Do Androids Dream of Electric Synths? Imagining an instrument from a clean sheet of paper is an essential part of the design process. It can remind us of the extent of possibilities – and, sometimes, why compromise is necessary. The German site Amazona.de this week unveiled mock-ups of an instrument conceived by their community. The […]

Dead-simple, focused on one task, the Wicks Looper reminds us why we liked looping. And I love the handmade gift case he made to go with it – an idea worth duplicating with other gear. All images courtesy Brian McNamara. For all that latest plug-in may perform every kind of synthesis ever, much of electronic […]

In Robert Seidel‘s “motion painting” Meander, digital video is fragmented into atomic textures, as sound and visuals alike crackle through streams and clouds. Don’t mention the word “glitch” or “datamosh”: it’s really more like digital action painting. Working with the visual development environment TouchDesigner, Robert collaborates with sonic artist Heiko Tippelt, as seen here in […]

Photo (CC-BY) Valerie Renee. Musicians get loads of gift guides. Still photographers, too. Visualists – people who care about live visuals, fun synesthetic toys, experimentation for your eyes, and visual innovation – not so much. Let’s change that. Whether it’s a book about Nam June Paik, a set of lenses, a novel live controller, we […]

Therenect – Kinect Theremin from Martin Kaltenbrunner on Vimeo. Who says technology has to move fast and die young? Leon Theremin may have been a full century ahead of his time, before computers, before transistors, before jet engines or atomic power or rockets. ReacTable creator Martin Kaltenbrunner has a virtual Theremin prototype built with Microsoft’s […]

Photo (CC-BY-ND) Atomic Sprinkles. A man named Don Waugh, friend of a CDM reader, is facing some serious challenges. He’s just lost his wife, and faces severe, possibly life-threatening health problems. There’s a campaign underway to get him a liver transplant. But Don doesn’t only want to fight for his health: he wants to make […]

Photo (CC-BY) magma666 / Scott. What’s truly wish-worthy? Is it a manuscript paper notebook? An iPhone app? A glitched-out hardware effect? A DAW? A sample library? A CD or book? Before we put together some of our own suggestions for this year’s gift guide, we want to hear from you. You can add to your […]

X Racer from Gadget Gangster on Vimeo. The Propeller Platform is open-source hardware with a mighty 8-core Parallax Propeller chip as its brain. Like the Arduino, it comes as a simple protoboard. But unlike the Arduino, the Propeller board is loaded with I/O pins and can output video and audio without much modification. It also […]

Chronome Prototype from FlipMu on Vimeo. The monome is defined as much by what it isn’t as what it is: it’s monochromatic, it uses only on/off binary buttons, and that’s part of its beauty. But what if it weren’t that? What if a monome could do color, and velocity sensitivity? As both engineering problem and […]

Google Translate’s pronunciations may or may not impress you, but the thing’s got some beatboxing skills. Reddit user harrichr notes a fun result: 1) Go to Google Translate 2) Set the translator to translate German to German 3) Copy + paste the following into the translate box: pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz […]