Digital memory, circa 1960s NASA, would be unrecognizable to us today. But it is digital. Photo contrasts an Apollo memory core (back) with modern avionics circuitry. Photo (CC-BY) Steve Jurvetson. The always-thoughtful Marc Weidenbaum of Disquiet picks up on my tongue-in-cheek comment, in which I question my own wisdom in dubbing this site “Create Digital […]

Visual Music Collaborative 2010 from Aaron Meyers on Vimeo. Aaron Meyers and Aaron Koblin, each with their own background in expressive code and the connection of music and visuals, offered a terrific workshop last month at the Eyebeam research center here in New York. They involved Ghostly International, a label that has enlisted designers, interactive […]

Squarepusher plays Rome in April of last year. Photo (CC-BY-ND) funkoolow. To take us into the weekend, here are some favorite online music releases this week to download, stream, and enjoy. Be sure to click over to the site if you’re on RSS for the included players if they’re not appearing.

Handmade Music returns August 29 to New York City – now in Manhattan at the new Culturefix space on the Lower East Side. Beginners, this is your chance to learn about electronics and sound making, with a newcomer-friendly workshop on making a photo-theremin – and yes, you’ll even learn to solder. (Like knitting, you’ll find […]

For all the wonderful tools and toys for sound out there, sometimes you want to find the couple of tools that, like a great kitchen knife, can accomplish the majority of what you actually need. (And as with the kitchen knife, while it may not eliminate your desire for all those other gadgets, it’s worth […]

a story of light from Jerome Monnot on Vimeo. Just two minutes in length, a teaser from a new documentary on the Mapping Festival encapsulates the growing range today’s visualist can cover. Far from look-alike video loops projected on narrow rectangles, that gamut extends to mapping and human performance that explodes the screen, from advanced, […]

Japanese fusion “underground music unit” Human Boot Project have a clever take on the music video, one that – well, let’s face it, probably appeals only to music production nerds like us. Using the free/open source software Gawker (Mac-only screen capture, not to be confused with thegossip blog), they take an extended timelapse of their […]

2010, meet 1984. For all the wonderfully-futuristic qualities of the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, electronic musicians have reason to scoff now and then: sometimes you want to be able to plug into good, old-fashioned, physical MIDI hardware. Line 6’s MIDI Mobilizer is a nifty little gadget that provides MIDI input and output via the […]

Artists know essential gear when they see it. Never leave home without your Moogerfooger, and your banana. Dan Deacon, surrounded by gear. Photo (CC-BY) Andrew Braithwaite. “Moogfest,” more than just a showcase around a brand, is an event that invokes one of sound’s greatest pioneers, Robert Moog. For a lot of artists, that’s a pretty […]

Pinhole photos date back to the genesis of photography, but artist Pierre-Olivier Boulant is re-imagining them as digital media. Working with custom, hand-built control hardware and software patched in the free visual development environment Pure Data (Pd), he composes live performances from the photos, working with musicians to create a live soundscape. A chemical engineer […]