25Oct/090

Vague Terrain 15: .microsound

[Ant Scott / Repetitive Beats (detail) / 2008]
Image: [Ant Scott / Repetitive Beats (detail) / 2008]"]

"Vague Terrain is a web based digital arts publication that showcases the creative practice of a variety of artists, musicians and scholars. The project aspires to apply the focus and methodologies of academic and art journals and the tenacity and specificity of independent record labels to examine contemporary digital culture in an immediate and accessible manner. Content consists of curated visual, audio and written works, and now a companion blog. For better and worse this project is neither peer reviewed nor funded."

The current issue of the journal, #15, focusses on the .microsound community and especially on "sub-atomic" musical aesthetics and a window into this globally distributed community of electronic musicians.

"The promise of technology had failed us, leaving us to choose between two paths: the ivory tower of sterile academia or the seizure-inducing din of the dance club. Both paths, with a few exceptions, had become formulaic and resistant to innovation.
As a result, the musical malcontents among us began to look for ways to disrupt, subvert, and deconstruct digital audio in hopes of finding new ideas and sounds within."

24Oct/090

Percussa AudioCubes: a platform for audio-visual creation and exploration

Percussa's Audiocubes are some sort of "intelligent interfaces" that share information with each other. They can "Generate, Process and Control music loops and samples". You can link them to you existing music software or also use them with Percussa's own Software. The cubes have an USB connector, as well as 1/4 inch jacks to connect them with each other to be used as "lo-fi sound generators". Cubes interact with each other wirelessly, change their color according to the settings, blink on triggering, etc.

"Each AudioCube is identical. You connect them with a USB cable to your computer, one after the other, and assign a colour and behaviour. After that, they work wirelessly with each other, and use their four onboard infrared sensors to communicate and measure distances to objects nearby. One cube stays connected, to pass the information from the cubes to the software on your computer. Location, orientation and distance information is passed to the software, while you interact with the cubes. The software can connect via MIDI or OpenSoundControl (OSC) to any software or hardware for music or visuals which you already have, or you can use it within your DAW (digital audio workstation) software as a VST plugin, or as a host for VST instruments to let you create sound immediately."

In the Video below, there is also an example how to trigger loops from Ableton Live. All in all these interfaces look really nice - they seem to be a quite intelligent and intutive interface to create, modify and trigger sounds. (see other AudioCube videos on Vimeo)

2 AudioCubes are priced €399.00, if you get a set of 4, they cost €649.00 (including tax). AudioCubes work with computers running Mac OSX 10.4 or later, or Windows XP SP2 or later. Drivers are not needed. Dimensions are 75mm x 75mm x 75mm.

I definitely have to get those. I will post a full review and some examples when i have them!

23Oct/090

Ableton Live 8.0.8 Update

Ableton Live was updated to version 8.0.8. Read the Changes from Live 8.0.5 to Live 8.0.8 below or find the previous ChangeLogs in the Ableton Forums. While the update mainly adds the support for the new Novation Launchpad Controller and improves support for the AxiomPro Controllers, some important bugfixes have been implemented. Live should work on Snow Leopard now (crashed or froze when running another Audio app before, e.g. iTunes). Other Bugfixes are adressing the Arranger and some small bugs regarding Loop points. An update is recommended for all Ableton Live users.

15Oct/090

Coded Cultures Music Night: Fennesz, Tom Ellis, Keichiro Shibuya @Unit Tokyo, Japan – 16.10.2009

Coded Cultures Music Night

CODED CULTURES and MINIMAL TOKYO are proud to present a special night of electronic dance music at UNIT/SALOON. The night will feature top international and Japanese artists working in a wide range of music styles from deep electronica to minimal house and techno.

14Oct/090

Coded Cultures Vienna 2009 Teaser

Teaser Video from the Coded Cultures 2009 Festival.

"Coded Cultures is a binational festival (Austria – Japan) in the year 2009 to explore new artistic practices and creative ability profiles within media integrated project-cultures and
digital media related arts, focusing on Japan and Europe."
(via 5uper.net)

Coded Cultures Vienna 2009 from 5uper.net on Vimeo.

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8Oct/090

Audio Preview: Parasew – Sour Holidays #4

Sour Holidays #4 by parasew

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2Oct/090

New Ableton Live Contoller: Novation Launchpad

launchpad-ableton-main-gimage-copy

A Monome for the rest of us. The new Ableton Live Controller by Novation looks quite like the monome. Still, if it integrates in Ableton as well as the Akai APC 40, it can be a quite handy - and cheap: 150€ (199US$) is said to be the street price (to be released Nov '09).

Still since the APC40 uses a proprietary protocol, it is uncertain if the Launchpad will be usable for controlling other things than Ableton Live.