Laptop performance gigs: MOMUS displays one (atypical) way to present your live performance persona. We forgot the “Find a way to keep your face warm” tip. Photo by Tamara Weikel, taken in a Chelsea (NY?) gallery. Getting good gigs is a challenge for all genres, and it touches even more issues when computers are involved. […]

A Casio in Iraq Ok, not technically a synth, but check this out. It’s a Casio AT-40 with Arabic labels spotted in Iraq of all places. Via Daniel: “A casio AT-40 with arabic lettering that I spotted in Hewler/Arbil in northern Iraq in december last year. I should have bought it!” Yeah he should have. […]

It’s really a pity The Video Case is a tongue-in-cheek design project from the Museum of Lost Interactions and not a real product. Yes, I know, we’re supposed to laugh at how this not-actually-from-1979 design is so primitive compared to our fancy-schmancy video iPods. But consider the design achievements here: The rigid suitcase protects from […]

Vienna-based design firm GP designpartners sponsored the FRONT musical interface design as part of its annual student thesis project. We’ve certainly heard these promises before for alternative interfaces: “a really new music instrument — without using classical paradigms. an instrument for new sounds, that gives the musician the possibility to express himself — even live […]

Perfect for barbeques, says Hercules. This (sadly, wireless DJ-free) barbeque via Flickr, by Adactico. Yes, just in time for the summer grilling season. Hercules — known in the 80s for their video cards and more recently as makers of a rather flimsy DJ controller — have introduced a toy-like wireless DJ controller. As a serious […]

Great sample libraries usually give you painstakingly-recorded collections of equipment and instruments to which you lack access. It’s a chance to get into someone else’s kitchen. Usually, that isn’t literal. In this case, it is. Welsh’s Synthesizer Cookbook has taken hundreds of samples of cookware from a US$5.95 price to free, providing kitchen sounds for […]

Musical activists are opposing a Japanese nuclear reprocessing plant. What’s in it for you: free musical downloads opposing contamination by nuclear radiation. (Any pro-radiation readers will have to look elsewhere.) Nuclear reprocessing is a way of reclaiming spent nuclear fuels. Sounds great, right — recycling and whatnot? Unfortunately, there are serious risks involved. The plant, […]

What has type got to do with motion? Plenty, if you listen to Erik Spiekermann. Type is rhythm, and rhythm is how you read meaning. As you first start to watch clips from the documentary Helvetica, you’re initially unaware that its ubiquitous star is staring you in the face. Then, it’s everywhere, generic yet insistent, […]