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 […]

Sneaks are a good thing. Photo (CC-BY) Pink Sherbet Photography / D. Sharon Pruitt. Let’s start with what’s really important: Chris McCormick’s squeakyshoecore tunes may well make you tap your All Stars and smile. The words “algorithmically-generated acid” and mention of the multimedia patching environment Pd might not suggest feel-goody, cheery, geeky-sounding electronic grooves, but […]

A tower of plastic, and a photographic reflection on the strange physical form music took at the height of the CD. Photo (CC-BY-SA) William Hook. Can music as a physical object have value and meaning again? For many music enthusiasts, that affection has turned back to the vinyl record, not the CD. (How many artists […]

It’s about time to tear up New York City with creative projection mapping, and The Architectural League in New York has a spectacular venue to do it. On September 25, the League’s Beaux Arts Ball descends on the Audubon Terrace complex, an extraordinary setting with various nooks, crannies, and galleries. [See photo gallery] From the […]

All photos courtesy/(C) Alessandro Cortini, for CDM. Call it cable addiction. Italian-born musician Alessandro Cortini, known for his live keyboard work with Nine Inch Nails, retreated into the studio with classic and contemporary Buchla modular synths to make “SONOIO.” Guided by his uniquely personal compositional style, he was able to wrangle that mess of chords […]

Visualization often wins out over sonification when it comes to making data clear. But sound has one key advantage: it can make time and scale apparent, by tapping directly into our perception of forward time. Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto, born well into the Nuclear Age in 1959, uses that property to chilling effect. The sounds […]

prettyugly from madbutter on Vimeo. Brooklyn-based interactive artist Robert Stratton writes to share his interactive, modular LED display system, currently on view through the end of August in a window on 53rd Street in Manhattan, between 5th and 6th across from the Museum of Modern Art. The project uses proximity sensors built by Sensacell. This […]

Is it time to get a round tuit? Photo (CC-BY-ND) Denise Mattox. For this book review, we welcome guest writer Andy Farnell, who himself has a terrific book on interactive sound design and free modular patching environment Pure Data, entitled Designing Sound. It began as a review of a book on using free software – […]