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? […]

Fermid: A Light That Breathes, A Kinetic Sculpture Like an Organism

Fermid, by Behnaz Babazadeh, is a beautiful kinetic sculpture that acts like a breathing organism – or perhaps a colony of parametric creatures. As the artist describes it: Fermid is a kinetic sculpture that uses technology and parametric design principles to explore the natural movement that can be found in living organisms. Special Thanks to […]

Good Watching: Synth Interviews, British Synth Artists, Musical Pioneers from Detroit to Berlin

Pour some port, find a comfy spot on the couch, and fire up the YouTubes. A surprisingly-rich raft of terrific documentary video for synth and electronic music enthusiasts has been making the rounds. In our queue: Analog Suicide interviews a legendary vintage synth spot in Berlin, an hourlong documentary features not only Richie Hawtin but […]

Resolume, VJ + AV Software, Turns 10 with Half-Off Discounts; A Video Look Back

Resolume, the VJ app – now really a live visual and audiovisual tool – has turned ten. The developers this week look back at that landmark, and reveal the first-ever license owner, the Dutch VJ team Vision Impossible. The original Resolume interface – now available as a free download. They’re making the original Resolume 1.0 […]

Sound, the Final Frontier: Audio Collections as Planets in Space, Intelligently Related

Two spacey ways of finding media: music collections, heirarchy, and images of planets in Planetary for iPad, top. Sound and loop collections, “magnetic” relations, algorithmic categorization, and rapid torchlight auditioning in Soundtorch 2.0 for Windows, bottom. If your music and sound collections seem like outwardly-expanding universes, two new tools promise to bring order by representing […]

Image to Sound with Quartz Composer; Mapping Goodness; Euphorie Live Act Review on CDMusic

The crew at French-native collective 1024 Architecture are giving us plenty to write about. Working to hone their chops in mapping, generative projection, and audiovisual performance, these artists embody the Renaissance in these fields. First, they point earlier this spring to a brilliant Quartz Composer plug-in that intelligently maps sound to generative visuals, the work […]

With Neon Guitars and Immersive Projection, 1024 Architecture Become Audiovisual Rock Band

Euphorie live at the Elektra Festival. Photo courtesy Elektra. When a brainy, abstract audiovisual act can elicit some laughs and cheers, you know something is going right. Euphorie, the live music and projection act by François Wunschel, Fernando Favier, and stage designer Pier Schneider of the collectives 1024 Architecture and EXYZT, isn’t brand new. But […]