Stories

Ohm: Mark DeNardo, Pixeljam, Liz Revision & Emulsion

Friday, August 24, 7pm Chicago Cultural Center, Cassidy Theater 78 E. Washington Street Free Hear Brooklyn-based musician Mark DeNardo (of the Gamma Bros) perform music on laptop, Game Boy and guitar accompanied by pixilated images provided by fellow Gamma Bros visual artist Pixeljam. Noted local electronic music performers, Liz Revision and Emulsion (of Ramp Chicago), DJ and play live throughout the evening. Full-screen imagery of video games and game culture provided by visual artists Baseshot…

Walk Score: How walkable is your neighborhood?

After I came back from living in France for a few months, I had a bit of a culture shock upon returning to the states. At the time I was living with my parents in the suburbs of Chicago and it dawned on me that most US cities (apart from the big ones with an extensive public transit system) are only possible because its inhabitants own cars. Pretty much every simple activity in my daily…

Meeting in Meatspace: A recap of the Demo Swap at Sonotheque

Social networking, online sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace â€¦ sometimes it seems like all the connections are being done online. Naturally, the Webâ€™s real power is when you can meet all those virtual personalities youâ€™ve gotten to know offline. Far better than getting demo CDs in the mail or listening to someoneâ€™s tracks on MySpace: meeting them at a party over a drink and getting their music from them directly….Clearly this is a model to be…

Get yourself a musical robotic exoskeleton

Here’s an interesting art / performance project byMaywa Denki. Based on the simple remotely-triggered servo action of “knockers” (not in the sleezy sense)–which are direct percussive controllers that can be used to pound on various things including boxes, pipes, and guitar strings. In the above video, these knocker modules are employed to make a switch-based drum-machine-like instrument that you assign a sequence of remote knockers to, and then control the playback speed manually with a…

Splice: Myspace for musicians

Just out of beta, Splice is a burgeoning community of music producers and DJs that goes beyond the capabilities of a general networking site like Myspace or Facebook. It’s an online niche community with all kinds of Web 2.0 buzz-concepts including social networking, user-generated content, user-rated data, collaboration, online applications, AJAX and digital media. After you join and create a profile, things start to diverge from a normal social networking site when it asks you…

Musical soccer ball

The Sound Ball is a soccer ball that makes different sorts of sounds based on whether it’s thrown, kicked or spun. Check out this video of widely different audiences interacting with it. There’s a particularly amusing clip of a kid with soccer skills bouncing it around and catching it with his knees. The SoundBall is a foam ball with a motion sensor inside, which communicates wirelessly with a computer, so that sounds and music can…

Terrorize your pool-party guests with a scary robotic shark

If you’re fortunate enough to have a pool, I bet you’ve probably got a few of those “friends” who just love spending more quality time with your in-ground than on enjoying your personal companionship. And going through cooler after cooler of your favorite lager is probably not earning them any more points in your book, either. So next time they don’t seem to get the hint, covertly launch this two-foot long Remote Controlled Robotic Shark…

Demos Swapped at the Demo Swap

So I did a more thorough recap of our Demo Swap at Sonotheque in Chicago last week over at Create Digital Music, but here’s a brief overview of a few of the more notable demo disks that came home with me. I also posted the first part of my DJ set at the end of the night. Unfortunately the laptop crashed when I unplugged the soundcard and I lost my playlist, so there are going…

DJ Set from the Demo Swap at Sonotheque [1/2]

I DJed at the end of the night after spending all of the rest of the time schmoozing. It’s missing a track since my laptop crashed when I unplugged it at the end and it didn’t save the playlist. Here’s some photos from the night and a more in-depth recap will follow soon. Demo Swap DJ Set [1/2] 190 VBR MP3 1. Plaid: “Zeal” 2. Test shot starfish: “Sort of” 3. Jeff Mills: “The Bells”…

Celebrity Mix 3-20-07 [Part 3]

The final part of the downtempo / IDM set I played at Celebrity in Chicago. 16. String Theory: “Ambulette” [BUY] 17. Posthuman: “Wonderful Eyes” 18. 101010 & Mr. Projectile: “Wild Orchids” 19. ?? (Can you ID this track? Hit the contact button and let me know!) 10. Modeselektor: “I Love You” [Hello Mom!] DOWNLOAD: Celebrity Mix Part 3 [192kbs]

Space Invaders Tie

Here’s a perfect tie for any guy who loves gaming, especially retro-gaming. Behold, the Space Invaders tie, which, at first glance appears to simply have a geometric repeating pattern in red. A closer look reveals that the little houndstooth-esque checks are actual bitmap aliens–it’s subtle but very cool. Did you know that the feature that made Space Invaders so challenging–the creatures speed up as more of them get destroyed–was originally an accident? Since there were…

VA: Faith is Fear compilation

Dark and pounding techno alternates with moments of respite through softer, more melodic tracks in this compilation from the Sheffield, UK-based Dust Science run by Black Dog. Anthony Child, also known as Surgeon, kicks off the album with the dark, ambient, ring-modulated track, “You Know I love You,” and Detroit Rocket Science eases into the beatier tracks on the rest of the album with its downtempo thumper, “Babymaker.” Onmutu Mechanics combines the sensibilities of the…