RIP: Walter Sear, Synth Guru and Studio Legend

Walter Sear addresses the AES convention in 2001. Photo courtesy the Audio Engineering Society, used by permission. It’s the end of an era: pioneering synth guru, engineer, sound designer, instrument importer, composer, producer, and owner of the landmark Sear Sound recording studio in New York has died at age 79. Sear’s career covered almost everything […]

Visual Interlude: Mixing Like Oil and Water – And After Effects

VISION from Drasko Vucevic on Vimeo. Musician Drasko Vucevic of Barcelona and Toronto sends us this lovely bit of work. It’s a real tank of water, real oil, shot real-for-real – then manipulated to heck. What’s interesting to me is that the process for the sound design mirrors the process for the visuals: recordings of […]

Meet Cinder: Free Barbarian Group Code Framework Produces Stunning Work; Q+A

Cymatic ripple from flight404 on Vimeo. It’s a beautiful age emerging for people making art with code. Tools like Processing and OpenFrameworks are as much about a philosophy and way of life as a specific tool. They’re not only about free and open code, but lightweight syntax, pulling together libraries that make media “just work,” […]

What Are Students Doing with Pd for Interactive Visuals? Plenty

Via the Pd announce list, a class of students are doing some pretty sophisticated experiments in design and interaction using Pd. I tend to have my own students focus on Pd for sound-making (since it naturally lends itself to signal flow) and use Processing for visuals (some are also using OpenFrameworks), but I’m impressed with […]

Ambient Audiovisual Osmos Game on iPhone, Linux

Osmos, the game that couples particle physics-based, absorption gameplay with a beautiful soundtrack (available in near-entirety here on CDM for free), continues its march to new platforms. iPhone and iPod touch users will soon get a handheld version, and a free port to Linux means you can play the desktop game on all three desktop […]

Flying Lotus Album Art, Come Alive: Fieldlines, Free Interactive Art App

You’ve heard the lamentations before: album art died with the move from the large canvas of the LP vinyl record to the CD. Well, eat your heart out, LPs: album art is back, it’s interactive, and it’s trippier than ever. Just ask Flying Lotus. Fieldlines is a free Mac and Windows application that creates an […]

Mobile Motion: iPad VGA Output Explained, Live in an App

Apple’s iPad-to-VGA Dock Connector adapter hasn’t exactly been a home run for consumer end users, who have been disappointed to discover that applications don’t mirror to the output automatically and DRM-ed content won’t play. That has caused the device’s ratings to plummet on the Apple Store, and Engadget had this to say: Apple iPad Dock […]

Video Editing, Coming to the iPhone (And Other Mobiles?)

NAB ’10 – Vericorder 1st Video from Hand Held Hollywood on Vimeo. You probably don’t need anyone to sell you on this dream: imagine editing videos on the road, without a computer. That’s the promise of Vericorder, an iPhone app Hand Held Hollywood captured at the NAB conference. (Found via Palm Sounds, which of late […]

Flight Patterns Visualization, Revisited in a Volcanic Age

Aaron Koblin’s 2006 Flight Patterns was one of the works that helped people to understand how data visualization, in motion, could matter – and why Processing was a powerful tool for making data visual. That, in turn, landed the project everywhere from Wired Magazine to the Museum of Modern Art, and helped raise the visibility […]

Listening: Paul Croker’s Sampled Vinyl MPC Collage, PublicSpacesLab

Photo (CC-BY) Hryck. / Todd. Barcelona-based, Los Angeles-edited PublicSpacesLab is an example of what a netlabel can be. Instead of just another dumping ground for sounds, it feels like a well-curated cafe, pairing regular but thoughtful releases with reflections on music making. Everything is Creative Commons-licensed, free music, from a variety of artists spanning geographies […]