After a delicious multi-course meal of short alphabetic animations earlier this week, here’s more of the charming and inventive work of Japanese animator Mirai Mizue. At top: Various scenes of predation. All creatures have to eat each other in order in order to survive. His first professional work. A complete version is included in [MIRAI […]

What a lovely coincidence that tape, originally a recording medium, works beautifully for distortion and saturation. Whatever the reason, tape saturation is a popular effect. If you want subtle, pristine saturation, there are various meticulous models of high-quality studio equipment. That was one topic in our interview earlier this week with Universal Audio’s Dr. David […]

Strap in – this may be one heck of a ride. Photo (CC-BY) François Rejeté, of Coney Island’s Topspin (perhaps part inspiration)? Like the aspiring artists themselves, there’s an abundance of Web services with big dreams of stardom. Most will fall into obscurity, and wading through them is a big chore. And then, love them […]

On Create Digital Music today, I note the availability of Warp’s 1991-2002 collection of Autechre EPs. With prices at US$30-50, every single version – even the MP3-only download of the set – also comes with music videos. That elevated the release to must-buy for Motion readers, too, because it includes three landmarks of music video […]

Max for Live, in action: a graphical programming environment inside Ableton Live. Photo (CC-BY-ND) akihiko.japan Max for Live, now into its second year, is a tool with an ambitious goal: take the custom music software creation, visual-patch-programming powers of Max/MSP, and put them inside live performance and production host Ableton Live. It’s not the only […]

Rob Brown and Sean Booth, aka Autechre, remain one of the most forward-thinking acts in electronic music; going back to their work from a decade or two ago feels less like history and more like futuristic artifact, a musical seed from space unearthed in a cornfield somewhere and about to rip your throat (or ears) […]

Endangered species? Maybe. Worth double-checking you can do online distribution, if you haven’t already? Definitely. Photo (CC-BY) Adam Jackson. Memo to music software developers, artists and labels distributing music, and anyone else who uses optical drives: stop assuming they’ll always be there, because they won’t. Talking points: Netbooks and tablets already lack optical drives. With […]

In the realm of digital motion and pixel animation – albeit extremely low-resolution – here’s the clock for the open source lover, a hackable bedside clock that can be programmed to display custom animations. From random dots to Pac-Man cameos, it’s a clock that breaks from stock, coded by you instead of Sony. And there […]

These drums need a new hit. Photo (CC-BY) Nathan Forget. There’s no more brutal opponent than elevated expectations. At least, that’s one explanation for the recent meltdown of the triple-A music gaming franchises. Harmonix, company that gave birth to the modern instrument genre saw both of its creations hit hard times in recent weeks. Activision […]

On Create Digital Music, amidst lots of hacks for listening and creation at the Music Hack Day here in New York, two teams focused on Kinect. Those creative instruments easily stole the show from more conventional social music tools. At top, Stringer, a simulated instrument that uses Kinect for input; at bottom, Bionic DJ, a […]