Lucinate video synth animates and live-codes visuals on Mac and iOS

From the makers of the utterly indispensable iPad app AUM (among other things), Lucinate is a real-time visual environment for macOS and iOS, based on Apple’s Metal technology. You can approach this as a ready-to-play, Ableton Link and Link Audio-enabled video synth. And when you want to hack or make your own shaders, you can live-code those, too.

The developer of Tweakbench wants to remake the DAW without linear time

The Digital Audio Workstation can never quite escape the timeline and its roots in multitrack tape. Tweakbench’s new Noemi, which entered alpha last month, starts from scratch. What if music in the DAW could constantly evolve and change? What if the DAW were non-deterministic?

Peter Kirn - March 4, 2026

Compassion through algorithms: live coding Algorave giving to Palestinians

They gathered for 24 hours in 70 live coding performances from around the world. Now Algorave has a 55-track album “full of really great music and noise from the live coding/algorithmic music community, fundraising to support Palestinian health, dignity, and culture.” All that plus extra videos from their recent livestream and more. At a time when computer tech is all about extraction, it’s refreshing to see an actual community that’s using code to give.

Peter Kirn - December 5, 2025

SuperSonic: SuperCollider synth is fun, playful, colorful, free, in any Web page

Peter Kirn - November 15, 2025

Alpaca interweaves code and pattern, from music to textile to dance

Peter Kirn - September 18, 2025

Tau5 will be a hub for live coding music, visuals, and art with friends – or bots

Peter Kirn - August 11, 2025

Renoise 3.5 is huge: phrase scripting, tuning support, splitter effect, more

Peter Kirn - July 8, 2025

Barry Vercoe, who made coding sound accessible to all, has died

Peter Kirn - June 17, 2025

Laurie Spiegel interview offers a way of thinking about community, imagination

Peter Kirn - April 7, 2025