. media culture . music
dvd . media . music

VV. AA. - Twisted Cabaret

Volvox, VOL0902, France, 2010, twisted_cabaret.jpg cd+dvd Volvox, VOL0902, France, 2010
This is a collection of music and video (on cd and dvd) tracking artists that are altering or simply using codes from what has been known as the "Weimar Cabaret." This Cabaret included burlesque, darkness and comedy, and while its practices ended decades ago, its legacy can be found here in the form of modern music video artifacts. Culturally this is an environment that pushes on a theatrical and  ... [ Continue ]


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book . media . music . sound

Frances Dyson - Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture

sounding-new-media.jpeg University of California Press, 2009, English, ISBN-13: 978-0520258990, U.S.A.
The most obvious link between sound and new media is that both are immaterial. Obviously there's more, especially through combination. Frances Dyson goes well beyond this point, adopting an interesting and original strategy: she argues that new media represents an "accumulation of the auditive technologies of the past." Specifically, she methodically examines  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . sound art

Electromagnetic soundscapes, revealing the hidden environment

Wire Less, Yann Leguay, Wire_Less_Yann_Leguay.jpg All around us the air is filled with silent signals. Our bodies bathe daily in streams of electromagnetic waves connecting hundreds of networks in the growing family of wireless media. Yann Leguay has been working with The GhostLab to establish a protocol for capturing radio frequencies spanning from VLF to UHF, including  ... [ Continue ]


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art . media . music . performance

Interferenze 2010 Rurality 2.0 report

interferenze_2010.jpgCheck the Interferenze photo set here. The idea of the nonconformist as no longer the black sheep but the one now wearing a digital player and headphones admirably sums up the theme of the 2010 edition of Interference: "Rurality 2.0". This year the electronic arts festival was held July 23rd to 25th in Bisaccia, Upper Irpinia, a significant place for its (undoubted) rural features as well as it being home to  ... [ Continue ]


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dvd . music

Prélude au sommeil, Jean-Jacques Perrey & la musique électronique

Prélude au sommeil, Jean-Jacques Perrey & la musique électronique, Les Films d'un Jour, 2009, France, Francaise, English, prelude_au_sommeil.jpg Les Films d'un Jour, 2009, France, Francaise, English
Prélude au sommeil (Prelude to sleep) is a documentary film catching the spirit of Jean-Jacques Perrey, an eclectic electronic music pioneer who began his impressive career in the fifties. The film reconstructs the trajectory of a free spirit who flew to the USA with his early Ondioline electronic instrument (sponsored by Edith Piaf and Jean Cocteau). Perrey is often briefly interviewed, but  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . sound . sound art

RHFID Speakers, a different directional sound

RHFID_speakers.jpg Speakers are neutral. They carry the sound from its decoded source to our ears, but they are firm, static and impartial. They can be adjusted to create a better listening experience, or multiplied and singularly managed to enhance it even more, but they are meant to stay where you placed them the first time they were used. RHFID Speakers by Ulrik Andersen Hogrebe, Filippo Cuttica and  ... [ Continue ]


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interactive . music . sound . visual

Otto, touching sound samples

otto, luca de rosso, otto_luca_de_rosso.jpg Luca De Rosso offers to all those who have dreamed of manipulating a digital sample by literally touching it with their hands, a way to turn their dreams into reality. "Otto", the name of this small device designed and built by the Italian designer, is not a simple controller: it is a component integrating hardware and  ... [ Continue ]


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book . music . sound

Toy instruments - Design Nostalgia Music, from the collection of Eric Schneider, introduction by DJ Spooky

Toy instruments - Design Nostalgia Music, from the collection of Eric Schneider, introduction by DJ Spooky, Mark Batty Publisher, ISBN  978-0982075487, USA, 2010, English, toy_instruments.jpg Mark Batty Publisher, ISBN  978-0982075487, USA, 2010, English
Square and compact, this book is reminiscent of an old tin box, like those used to contain ginger biscuits or other mysterious delicacies. From his personal collection, Eric Schneider has created this delightful collection of toy musical instruments from around the world. The earliest pieces  ... [ Continue ]


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floppy disk . hacking . music . preservation . sound

