sktch is a different kind of art tool for the mobile app age. For starters, it’s the outgrowth of a media outlet: Creative Applications Network, led by London-based architect, technologist, and curator Filip Visnjic, has already become the go-to site for people interested in making apps into art. The application itself embodies some of that […]

Music making with your face? It’s just the latest novel way of manipulating your computer with movement, thanks to a revived interest in camera-based interaction spurred by Microsoft’s Kinect and hackers making it work, and other computer vision libraries. One original work: FaceOSC, which uses custom tracking code and a standard computer webcam (no additional […]

If you aren’t quite ready to delve into the mysteries of granular synthesis and code, a colorful interface guides you through playing in Ableton Live. Granular synthesis… you’ve heard it before. Famously articulated by experimental composer Xenakis, the process of slicing up sound into tiny bits and reassembling it has produced everything from lovely (or […]

He’s built an open-source, retro-tinged 8-bit sampler, “Where’s the Party At?” (I’m been building the second generation now, so expect a review by early August.) He’s had electronic instrument designs on shelves at the retail chain Target and on the walls of the Whitney Art Museum in New York. He just completed a set of […]

From the previous bounds of the proscenium tradition – the flat, rectangular space defined by screens and theaters – audiovisuals increasingly sprawl into surround. One superb example comes to us from Seppo Gruendler of Austria. The project combines multiple “surround” technologies across multiple media. Projection is mapped across screens for wraparound visuals, but sound, too […]

From the previous bounds of the proscenium tradition – the flat, rectangular space defined by screens and theaters – audiovisuals increasingly sprawl into surround. One superb example comes to us from Seppo Gruendler of Austria. The project combines multiple “surround” technologies across multiple media. Projection is mapped across screens for wraparound visuals, but sound, too […]

Hey, Jitter fans: jit.artkmulti is an external for Max/MSP and Jitter that brings the powerful, marker-based augmented reality capabilities of ARToolKit to Max. We’ve seen a lapse in interest in marker-based tracking, I think, with the advent of technologies like Kinect, but it’s still useful for certain applications – and this makes it really easy […]

Working in open source code for any platform, Brazilian artist and developer Jeraman has produced a charming project that imagines musical interfaces in dynamic, whimsically-simple sketches. Like doodled knobs, cartoons of guitar pedals, interactive devices on the touchscreen control musical activity. And because it’s open, cross-platform code, everything from a computer-powered multitouch table to an […]

Some of us move freely between the real and virtual dimensions, can make dubstep basses just by moving our spine, and shoot flames out of our hands naturally. For everyone else, there’s this. Ryan Challinor, whose day gig is as a developer working on Dance Central, apparently just couldn’t get enough Kinect hacking at his […]

The Swarmatron, made infamous by The Social Network, is just one of the crazy sonic creations we’ll be seeing this weekend. Photo credit: Joshua Sarner. This weekend in North Adams, Massachusetts at MASS MoCA, the band Wilco is gathering their very own music and arts festival, Solid Sound. It’s become a real oasis of unique […]