Perhaps the Biggest Single Update Yet Just […]

IK Release iOS SampleTank, iRig; In Demo, Your Post-PC Future?

IK Multimedia this week is shipping both their SampleTank virtual instrument and iRig hardware MIDI interface for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It’s not the first software instrument for iThings, but it is arguably the first appearance of a major, conventional computer soft synth in mobile form. MIDI interfaces, likewise, would require a comparison of […]