Magazine Cover Opens Imagined Worlds: Augmented Reality Publishing, Free Code

Boards Interactive Magazine – Walkthrough from Theo Watson on Vimeo. Augmented reality has inspired plenty of experiments, magazines included – some successful, some failing to get far beyond the gimmick. What’s nice about this work is that it introduces the concept of motion to the typically-static pages of print, and inspires readers to imagine a […]

One Man Band Watch: Gestures, TouchOSC, Pure Data, Breath Control, Oh, My

Every so often, I’m reminded of a simple fact: the greatest machine on the planet remains the human machine. So, yes, it may seem strange to one of the uninitiated to imagine strapping an iPhone to your wrist. And yes, musicianship in the digital age is partly about triggering, not just playing (though Onyx can […]

Single Shot Superheroes: OK Go on Winning at Internet Video. Jaymis on Creativity

Just in case you’re one of the few people on the planet who hasn’t yet encountered OK Go’s “Rube Goldberg Variation” video of This Too Shall Pass, let’s get that out of the way: As far as I’m concerned, OK Go are winning at internet video. From the self-conscious genius of A Million Ways, iterating […]

Music Game Revolution, Now Indie Friendly, as Rock Band Network Goes Live

They are the robots: Flight of the Conchords. Now, you are the robots, too, as Rock Band Network opens the indie floodgates to the music-distribution-as-game model. (And yes, you’ll get to sing along with the Conchords, too.) Photo (CC-BY-SA) kris krüg. Music games Rock Band and Guitar Hero are simple enough in terms of gameplay, […]

This Week at the Game Developer Conference, San Francisco, Push the Button

What can you do with this? Game designers and artists find out this week at GDC. (Pictured: my own submission, up close.) Why should Create Digital Music and Create Digital Motion (and, well, their editor) go to a game conference? This year, in particular, the annual gathering of game developers in San Francisco means a […]

OSC, Kyma, iPad, and Beyond: Your Networked Musical Future

Connecting stuff is one of the things musicians naturally do with gear. So, there’s really no reason that musical gear shouldn’t network as easily as Web servers. And yet a basic protocol, built largely on existing standards, meets with responses like this: “We’ll support OSC when there’s hardware out there.” “Name one piece of hardware […]

Mu, Lemur + Ableton Live Integration, Revealed – and Other Lemur Sequencers

We already knew that one Next Big Thing for the Lemur – the specialized multimedia multi-touch controller – would be Ableton Live integration. Having teased that coming functionality, JazzMutant has now revealed the name (“Mu”), as well as a video showing what the features look like. What’s funny to me is that the result is […]

Shared Inspiration: Beeple Talks Process, 3D Sound Robots, Work to Watch

We got to once again enjoy the work of Beeple aka Mike Winkelmann this week with his Instrument Video Nine, featuring a new batch of 3D sound-making robots. The work landed him on the top of Vimeo, and rightfully so. Mike now shares some of his work flow All the (wonderful, hand-rawn) pictures by Mike […]

Renoise 2.5 is Here, Making Your Mac, Windows, or Linux Box an Instrument

“It looks alien at first, it looks scary … [but] it’s like, here’s your paper; be creative.” “A tracker basically turns your computer an instrument.” -Dac Chartrand, Renoise, trying to explain Renoise to those who haven’t yet gotten religion Renoise 2.5 is here, for real – not a beta, a nice, golden, final release. The […]

Musical Sewing Machines, Electronic Honky-Tonk, and Handmade Music NYC Monday

Sewing together music: designer and techno-textile artist Lara Grant constructs music with a modded sewing machine and Max. Lara is one of the artists playing Handmade Music in New York next week; stay tuned here for more behind the scenes of what those folks are doing. Photo (CC-BY-SA) See-ming Lee. Before evolutionary adaptation comes mutation. […]