Image courtesy Machine Orchestra. Ed.: From modern electronica to South Asian Classical music, machines to humans, the Machine Orchestra is doing fascinating things with electrically-powered, digitally-manipulated, physically-robotic music. Here’s more about what makes the ensemble tick. It’s been nearly three months since I had the opportunity to guest blog here on CDM about a project […]

Rapid Projection Mapping System from Kyle McLean on Vimeo. Kyle McLean is quick. He’s apparently quick at connecting together visual wonders in the multimedia patching environment vvvv, and he’s now focused on an environment that allows augmented projection to be “sketched” quickly onto surfaces. That speed doesn’t mean laziness, though: it means the ability to […]

Photo (CC-BY-SA) Brandon Daniel. Open source hardware may not sound like something that would produce a huge musical hit – unless you’ve met the x0xb0x. A clone of Roland’s legendary TB-303 bassline generator, the open version offered not only greater afford-ability than the now-rare antique, but expanded possibilities for hacking the hardware into a musical […]

With May fast approaching, garage sale season is kicking off in the US. For the DIY crowd, that means a lot of digging through piles of obsolete technology in the hopes of finding something useable, then bargaining with the seller to pay as little for it as possible. This year, you can add 3.5″ floppy […]

Maschine’s hardware controller, which assigns dedicated physical control to the software’s functions. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Dmitriy G./droptune. “Feature creep” is a tricky thing. We all say we want tools that focus more on what we want rather than just add features. But some functionality is there for a reason. When Maschine came out, Native Instruments’ take […]

Ask a machine to emulate human creativity, and at the very least, you’re guaranteed to learn something. Modeling creative rules and intuitive algorithms as generative code is itself an eminently human activity – think of it as interactive theory. And where the computer fails to sound like a human, you learn something, too. Improv-Visor is […]

Shoes are the new turnables. Or at least that’s the conclusion you might reach after watching a new Japanese campaign for Nike’s Free Run+ running shoes. Apparently wishing to tout the bendable qualities of its new footwear, Nike enlisted sound artists to transform its product into a musical instrument. The shoes get plugged in, switched […]

What’s New in Resolume 3.2 from Resolume on Vimeo. Resolume 3.2 is now out in the wild; this all-in-one audiovisual performance app for Mac and Windows continues to improve. (The most recent convert I know: Flying Lotus, better known for his music than his visuals, is having a blast.) The big news in 3.2 on […]

In this bold, new future of computing, we don’t need USB or ports, huh? Wait – scratch that – you may have your iPad and your USB, too, after all. Photo (CC)