Like the modulars themselves, an upcoming documentary on these analog synth beasts has been lurking behind closed doors. But that won’t be the case for long. “I Dream of Wires,” the crowd-funded documentary that probes artists’ fascination with making music by connecting patch cords, will see a public showcase at Montreal’s MUTEK Festival. This and […]

These green things, for once, are the stars, in Data Garden Quartet. From the installation version in Philadelphia. All Data Garden photos courtesy the artists. “On lead synthesizer, a philodendron …” (And the crowd goes wild…) Vegetation may not be the first association you have when thinking of electronic music. But two new albums, each […]

A look at a Buchla, up close, from Messe in March. Some of the most innovative modules – and certainly some of the strangest parameter and module labels – have come from this designer. And for lovers of all things Control Voltage, a coming event in New York seems a don’t-miss. You could almost call […]

We remember Adam Yauch today on Create Digital Music, with the help of Network Awesome. It’s doubly appropriate to talk video, as MCA was also the Beastie Boys’ filmmaker. Our friend Benton-C Bainbridge did live visuals with Beastie Boys. He remembers Adam by sharing, at my request, some of his visual work with the band. […]

In moments that would have pleased Belgian surrealist René Magritte, an ordinary paint roller transforms a litany of European landmarks with video “paint.” Roll on, and it’s as though someone has punched a hole to another dimension. This isn’t a post-production effect: it’s all live, via computer vision and projection mapping. The project is the […]

By popular reader demand, CDM remembers Adam Yauch this week, teaming up with our friends at Network Awesome, who dig deep into the archives for some video gems. Peace, Adam, indeed. Try http://networkawesome.com/2012-5-11 if the video above isn’t loading for you. It’s not hard to understand the impact of the loss of Adam Yauch, aka […]

Today on Create Digital Music, we examine DeFunct/ReFunct, the latest installment of a touring (Ireland, France, Germany) collective working with repurposed, rescued refuse technology: Art From Trash, as ReFunct Media Makes a Symphony from Obsolete Gear [Videos] The group works both in sounds and image, so here I’ll echo what I say there in visual […]

For all you hear about the primacy of visual culture, you might not expect a Web service exclusively focused on sound to be a big hit. SoundCloud, however, has seen meteoric growth, hitting 10 million users in January. Its interface, however, hasn’t quite grown and matured at the same pace. We’ve seen a lovely-looking new […]

Jam. Far out. The artwork of Lionel Williams served as backdrop for a set of live jam sessions. It’s a question so elemental in music, you might forget to ask it: what can you get out of a (music) jam? Electronic music worldwide is dominated by the DJ, the dance party. That, in turn, often […]

As ubiquitous in our lives as the digital landscape of sites like Google Maps can be, they’re in some sense private space. They strip our world of human beings (or freeze them in strange, invasive shots taken by roving vans), and put that space in the exclusive hands of private publishers. (Or, at least, one […]