Macworld has a quick review of Photoshop CS3, which mentions the new Animation (Timeline) tools. Photoshop Extended can import video files, and importing a video is as easy as adding a new layer and selecting a movie, which shows up as a Video Layer in the Layers panel. Importing is very quick in Photoshop Extended, […]

Every time Bjork drifts in a musical direction you don’t love, just wait. Her latest collaboration, Earth Intruders, with Timbaland producing, sounds utterly fantastic. Listen closely, and it’s also deeply disturbing, a bit like the violent lyrics of the early-century Italian Futurists (check them out if you don’t know them), but set in a terrifying, […]

It’s a huge disappointment: the best eye candy on earth causes blindness. And it’s a little hard to see, even as our closest star. Enter NASA, with the solution: the first-ever stereo three-dimensional images of the sun. STEREO: First 3-D Images of the Sun NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) satellites have provided the first […]

Live visual instruments often lack that … certain something. Other than occasional oddities like the Livid Viditar, generally visual performance instruments just don’t have the panache of musical instruments. The solution: pack a bunch of hardware into the body of a white-lacquered grand piano, of course! (What, that seemed like a logical leap?) As seen […]

Native Instruments has tweaked their Elektrik Piano, finally adding Universal Binary support for Intel Macs. Unlike the Vokator and Spektral Delay updates, though, there are some new features for everyone to enjoy. The samples are the same, but everything else has gotten an update:

Imagine every single piece of gear you have on your wish list. Then imagine a baby grand piano, lacquered in white. Then imagine — you know, for the sake of practicality — you want to use the piano as a projection surface. And sound system. And then imagine you just mash all those ideas into […]

Max Mathews and 50 Years of Computer Music “Fifty years ago, in 1957, at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Max Mathews demonstrated that the digital computer can be used as a fantastic new musical instrument. He created a revolutionary software platform destined to form the basis of all contemporary digital musical systems. His audacious ideas were driven […]

I’m boarding a Greyhound bus for Boston and the Ideas in Motion weekend of Boston Cyberarts, two packed days of events on dance, motion, interactive technology, artificial intelligence, and augmented bodies: Boston Cyberarts Festival 2007 – Ideas in Motion: The Body’s Limit If you’re in Boston, stop by and see us! I’ve been preparing two […]

Next week in Brooklyn I’ll be collaborating again with MAKE:Magazine, Etsy, and Popular Science. This month’s theme: paper. Paper Projects Night [makezine.com] Even if you’re not in the New York area, if you’ve got a paper-based music project of some kind — instruments (working) made out of paper, interactive paper sculpture, whatever, drop me a […]

Pictures of cats and blogging are a cliche — but that cliche happens to be true. And it extends down the long tail (ahem, so to speak) to our little niches. Yes, there really is a blog dedicated to pictures of cats and synths. Not weirded out yet? Via Matrixsynth earlier this month (and evidently […]