Its been an opportune few weeks for visualists in Europe, with a spread of three festivals all with their own take on the field. Here’s a quick tour through the eyes and itinerary of one *spark.
Late at Tate: The AV Social; 4th April
NODE08: Forum for digital arts; 5-12th April
Mapping: VJing and Audio-Visual Festival; 10th-20th April
Vision’r: Festival VJ; 17th-20th April
Resolume 3 & Freeframe 1.5
On the horizon: Visual Berlin and Live Performer’s Meeting

When did you make your first electronic composition? Andrew Cordani points us to a find on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog — a CD compiling high school students (and a seventh grader, in the first example) composing electronic music between 1968 and 1984. Brian Turner at WFMU notes that right now the way to get […]

While we’re looking at things Nodal: The Sandin Analogue Image Processor (or IP) is an impressive looking device, and is demonstrated by a man in an impressive looking hat. (If you’re impatient, skip towards the end for some analogue video trippy colour coolness) There is so much beauty in this video: The hat. Analogue versions […]

We will have more extensive coverage of this coming very soon as Toby*Spark brings us a write-up of the Node08, Mapping and Vision’R festivals. However, for those who like their news to be the breakingest: Le Collagiste has some stills and video of Resolume 3 at Vision’R, running natively in OS X on a Macbook […]

Despite the many gigs I’ve played in my time as a VJ – including over 80 in the last year of touring – I am yet to record my output on a single live show. It sounds terrible, but I know I’m not alone in this: Both musicians and visual performers I’ve worked with tend […]

There are pioneers and artists — and then there are people whose impact is great enough that they become inseparable with the history of a medium. Bebe Barron, along with husband Louis Barron, was far enough ahead of her time that her ideas remain futuristic today. The Barrons didn’t just produce the first full-length electronic […]

With talk of instruments like the Tenori-On, and looking to the future of tangible interfaces for music, it’s worth exploring past designs, as well. Take Don Buchla’s Music Easel — concocting sounds with this rare 70s instrument was a matter of plugging, touching, and patching. Digital sounds and music sequencers do plenty this can’t, but […]

Updated: Let me sum this up. Ableton may or may not have a vocoder in the works (signs actually do point to yes on that). The best part of this story is the remixed “no one needs a vocoder” video, which encapsulates electronic music’s current love/hate/cliche relationship with the thing. And other than that, there’s […]

Hidden as an extra, Mario Paint Composer was one of the first software creations to meld music creation with game. It’s been a novelty favorite among 8-bit fans — not really a serious tool, but a curiosity nonetheless. But that requires a copy of Mario Paint. Now you can get the Mario-infected goodness on your […]

Via our forums, April 22 is the magic release date for Max 5: Max 5 release date [Create Digital Noise] And if you’re lucky enough to be near Bellingham, Washington this week, you’ve got pretty good odds on winning the upgrade, plus a 100% chance of checking out some cool stuff. Atomic Afro, CDM regular […]