Visual programming or “patching”, producing custom software by connecting on-screen objects with patch cords, until recently had only niche appeal. The domain largely of academic computer musicians, patching was scoffed at by computer science departments and unknown to everyone else. Lately, though, something very strange has been happening: this technique, popularized by experimental music synthesists, […]

A box covered with buttons and lights can be much more. Such it is with the Monome, the open source controller for music and multimedia. Beloved for its simplicity, the Monome continues to earn fans. The original 40h is gone, but as we’ve seen here, a new line of models is coming to satisfy your […]

We’ve got some fantastic people coming tomorrow night to the event at Etsy Labs, co-organized by Etsy, Create Digital Music, and Make. If you’re in the area, hope you’ll be one of those fantastic people! And bringing along cool projects — whether it’s a Reaktor or Max patch or a hacked-up QWERTY keyboard or a […]

I’ve had 2 rented Draper Cinefold screens with me on the tour. These are relatively expensive collapsible screens which we got a good deal on for a 3ish month rental. Unfortunately their former life at dance parties outside in the elements had left them with some pretty serious battle scars. One of the screen frames […]

If you’ve been waiting to take the plunge with Ableton Live but couldn’t quite shell out the cash, Ableton wants to talk to you: the new Ableton Live LE runs US$149-199 and includes a pretty significant portion of the features in the full version. This is not “Live Lite”, the stripped-down version that is bundled […]

Wow. Pretty nerdy sounding, but this technology is quite impressive, and could be incredibly useful for aspect ratio conversion, object removal, rescaling, etc. The object removal is very very impressive. I can think of a bunch of interesting uses for this, especially if you artificially mess with the weights for effect only. Id love to […]

The Keepon is a cute, yellow robot that dances to music you may have seen bopping on YouTube. It shows how subtle changes could make robotics friendlier in the near future. Foremost among those changes: show a little skin. By wrapping the robot’s armature with soft, rubber skin, the Keepon is both squeezable and more […]

Apple’s latest GarageBand 08 is nothing if not pretty. It remains a fun way for Mac users to get their feet wet in music making, and hopefully, simple as it is, something like Magic GarageBand will include users to brave the GarageBand icon that comes factory-installed on their Macs. But what about serious music making? […]

M-.-n aka discodirt from Arkaos land shares what happens with a camera with a dead CCD. I love (digital) trash: The camera in question is an old, “crappy” Minolta DiMAGE X20. See, why can’t my gear break in interesting ways? All I get is something that refuses to turn on or a tape eject mechanism […]

3D goodness means getting cozy with your local graphics API — and getting ready to nerd out in a big way. OpenGL continues to progress with a major overhaul. It’s a way off, but you’ve still got lots of eye candy with OpenGL 2.1. So … if you’re not Electronic Arts or Bungie, is there […]