1893 Columbian Exposition, Chicago, and Vikings — basically a convergence of things I take geeky historical pleasure in. Reproduced from Stanley Applebaum’s The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, p. 51.  Snagged by Karla Kaulfuss, via Flickr. Daedelus remains one of my favorite electronic music personalities. A virtuoso of his hand-built Monome (the early prototype) dressed […]

We covered a source for cheap visualist miscellany last week. It included cheap NTSC CMOS cameras, but unfortunately DealExtreme doesn’t seem to stock much PAL gear. I had gone looking and placed an order with another site, but didn’t want to recommend it until that order had arrived intact. That order has arrived intact. The […]

Crystal Castles: now under fire for abusing a Creative Commons license on a chiptune track. Photo by Oliver J. Lopena: oliverlopena.com. (And CC-licensed, via Flickr.) As using sounds produced on unusual 8-bit systems and game consoles grows in popularity, some artists are appropriating the music as their own. Sometimes, as with Beck, a well-known or […]

Scratching began as a practical means by which DJs could cue records. (So say originators like Grandmaster Flash; if you’re interested in the history, check out the fantastic documentary Scratch — trailer above.) But something about the gesture, the mechanical feeling of scratching, and all that history has made the turntable compelling as a controller. […]

A bank of faders, a touchpad, and then … it just does anything you want. Even today, the idea of a fully-integrated visual instrument is a pretty profound concept. Ableton’s creators thought about the design of the Synclavier digital synth (the rival of the CVI’s music sibling, the CMI) when designing their software. At least […]

A bank of faders, a touchpad, and then … it just does anything you want. Even today, the idea of a fully-integrated visual instrument is a pretty profound concept. Ableton’s creators thought about the design of the Synclavier digital synth (the rival of the CVI’s music sibling, the CMI) when designing their software. At least […]

I’ll be doing a two hour workshop in Boston on Processing for a conference on graphic design in education. My goal: get a group of educators and students unfamiliar with the tool up to speed as quickly as possible. I’m assembling a “90-minute” Processing code kit for the purpose, indebted to some of the existing […]

Whether in three-dimensional videos or paper sculptures, artist Martin Böttger manipulates organic, fluid geometry like a child with blocks. An artist working with Maya, vvvv, and Processing, his work demonstrates that even simple elements can yield a variety of creative products. “Transformer” is an intentional nod to the robots and movie — with good reason; […]