Disney Research is apparently releasing all their latest inventions at once. The most dazzling, atop the air-interaction-feedback project we saw earlier this week, uses captured light field data to transform ordinary photography into the basis of three-dimensional scenes. Say wha?: This paper describes a method for scene reconstruction of complex, detailed environments from 3D light […]

This story has been updated based on an FAQ and official response to CDM from the Cornell University Library, responding to some of the concerns. The not-for-profit Bob Moog Foundation has been working since the synth pioneer’s death to restore and make accessible his archives, undertaking preservation efforts, mounting exhibitions, and recently acquiring a space […]

The essential quality of electronic music is, in some sense, collage: drawing from multi-track recording, it is defined by the ability to put things together in records or performances in new ways. The contents of that collage need not always be drum machine beats or synthesized alien sounds. And so, many artists draw from a […]

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of traveling to Taipei, Taiwan for Computex, where Acer was promoting its latest touch hardware. Normally, I’d ask whether there was reason for musicians and DJs to care. But this time, the computer maker is hoping the passion around music will be a factor that woos users to […]

A color grid you can carry in one hand, with physical controls and full RGB – and the option of wireless and batteries, so you can walk around while adjusting lights or projection? Oh, and it’s modifiable, available fully made or as a kit, and completely open source hardware? Yeah, that sounds about perfect. On […]

“Pro” is a funny word. When people say “pros” in contrast to “amateurs,” “producers” rather than “consumers,” they mean something about relative seriousness. And in tech, they usually invoke these words when they’re looking down on tools they feel aren’t up to snuff. That’s fair. Especially in music making and digital art where money is […]

Propellerhead’s latest cheeky tutorial makes no apologies. Reason 7’s Audiomatic Retro Transformer is, they say, the equivalent of tapping a filter on a phone camera app like Instagram, bundling lots of different sound attributes together into a single push-button setting. Ironically, their example is a send-up of the distinctive sound of Daft Punk’s poppy, fuzzy […]

Blast from the past: this color organ is from 2007. But it’s a beautiful demonstration of light and sound, fused into a single interface, and thus worth mentioning as I pull together notes for a talk at Mapping Festival tomorrow here in Genève. Compare the 60s-vintage Lumigraph of Oskar Fischinger, which I write about today […]

We make music through objects, whether instruments or machines. And so we have this relationship between our ideas and those objects, between our imagination and the imagination of the people who built them. Talking to Keith Fullerton Whitman about his suitcase of modular gear, then, wasn’t just geeking out. It was a chance to understand […]

Avid has announced Pro Tools 11, the latest version of their flagship DAW. There are no whiz-bang features in this upgrade; instead, it seems Avid was solely focused on performance. Those improvements look promising; real-world performance is one of those things that makes the biggest difference in day-in, day-out use. The engine rewrite is joined […]