Mixed Up – Beat Blender and Mixmaster 1200 from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo. Matti Niinimäki is back DJing with flea market, broken appliances as physical interfaces – and the whole project is getting better and better. We saw an early prototype of the Beat Blender, a re-purposed Osterizer with fake fuzzy fruit that stand in […]

The Arduino isn’t quite an deal choice for a live generative visual computer – but it can do some gorgeous things with signals. Sebastian Tomczak has a gorgeous hack (as seen via Limor Fried) that manipulates RGB data lines with the Arduino. You connect horizontal and vertical sync signals, then go to town. The Arduino […]

Experimenting in the projection lab; photo: hc gilje. videoprojectiontools, the powerful and intuitive Max/MSP/Jitter-developed Mac and Windows tools for projection mapping, just got a nice update. The new version has OpenSoundControl (OSC) support – and yes, despite the “Sound” in the acronym, it’s really more like Open … Control. Max is not required to use […]

Closing out our (unexpected) Week of Optical Flow feature, Michel from the vvvv forums has ported Andrew Benson’s optical flow implementation to that DirectX-based, Windows-only, free for non-commercial-use patching environment. (Jitter and Quartz Composer, mentioned earlier, each use OpenGL, not DirectX.) Since it is DirectX, the shader uses HLSL instead of GLSL. In technical terms, […]

For lovers of the simplicity and fun of the Casio VL series, a successor seems is finally here. The Operator-1 (OP-1), even in prototype form, has us hot and bothered more than anything we’ve seen recently. We’ve been able to snag some additional details. MusicRadar got a video with the creators, though you won’t learn […]

Scenes from the Live 8 launch event in Berlin other Live 8. Actually, Live 8 will totally make you feel like eight men. Ableton, you can quote me on that on your press clippings page if you like. (Pictured: Live 8, the relief event, no relation to Live 8, the software.) Live 8 is now […]

Should sounds be part of a closed format that may not last? What happens if the format and platform that once were trusted by musicians and sound designers ceased to be? That’s the hard lesson learned by users of a popular sampling “standard” – but for once, the news is good. GigaSampler has been a […]

Novation has unveiled their revised SL line of controllers, dubbed the SL Mk II. The changes are subtle, but significant. Looks awesome: Fatar semi-weight “fast touch” keyboard action Touch-sensitive controls for immediate feedback on the LED screen Buttons are now backlit Encoders are ringed with red LEDs Dedicated buttons for enabling Automap and switching modes […]

GPU HSFlow port to Quartz Composer from vade on Vimeo. The Live Optical Flow Processing continues. Anton Marini, aka vade, is working on his own Quartz Composer patch, which will in turn be integrated with the visualist software he’s assembling, v002. More details once we get them, but you can see how nice parameterizing this […]