Music for Dieter Rams: Alarm Clock Becomes Melodic, Minimal Treat; Music and Good Design

Tuning into the design aesthetics of Dieter Rams. Here, a Braun RCS 9 radio design, photograph (CC-BY-ND) by Ruper Ganzer. Composer/producer Jon Brooks has a love piece for the Braun AB-30 alarm clock, and its iconic designer Dieter Rams, entitled, appropriately enough, “Music For Dieter Rams.” “Every sound on this record, from the melodic sounds […]

Impossible Architectures, in Real-Time Music Visualizations by Abstract Birds (vvvv)

The ultimate compliment to a visualization of music would be giving the unseen structure, changing the perception of the music not only by granting it visual embellishment, but producing a new experience of the composition that fuses sight and hearing. Abstract Birds, working with French new media organization Arcadi, legendary Paris digital research center IRCAM, […]

Party Like it's the End of the World: Eclectic Method Apocamix

Audiovisual superstars Eclectic Method hop on the apocalypse bandwagon, resulting in a rockin’ audiovisual mix that can get your Judgment Day parties started right. Although, as I keep having to correct people, this is technically the Rapture that some say will be happening this weekend, not the full blown “end of the world.” That leaves […]

Party Like it’s the End of the World: Eclectic Method Apocamix

Audiovisual superstars Eclectic Method hop on the apocalypse bandwagon, resulting in a rockin’ audiovisual mix that can get your Judgment Day parties started right. Although, as I keep having to correct people, this is technically the Rapture that some say will be happening this weekend, not the full blown “end of the world.” That leaves […]

Vinyl Poised to Make Further Gains; Time To Ask, “What Does it All Mean”?

Kids today, with their new-fangled desire to listen to music cut into grooves on big circular platters… Photo (CC-BY) Matthias Rhomberg. At first, it seemed like it might be just a blip: amidst generally declining sales of physical music, down sharply from their 1990s boom, vinyl sales were trending up. The reversal started with a […]

Planetary Exploration: 3D Warping with Unity Game Engine + OpenFrameworks + Syphon

Now you’re thinking in spheres. We’ve been covering Syphon since its introduction – see a recent interview with co-creator Anton Marini. The idea is to give visual apps on the Mac the ability to pipe textures from one app to another, as simply as you’d connect sound signal on a computer or in a studio. […]

Design to Address Visual Performance in Music, Explained by a Giant Robot Face

Computing technology is an inherently disruptive thing, wonderfully so. It solves problems you didn’t know you had. It creates problems, then creates new problems in even trying to understand those problems. Simply using a computer is a kind of design statement. You’ve seen questions about what happens with computer performance and audience interaction. But, in […]

Amon Tobin Releases Live Tour Trailer, Dates; Can Computers Break a Sweat?

Okay, I’m not sure the computers can break a sweat (at least not without some serious consequences). But all the people projection-mapping generatively sequencing live audiovisualism electronic thingamabops sure are working hard in the above teaser video for Amon Tobin’s live ‘ISAM’ show. Not a lot of cities get to see the results, but those […]

Nodal Music Making Hands-on, as Creative Compositional Worlds Meet Synth Laboratories

What’s a “lab,” anyway? For music, any number of tools – software or hardware – can become gateways to creative musical explorations. Chris Stack joins us again to look at Nodal, Mac/Windows software that generates musical patterns from graphical maps of nodes, alongside hardware explorations. Along the way, Chris has some reflections on composition itself. […]

iPad 2 Goes Native: 1920×1200 Output with Thicket; Devs, How to Add This To Your Apps

Joshue Ott, media artist and designer and the visual developer of Thicket for iOS, joins us for a special guest post. First, he shows off the ability of the iPad 2 for full-blown, better-than 1080p HD output, at native 1920×1200. For developers, he also demonstrates how to get the same results. Why does this matter? […]