Bug Squash: AlexP on MacBook Vista Audio Problems, Other Wifi Adapters and DPCs?

I love the sound bugs make when you squish them under a solution. AlexP, whose blog is also a great source for multitouch and the Sony PS3 Eye Camera and Windows drivers we used in the recent hackday, has been diagnosing his MacBook under Windows Vista. Hardware problems are often the source of sound blips […]

99 Bottles of LEDs on the Wall… Bottle-Drive Display Tech

Bottle wall (no sound) from Alex Beim on Vimeo. Organic LEDs? Interactive visual fabrics? Bah. The future is BOTTLES, man. Alex Beim sends along this lovely-looking display made from bottles illuminated by LED lights, which makes for the Official CDM Saturday Diversion Post. (Um… yeah, the first and last of those.) The real lesson: if […]

Video: Novation Automap for iPhone, with Ableton Live

Automap on other devices – and an iPhone as a remote control for your Live set? Our friend Ben Rogerson at MusicRadar have caught up with the chaps at Novation at a London trade show to have a look at Automap for iPhone. This app hasn’t yet hit the App Store yet – Hispasonic and […]

RED Digital Camera, Meet Sony Vegas 9: First Impressions

No, you’re not imagining things. That is in fact 4096-pixel-wide footage you’re editing, right in Sony Vegas. What happens when digital cinematography meets a favorite desktop video editing app for mortals? When our friend Nathanaël Lécaudé, also a talented multitouch developer, said he had encountered some work with RED, I was really curious to know […]

Musical Machines, Piano-Playing Typewriters, Plastic Cups, and Invisible’s Physical Music

Greensboro, NC-based art music band Invisible are indiscriminate about technology – in a good way. Plastic cups, keyboards, typewriters, machines controlled by robotics, if it’s in the trash or at a thrift store, it has a place in the band. Sequences are executed in physical, radial player instruments, without a controlling computer anywhere in site. […]

Microsounds: Compressed Sound Art to Amuse, Shock, and Confuse

Digital technology has the power to transmit information more efficiently, to make the invisible visible, and to express new things. It can also be pushed so far to the limits of actually transmitting information to be meaningless. It can push well beyond what we can even perceive in a useful way. What’s bizarre and wonderful […]

Ableton Live 8: Group Clips with Track Groups

If you’re using Ableton Live 8, you’ve hopefully already discovered the joys of Track Groups. Track grouping is a welcome feature in any DAW, but in Live, the mixer-centric Session View can easily get unruly with endless columns of vertical tracks. I wanted to share some discoveries about Track Groups, including what I thought was […]

Projecting, Reflecting: 10 Minutes of VJ-Visualist Documentary

CTRL ALT SHIFT – from V.I. Artists on Vimeo. Michael Faulkner of D-FUSE says the most interesting thing in this video: it’s when technology becomes redundant that it’s accepted as art. Photography gets invented, and suddenly painting – a business and a craft for centuries – is “high art.” (Don’t ask, incidentally, about what late […]

Turntablism in the Digital Age: DJ Jungleboy with Stanton SCS.3d; Open Scratch Scripting

Want to reignite interest in DJs who actually use their hands and fingers to slice up and juggle sounds? A cavalcade of “laptopists” is the ticket. Suddenly, at least in some corners, people are again interested in turntablism. It’s nice to see how a controller can integrate digital loop and cue points with a setup […]