Marrying open source and commercial development, or trying to bridge analog consoles and computers – either task on its own might seem improbable. But yesterday, a newly-announced tool promised to bring together all those dimensions. Ardour is the free and open source Digital Audio Workstation software for Linux and Mac. It’s widely underrated and has […]

It’s Richie Hawtin Watch time! The latest: NI teases an upcoming DJ controller by sharing video of Richie playing it in a club. The surprise: it’s actually what he’s doing with Maschine that seems most interesting to me. And if you recall the Twitter DJ app that he promised in the spring, it’s here, ready […]

It’s simply stunning some of the terrific instrument and effect plug-ins available that are now free and open source – yes, free as in freedom, not just freeware. I had commented in the past something along the lines of, “boy, wouldn’t it be great if this now meant, say, a Linux port?” and then went […]

Photos by Hedi Slimane; courtesy Final Fantasy. Can you approach a symphony orchestra as though it’s an analog synth? That’s a question composers have asked since the first time they heard electronic sounds. It’s impossible to hear the 20th-century technology alongside the 19th-century technology without the one reframing your view of the other. Now, it […]

Windows 7 running on a MacBook. Photo by Esparta Palma . Windows 7’s buzz has been overwhelmingly positive, in stark contrast to the rough ride upgrading to Windows Vista. The scene is of particular interest to visualists. The Windows OS, for better or for worse, is still the best OS out there as far as […]

Windows 7 running on a laptop, as photographed by / (CC) Luke Roberts. Windows 7 makes far subtler changes than Vista did, which gives it an opportunity to refine features by the ship date. And it’s been tested unusually widely, by testers like Luke. Windows matters. It’s what roughly half of CDM readers use, and […]

There’s a curious distinction in hardware keyboards. You’ll find plenty of keyboards geared for performance with software at the low-end to mid-range. But if you want a keyboard with uncompromising durability and action – and you’re willing to pay more and lift more weight – those choices suddenly disappear. Suddenly, you have to buy a […]

We’ve been keeping an eye on Seam Carving (or “Content Aware Image Resizing”, for the academically unhip) since 2007. Now, via French VJ blog extraordinaire LeCollagiste, we discover that Photoshop CS5 will feature what Adobe and Princeton are now calling PatchMatch. PatchMatch: Structural Image Editing from Dan Goldman on Vimeo. No sign of any publicly […]

You’ll want superb music on loop, because it may … take some time to get out of this puzzle. Musicians and artists now have the power to fuse visuals, sound, and interaction, to make a spectacle, an album, and a game all at once. But with the blank canvas of three different media before you, […]

Nosaj Thing Visual Show Compilation Test Shoot from Adam Guzman on Vimeo. Designing visualist work is often a baroque process of iterating through more and more layers, ornaments, and complexity. But it’s stunning, sometimes, how people respond to simple, elegant ideas. Adam Guzman‘s collaboration with Taiwanese-born, LA-based designer Julia Tsao yields this beautiful sequence of […]