Generative physics animations in Illustrator most certainly fall into the “because it’s there” / “for no very good reason other than it’s possible” category. But the results are hilariously awesome. See above, Adobe fans. The tool behind this is very cool, too. Processing lovers who don’t already know the insanely great toxiclibs library – and […]

In a competitive show of virtuosity, artists at an event in San Francisco over the summer battled to show that live electronic and laptop performance can be physical. It’s dance music that makes the artist sweat, and not just the audience. Hosted by the new Controllerism.com blog with San Francisco’s LoveTech and Slayer’s Club communities, […]

Now, aside from making fake volcano simulations, you can actually get some recording done with this stuff. Science! Photo (CC-BY-ND) Rodrigo Huerta. Need a new mic to play with? Maybe you should raid your kitchen pantry. London-based musician Leafcutter John writes us to share a detailed tutorial on cooking up new mics from common household […]

Numerology is a sophisticated Mac modular step sequencer, capable of brewing patterns from simple to elaborate using combinations of note-making building blocks. It’s also a powerful host, opening up signal routing and modulation to AU plug-ins. Version 3.1, released this week, may be a “point” release, but its two additions are significant. First, it’ll run […]

It’d be silly to write a long post about an (extremely) short film, so I’ll just say this. Sometimes, I open my inbox, and I see an email that says nothing other than this: Hello! Just want to show some gypsy motion graphics Thanks! — Best, Pavel I won’t make any further introduction. Gypsy motion […]

God Bless Russian engineering. As of this summer, it’s the only ticket to and from our space station, via a capsule that Just Works. It gaves us the very first electronic instrument (thanks, Professor Theremin). And it gives us an insane music tracker slash production tool slash soft synth selection slash modular hosting environment that […]

Developer Alex Zolotov has been producing fascinating experiments for the iPhone. Today, we’re covering updates to Alex’s SunVox production tool, on iOS and desktop alike, but this pair of iOS tools deserves its own post. I could try to describe them, but there’s little to say that can’t be clearly seen in the video: you […]

Scratching, meet recycling. Rather than allow MIDI DJ controllers to consign themselves to landfills, a new open source project promises to retrofit these gadgets with scratch capabilities. Scratch Decoder is a collaborative, open source effort to add or extend obsolete controllers, CDJs, and turntables with digital vinyl control – before they get tossed. Inspired by […]

What began as a simple branding project for a pharmaceutical company evolved into beautiful, generative imagery, produced by a custom tool. Built with Processing (and the controlP5 library), the Actelion Imagery Wizard takes parameterized drawing to explode and reintegrate particle-driven illustrations of DNA, and faces, in what the designers call, neatly, “digital molecules.” The project […]

Compose and sound designer Diego Stocco, seen often in these parts, has an endlessly-inspiring approach to inventing new timbres. That process of, as he puts it, “bringing music into the process of creating sounds” is sometimes destructive – as in, sawing an instrument in half destructive. It seems often at the edge of obliterating the […]