Want to reignite interest in DJs who actually use their hands and fingers to slice up and juggle sounds? A cavalcade of “laptopists” is the ticket. Suddenly, at least in some corners, people are again interested in turntablism. It’s nice to see how a controller can integrate digital loop and cue points with a setup […]

  So, you’ve been looking at that Akai APC40. And it’s appealing. It’s got lots of lights and a huge array of buttons for triggering samples or video or what have you, and plenty of knobs and faders. Now the APC40 has some serious “indie” competition, though, in the form of Livid’s Ohm64. Let’s compare: […]

Shamus Young’s “Pixel City” feels like flying in a helicopter into the art from Ghost in the Shell, or discovering a metropolis inside your computer. The latest work from an undiscovered YouTube talent, the software itself will be released under an open source license. I don’t need to tell you this could inspire other experiments […]

MUTEK this year looks to be a tremendous few days of audiovisual performance and art. To get in the mood one day early, we’re working with our friends at New York’s eclectic monthly live electronic party to host a special Montreal edition of Warper. It’s a convergence of New York and Montreal artists (full lineup […]

lights on from thesystemis on Vimeo. Digital visuals are often confined to a screen or a panel of wall. So there’s something magical about projects that get an entire building as a canvas. “Lights” is a live audiovisual performance for the Ars Electronica museum in Linz, Austria. The facade has some 1085 LED windows, controllable […]

Part of what makes Resolume Avenue so compelling as a live visual solution is that it can mix, mash, and loop audio alongside video, in ways often resembling Ableton Live. But that, of course, doesn’t make Resolume nearly as deep a live sonic tool as Ableton. So, to combine two great tastes – live video […]

Stock footage has long been a VJ cliché, and remixes in and of themselves aren’t always meaningful. But in the right hands – just as in audio sampling – sampled content can take on new life. It might even find an unrecognizable form. And with publicly-funded documentaries, why not give the actual content back to […]

AR scratching from vanderlin on Vimeo. “Augmented Reality” is a fancy term for describing ways of using computer vision to overlay digital intelligence on images. In other words, you can, for instance, scratch a vinyl record using a camera – plus a tag for identifying the object’s position in 3D space. Cambridge-based designer Todd Vanderlin […]

Magic is itself a kind of augmented reality, a willing suspension of disbelief as we watch what we know is a blend between what we’re seeing and what we simply think we’re seeing. We know it’s not all physically happening, but the act of seeing it is enough. So it’s fitting that someone would try […]