As I have a plotter which only speaks vectors, and Peter has motion tracking on the brain we’ve been thinking about visualisations involving vector graphics a lot recently. Someone else who has visualisation on the brain is Martin Wattenberg. I’ve encountered his work before, but hadn’t connected the projects together. Shape of Mary Had A […]

Mashup/files/media/music maven Moldover checks in in comments with another tip for surviving the desert of Burning Man (or, you know, your next gig in Yemen): I’ve been bringing my laptop to the playa for several years now. My solution this year was a modified briefcase. I made a mount for my MIDI controller to sit […]

Vocoding is capable of a broad range of sounds, from the traditional “robot talking” effects to unique, organic-sounding synth and drum effects. Like many commonly-used techniques for synthesis and processing (and qualifying as both), vocoder effects can be cliched — but they can also be used to great effect. Before today’s vocoders, there was the […]

You go offline for a couple of days and what happens? Only the deluge of RED camera information since it was announced. The Red Digital Cinema website has been updated, and Mike of HD4Indies has been working Red’s booth at IBC and has been furiously blogging his experiences. Red show their footage for the first […]

Separated at birth — or fresh off the photocopier? In the case of Lemur touchscreen versus Mono Touch, it’s pretty obvious the creator of the Mono Touch software just worked on cloning the exact layout of the Ableton Live template on the Lemur. David Cross points us to this comparison from the Ableton forums, as […]

One notable problem with Java (and thus Processing) is that, on its own, it’s not the best solution for doing the pixel-by-pixel processing and computer vision / motion tracking / video analysis, as it’s not as efficient for those kind of tasks as C/C++. The motion tracking / computer vision library for processing JMyron is […]

Novation is hoping you’ll bring their new Xiosynth mini-synth keyboard home, and to help give you an additional push, they’ve got a new online sampler keyboard plus lessons for learning synthesis techniques. Have a listen to the patches on the Xiosynth with the Flash player below; try the z, x, and c keys on your […]

SM Pro has released a “passive summing mixer” that mixes eight analog audio channels to two. The idea is that digital summing, as performed in software, will cancel certain sound components and result in a less detailed mix after mixdown. The PM8 passive summing mixer does this for you in the analog domain, theoretically resulting […]

Sony have released an update to their Movie Studio line. Doting grandparents, soccer mums, beginner vidcasters, and mobile visualists rejoice! Notable updates from the previous Vegas Movie Studio include: HDV support/Capture 77 new effects 50+ more transitions Primary colour correction (anyone know what that means?) 5.1 surround sound mixing Limited edition Sony Pictures Sound Effects […]

Quartz Composer, the free Mac developer and live visual tool, can be daunting to beginners. Its modular synthesis approach to manipulating live visuals is powerful, but is open-ended enough that it can be hard to know where to begin. And some of its real power — like the ability to create highly-optimized custom image and […]