Floppy Drive Reverb, recycling floppy drives as tape delays

Floppy Drive Reverb,  Jeri Ellsworth, Daniel McAnulty, floppy_drive_reverb.jpg Self taught computer chip designer Jeri Ellsworth known for making an emulation of the Commodore 64 that fits into a joystick has recently found a new application for old floppy drives and diskettes. This storage technology,  ... [ Continue ]


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art . book . music . sound

Caleb Kelly - Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction

Caleb Kelly, Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, The MIT Press, ISBN 978-0262013147
, cracked_media.jpg The MIT Press, ISBN 978-0262013147
, USA, 2009, English
Since John Cage we have started to prefigure what is now called the "aesthetics of failure." Reconsidering accidents as opportunities has been the conceptual terrain of different avant garde artists ever since. All the major musicians that have founded their own career researching the  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . sound

Fine collection of curious sound objects, everyday things that sounds unexpectedly

Georg Reil, Kathy Scheuring, Fine collection of curious sound objects, fine_collection_of_curious_sound_objects.jpg The sounds of everyday objects can be quite extraordinary at times. The din of a pan, the hum of a refrigerator or the barely audible metallic rattle of a neon light tube cooling down can provide attentive listeners with surprising aesthetic experiences. But in other cases ordinary things can simply sound  ... [ Continue ]


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book . hacking . hacktivism . music . sound

edited by Mattin & Anthony Iles - Noise & Capitalism

edited by Mattin & Anthony Iles, Noise & Capitalism, Arteleku Audiolab, ISBN 978-8479086221, mattin_iles_noise_and_capitalism.jpg Arteleku Audiolab, ISBN 978-8479086221, Spain, 2009, English
This book is an exception to the rule that a product can be judged from its price. It is free (either downloading it or trading a printed copy) and it sports professional editing, graphic design and production. But it seems just a direct consequence of the  ... [ Continue ]


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art . dvd . music . sound . video . visual

Yoshihide Sodeoka - Video Metal

yoshihide_sodeoka_video_metal.jpg C505, Content004, USA, 2009, English
This DVD is a real visual and sound trip. Master of visualization concepts, Yoshihide Sodeoka, is here enjoying the freedom of experimenting with both visual forms and ideas. The three pieces launch the user into an obscure and hypnotising video universe. The heavy metal atmosphere is made precarious  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . software . sound

Sonicity, live data space

Sonicity, Stanza, sonicity_stanza.jpg With the installation Sonicity, the English artist Stanza adds another significant chapter to his quest for new metaphors to translate the countless interactions produced by data passing through an environment into a sensory plane. Stanza's aim is to create a data space that is perceived as alive. To achieve this goal he has installed a great number of sensors that are  ... [ Continue ]


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book . music . sound . visual

edited by Cornelia Lund, Holger Lund - Audio.Visual: On Visual and Related Media

Cornelia Lund, Holger Lund, Audio.Visual On Visual and Related Media, audio_visual.jpg Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt, ISBN 978-3897902930, Germany, 2009, English
Cornelia and Holger Lund established and run the Fluctuating Images gallery in Stuttgart since 2004, and in 2009 they relocated to Berlin. Their activity was centered on connecting the local audiovisual artist community (with a special care for the VJ scene) with the international one through works and  ... [ Continue ]


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book . hacktivism . music . science . sound

Steve Goodman - Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear

Steve Goodman - Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, The MIT Press, ISBN-13: 978-0262013475, sonic_warfare.jpg The MIT Press, ISBN-13: 978-0262013475, U.S.A., 2010, English
Sound waves can't usually damage your ears unless you constantly keep headphone volume too high,or you insist on standing very close to tall speakers during a concert for too long. Used in the right way (or wrong way), however, they can be a scary armament, able to inflict various degrees of harassment,  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . sound

IIE (Interactive Infrasonic Installation), infrasound for public consumption

IIE, Interactive Infrasonic Installation, Reinhard Gupfinger, interactive_infrasonic_environment.jpg IIE is an interactive acoustic installation through which Reinhard Gupfinger researches infrasounds, that is, those sounds that, having a frequency less than 20/16 Hertz (20/16 cycles per second), are below the audible threshold of the human ear. While the ear is insensitive to those sounds, the human body can nevertheless perceive  ... [ Continue ]


