We’ve seen fairly impressive work involving people waving their arms around at cameras, but at the end of the day, you still have people … waving their arms around at cameras. In a refreshingly different take, the world of the game Mimicry is the “ultimate sandbox game” – set in a literal sandbox. Participants manipulate […]

This goes to ele—augh, no, aside from over-compressing, we need to stop overusing that joke. Photo (CC-BY) Orin Zebest. You’ve heard the gripes, and heard and seen the somewhat unscientific demos. Now it’s time to examine the over-compression of music with – science! Earl Vickers of STMicroelectronics examines the Loudness Wars in an academic paper, […]

From the previous bounds of the proscenium tradition – the flat, rectangular space defined by screens and theaters – audiovisuals increasingly sprawl into surround. One superb example comes to us from Seppo Gruendler of Austria. The project combines multiple “surround” technologies across multiple media. Projection is mapped across screens for wraparound visuals, but sound, too […]

From the previous bounds of the proscenium tradition – the flat, rectangular space defined by screens and theaters – audiovisuals increasingly sprawl into surround. One superb example comes to us from Seppo Gruendler of Austria. The project combines multiple “surround” technologies across multiple media. Projection is mapped across screens for wraparound visuals, but sound, too […]

From the intrepid grid-playing monome producers comes a whole bundle of goodness: a free album, and along with it, a nice video that illustrates what’s happening on some of the tracks, some reflections on how 15-second samples can bind together a community of music makers, and even, as a bonus, some tips on running Windows […]

Games have modeled various mechanisms for conveying win and failure, and in particular some abstract simulation of your life force being sucked gradually as you make mistakes. But GlitchHiker is different: play poorly, and it’s not your virtual avatar that dies. The game dies. And following gameplay at the Dutch Game Jam that created it, […]

Cakewalk’s Z3TA+ has long been a favorite virtual analog / waveshaping soft synth, so much so that it consistently hits top 10 lists of software classics, even as it’s been (in past, at least) a Windows-only offering. Years, later, though, it’s most definitely due for an update. Cakewalk has released a video of what’s in […]

Producer Sam Greene was so in love with Aalto, the semi-modular, Mac and Windows soft synth whose developer we profiled last month, that he made his own place to share patches for it. Patches are free to download and use in your music, and you can upload your own; the only restriction is that the […]

For a very different aesthetic take on the United States’ Independence Day celebrations, here’s electronic producer Steve Nalepa joining visualist superstar Johnny de Kam for a collaboration. I find it makes for some nice, chilled-out Monday, July 4 inspiration, wherever you are – no marching-band bombast required. Nalepa has been sharing his Ableton skills with […]

Speaking of sound design, here’s a nice weekend diversion for you: “140 dB” is an experimental short film, combining sonic acrobatics with digitally-synthesized motion spectacle, that meditates on the “interaction between sound and physical bodies. The main idea is to show how sound can change objects form and structure including human mental state.” Thanks to […]