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. […]

FreeFrameGL Effects Pack; More Platform-Portable Visuals to Come?

You’ve found a cool effect. It makes use of your GPU. Why shouldn’t it work in more than one place? And why shouldn’t you be able to easily port standard-format effects in code-for-artists environments like OpenFrameworks and Processing? With a new plug-in pack and further progress on development, FreeFrameGL promises finally to deliver on just […]

Émilie Simon, Making Homemade Sessions in Her Apartment

Émilie Simon is a fantastically-talented artist with a unique background: her work now falls clearly into pop territory, but her lineage is just as much experimental and classical. Conservatory training gave way to time at the avant garde nerve center of Paris, IRCAM. IRCAM’s Director, Cyrille Brissot, still plays alongside her – more on his […]

Fresh Work From Beeple! 3D Sound Robots with Instrumental Video Nine

Hey, everyone! Look, there’s a new video from Beeple! instrumental video nine from beeple on Vimeo. Now, some background: We’ve been following the awesome Beeple, AKA Mike Winkelmann, since back in the day. He even gave an interview to Momo about his techniques in FL Studio, Vegas and After Effects. This new piece continues the […]

A LEGO Sequencer, Imaginary Electronic Antiques, and Other Yoshi Akai Creations

Artist and design Yoshi Akai (no relation, as far as I know) treats analog electronics as an art form, a sculpture, an instrument, and an exercise in interaction design, all wrapped in the velour of vintage hardware design. For everyone who misses the deco elegance of meticulously-engraved surfaces and tastefully-appointed enclosures of early-century electronics, Yoshi’s […]