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art . book . music . preservation . sound

edited by Arjen Mulder, Joke Brouwer - Dick Raaymakers: A Monograph

dick_raaymakers_a_monograph.jpg NAi Publishers, ISBN 978-9056626006, The Netherlands, 2009, English
The slow and almost unavoidable disintegration of pieces of early electronic art is part of a broader problem that involves the preservation of both their materials and their historical documentation. This task can be accomplished only by trying to systematize the rescued documents, in order to ease the  ... [ Continue ]


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music . performance . robot . sound

SoleNoid ß, tap dance robotic concert

Peter William Holden, SoleNoid ß, solenoid_beta.jpg The tap-dance rhythmic lines are the protagonists in SoleNoid ß by Peter William Holden. Eight glossy tap-dance shoes, placed symmetrically in a circle, are animated by a computer connected with circuits controlling electromechanical valves (solenoid valves) and compressed air hydraulic pistons. The "living"  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . performance . sound . visual

scoreLight, playing contours

Alvaro Cassinelli, Daito Manabe, Yusaku Kuribara, scoreLight, score_light.jpg Blind people have a different conventional way to "see." They use a walking stick to sense borders around them, and their task is made easier when they can use a special rubber guidance route on the street. This process is not too conceptually distant from pickup and vinyl mechanics, and it's also the  ... [ Continue ]


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music . performance . sound . videogame

Heavy Metal Moshpit, Metal Head Orgasmatron

Heavy Metal Moshpit Amp, //////////fur////, heavy_metal_moshpit.jpg Video games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band have certainly altered the way we interact with music by filling a quenchable void once solely occupied by air guitar and karaoke. Now //////////fur//// group is heralding the new 'metallenium' with their advanced musical interaction of user-simulated  ... [ Continue ]


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CD . book . music . sound . visual

Francesco Brunotti/Various Authors - Nocturne

Francesco Brunotti, Various Authors, Nocturne, Persistencebit Records, nocturne.jpg Persistencebit Records, Italy, 2009
This is a product in the Bitmedia series, developed by the eclectic label Persistencebit. It is devoted to the production of multimedia works related to the ambient and modern electronics scenes. It's a book of photographs by Francesco Brunotti properly entitled "Nocturne" that includes a cd album stuck to the  ... [ Continue ]


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art . dvd . music . sound . video

Phill Niblock - The Movement of People Working

Phill Niblock, The Movement of People Working, the_movement_of_people_working.jpg Extreme/Microcinema, USA, 2009, English
This is a new reprint (the first release was in 2003) of an important dvd which gathers a series of audio/visual artworks made by Phill Niblock from the early 70s to middle 80s. Niblock is a historical intermedia artist, who has been mixing film and music since the late 60s, and is an acknowledged  ... [ Continue ]


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12" . art . literature . music . sound

Evan Roth - Explicit Content Only

Evan Roth, Explicit Content Only, Inge Records, explicit_content_only.jpg Inge Records, USA, 2008, English
The "Parental Advisory Explicit Content" logo in black and white stripes, as with all mandatory logos, has been creatively used for ironising a feature which is still very typical of the U.S.: governmental support for parental paranoia. In fact the sticker was pushed by the Parents Music Resource Center  ... [ Continue ]


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copyright . music

Musopen, building a free classical music library

Musopen, musopen.jpg If there's one intended victim of the decaying copyrighted music game it is classical music. A great amount of classic music should be totally free, because its copyright expired a long time ago, but very few recordings of this kind of music are in the public domain. The founders of Musopen want to achieve the goal of recording and eventually also  ... [ Continue ]


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hacking . media . music . sound

Sound Chaser, running a vinyl rail track

Sound Chaser, Yuri Suzuki, sound_chaser.jpg Almost none of the dozens of interactive music tables have escaped the "abstraction" trap, sticking with similar, familiar "elements" made in perfect geometric shapes that assume the identity of "instruments", "samples", "drums", you name it. Yuri Suzuki's "Sound Chaser" instead tries to exploit a connective system that has already  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . net . performance . sound

