Last Days of Compact Disco: Album Lovers Hand-Make Musical Objects

While Mac blog TUAW calls on Apple to kill optical drives (does Apple need that kind of encouragement?), the shiny digital compact disc and the album in general still have their devotees. Sure, album sales are down. Sure, digital downloads are in. But look beyond business or practicality for a moment at these exotic hand-constructed […]

Hypnotic Projections and Light Art from the Mapping Festival, in Videos

lights.bac.mapping from Jerome Monnot on Vimeo. The Mapping Festival is an event dedicated to being a “laboratory for the VJing discipline,” a visualist extravaganza of light and performance. Founded by the creators of Mac VJ app Modul8 and Zoo/Usine, the Fest has just released a couple of videos of this year’s installment, held earlier this […]

Cakewalk SONAR X1 Rethinks Windows DAW’s User Interface

Cakewalk’s SONAR has always been a compelling choice of DAW on Windows. Under the hood, its 64-bit processing, 64-bit mix engine, balanced complement of editing features, and quite-nice array of instruments and processors has held enough appeal. But then there’s the interface, which hasn’t held up to the tools underneath. Being pretty isn’t only cosmetic; […]

Create Analog Motion: Lomography + LC-A Stop Motion

It’s crowd-sourced stop motion: twenty UK-based photographers equipped with Lomography LC-A+ 35mm film cameras (and a bit of Super 8) took to the streets of London’s Soho to shoot some film. In this age of faux-analog (hello, Instagram and Hipstamatic iPhone apps), it’s nice to see the texture of the real thing, complete with unexpected […]

Preview: Indamixx 2 Tablet to Offer Mobile Music, Multi-touch, MeeGo Linux

Photo courtesy Indamixx. Touch form factors make sense for music creation on the go: a mobile tablet with finger-based interface seems ideal for performance and travel. In the fast-evolving hardware, though, it’s tough to work out exactly what will be a hit and what will be a flop. Multitouch tablets have splintered in two – […]

Barbie Video Cam Versus Canon 7D, Toys, and Relativity

Canon 7D vs. Barbie Video Girl from Brandon Bloch on Vimeo. Ah, the eternal debate over what constitutes a “toy.” We’re again seeing it as musicians snap up the cheap, smartly-designed keytar for Rock Band 3. (That should make a nice visual controller, too, though perhaps visuals are really the perfect application for the guitar.) […]

8500 Years of Istanbul's History, Played Out Against a Building, and Amping it Up

‘YEKPARE’ (monolithic) from nerdworking on Vimeo. From over the summer, here’s a dazzling visual narrative set out against a train station in the town. It also answers a point made recently in comments. The impact of projection mapping is indeed greatly dimmed when projectors fall short on contrast ratio or brightness. This work, on the […]

8500 Years of Istanbul’s History, Played Out Against a Building, and Amping it Up

‘YEKPARE’ (monolithic) from nerdworking on Vimeo. From over the summer, here’s a dazzling visual narrative set out against a train station in the town. It also answers a point made recently in comments. The impact of projection mapping is indeed greatly dimmed when projectors fall short on contrast ratio or brightness. This work, on the […]

AmpliTube 2 for iPhone, as the Handheld Music Workflow Gets Clearer

AmpliTube 2 arrives today with new effects, recording, bounce to audio, export/import, practice tools, and in-app purchase of extra stomp modules. I’ve been playing with a pre-release version for the last few days. Combined with an audio interface like IK Multimedia’s own iRig, AmpliTube 2 turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a handheld, pocket-able […]

Free Code Sketching, Anywhere: Processing, Pd from Android to iOS to Desktop

Paper, wood, and traditional media aren’t tied to one vendor. They don’t require licenses or agreements. They aren’t, generally speaking, incompatible. If digital art is going to provide artists with the same freedom, it stands to reason that artists working with computation will find ways to make any pixel their medium. Processing is a good […]