Inspiration: Fluid, Organic Forms, in the Generative Narratives of tsaworks

Martin Böttger (tsaworks) sends along a beautiful 3D audiovisual concoction, with generated tendrils that drift in and out of light as though they are suspended in fluid, synthetic ribbons of jellyfish tentacles. I asked Martin to tell us more.

Guerilla Sculptural Visuals: An Intervention with Sol LeWitt, a Backpack Projector

Buckle up and project: that was the mission of a group of art “interventionists”, firing guerilla projections at the public installation of artist Sol LeWitt in Manhattan’s City Hall Park. The weapon of choice itself is one of interest: a self-powered mobile projection rig means live visuals can appear anywhere. The production team describes the […]

Loops as Sketches of Guitar Pedals, in Multitouch Table Music Design

Working in open source code for any platform, Brazilian artist and developer Jeraman has produced a charming project that imagines musical interfaces in dynamic, whimsically-simple sketches. Like doodled knobs, cartoons of guitar pedals, interactive devices on the touchscreen control musical activity. And because it’s open, cross-platform code, everything from a computer-powered multitouch table to an […]

Future Shock: The Emergence of Detroit Techno, Told by Wax Poetics

Derrick May in the Michigan Theatre parking garage, 1988. Photos by Bart Everly. Reproduced courtesy Wax Poetics. In the words of Yogi Berra, the future ain’t what it used to be. Drawing from futurist philosophy and the machine aesthetic of bands like Kraftwerk, the moment at which techno comes into the world is a seminal […]

Final Cut Pro X: Macworld Review, Information and Resources, Free Tutorials

Courtesy of Apple. A mind-boggling number of words have been spilled around Apple’s Final Cut Pro X release. I won’t add to that editorializing here, but I will point to some information that I think can help you make sense of the new software, some of its promise, and some of the issues that are […]

Video as Message: Seeing NYC's Chaotic "Three-Way" Streets

In a great example of video’s power to tell a story and send a message – particularly when embellished visually – design student Ron “RonConCocaCola” (School of Visual Arts) presents documentation of just how chaotic a single New York City intersection can be. There are some especially bad moves by cyclists, though motorists try their […]

Video as Message: Seeing NYC’s Chaotic “Three-Way” Streets

In a great example of video’s power to tell a story and send a message – particularly when embellished visually – design student Ron “RonConCocaCola” (School of Visual Arts) presents documentation of just how chaotic a single New York City intersection can be. There are some especially bad moves by cyclists, though motorists try their […]

Entering the Third Dimension: One Evocative Take on Real-Time Music Creation with a 3D Interface

AudioGL, a project teased in videos first in April and then again last week, is a new concept in designing a user interface for real-time music creation. Visuals and sound alike are generative, with the rotating, 3D-wireframe graphics and symbolic icons representing a kind of score for live synthesized music. The tracks in the video […]

Like a Dubstep Lawnmower Man: Free Kinect Tool Combines QC, Ableton

Some of us move freely between the real and virtual dimensions, can make dubstep basses just by moving our spine, and shoot flames out of our hands naturally. For everyone else, there’s this. Ryan Challinor, whose day gig is as a developer working on Dance Central, apparently just couldn’t get enough Kinect hacking at his […]

Spectral Layers Audio Editor Focuses on Editing Sound Visually, a la Photoshop

Can editing sounds be as easy as editing pixels in a tool like Photoshop? That’s the question asked yet again by an audio editor, in the announcement of a new tool called Spectral Layers, seen in a new teaser. Visualizing sound is not a simple problem, but you can do worse than the spectral view. […]