Bicycle Built for Two Thousand, online workers choral effort

Bicycle Built for Two Thousand, Aaron Koblin, bicycle_built_for_two_thousand.jpg With “Bicycle Built for Two Thousand” Aaron Koblin confirms himself as specialist of crowdsourcing based artworks. As Jeff Howe wrote, "crowdsourcing" is "the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . sound . visual

Strobovj, stroboscopic sequencer for vjing

Gijs Gieskes, Strobovj, strobovj.jpg Gijs Gieskes is an incredible machine inventor (as well as an esteemed VJ and performer). Among his latest creations Strobovj deserves particular attention: it's a sequencer for vjing that uses the working principle of the stroboscope: looking at a spinning wheel. The machine created by this eclectic artist is not just limited to real-time  ... [ Continue ]


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copyright . music . sound

Love Songs, mashup visualized

Love Songs, Chris Han, love_songs.jpg Mashup has been one of the innovative techniques to take over the massive pop productions, breaking the borders established by the industry around every song released. "Love Songs" by Chris Han is an online "compilation of songs with 'love' in the title" where the flow of sounds is accompanied by the flow of the sequencing interface. It may seem banal,  ... [ Continue ]


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art . book . music . sound

curated by Vicki Bennett - Smiling Through My Teeth

curated by Vicki Bennett, Smiling Through My Teeth, Sonic Arts Network, Various Artists, Rank Sinatra, Cristian Marclay, Ergo Phizmiz, Maria Callas, Viennese Seven Singing Sisters, John Oswald, plunderphonics, Nihilist Spasm Band, Nurse With Wound, audio art, experimental, Xper.Xr. Aurelio Cianciotta, VickiBennett_SmilingThroughMyTeeth.jpg CD - Sonic Arts Network
Vaudeville musicality and extreme cut-up, precise techniques for assembling and overlapping audio, intentional intertwining and multiple collages. These are just some of the gimmicks used by Vicki Bennett, in her spiky re-contextualizations, which are not alien to pop culture, experimental art, cabaret  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . net . sound

Bufferrrbreakkkdownnn Arkestra, aural network test

Marcos Destructos, Bufferrrbreakkkdownnn Arkestra, bufferrrbreakkkdownnn_arkestra.jpg Marcos Destructos (aka Marc Chia, aka One Man Nation) has completed a compelling investigation of data transmission over computer networks with his recent "Bufferrrbreakkkdownnn Arkestra". The  ... [ Continue ]


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hacking . music . software . sound

Autechre Reverse Engineering

Robbie Martin, Autechre, reverse_engeneering_autechre.jpg Robbie Martin (as known as Fluorescent Grey) is a musician and provocateur who has become famous as a producer of fake material. He was responsible for the video of an American soldier’s beheading in Iraq (actually the "victim" was his friend Ben Vanderford aka The Great White Hype), which was  ... [ Continue ]


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art . book . music . sound

Edited by Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid - Sound Unbound, Sampling Digital Music and Culture

Edited by Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid, Sound Unbound, Sampling Digital Music and Culture, sound_unbound.jpg The MIT Press, ISBN 9780262633635, U.S.A, 2008
Music beyond composing. Dj Spooky edits an anthology about "music as one of the most immaterial of artforms" that is worth a careful reading to open one's mind with real food for thought. "Dj is writing" he stated in his previous book "Rhythm Science" (2004), and the selection of texts in this new one  ... [ Continue ]


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art . music . performance . software

Physical Sequencer, sequencing and performing on stage

Physical Sequencer, Enrico Costanza, physical_sequencer.jpg Enrico Costanza, PhD student at the Media and Design Laboratory of Lausanne's Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, has focused his research on designing objects that can bring digital and physical worlds closer. His "Audio d-touch" project, developed with Simon Shelley, is a clear example of this  ... [ Continue ]


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art . media . music . sound . visual

Graphite Sequencer rocks the analog world

Graphite Sequencer, Caleb Coppock, graphite_sequencer.jpg Caleb Coppock's "Graphite Sequencer" is an analog drum machine of sorts that works through simple electrical conductance. Two wires scrape along the surface of a spinning paper disk with graphite shapes scrawled across them (graphite is a conductive material) so that when they pass over  ... [ Continue ]


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editor in chief:
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