Th new mobile app Astro Cantus plays the stars like a music-box, much like my own 2009 piece, Wheel of Stars. There are a few differences, however (I don’t doubt that it was conceived independently). Astro Cantus classifies the stars into 7 discrete pitch classes (based on spectral type), which gives the music a more […]

Improv Everywhere‘s Charlie Todd gives a wonderful TED talk on two of my favorite subjects: wonder and delight.

For the past four years, Ranjit Bhatnagar has done something awesome every February: He builds an instrument a day for the entire month. One of my favorites is this 8-bit violin. On his site, you’ll find some great videos of the violin being played by experts. Ranjit has been doing this for a while, and […]

I recently posted a tutorial on how to draw circles, spirals and fibonacci spirals (that pattern you see on sunflowers). I thought it would be only fair to post this critique of the notion of the “golden ratio”, in which mathematical curmudgeon Donald Simanek takes sacred geometers to task for overstating the importance and pervasiveness […]

Sean Bogg’s Blue Monster contains a very slowly rotating spiral full of googly eyes, inside a ring of blue monster fur. As it rotates, the eyes shift, in their sockets in a charming and alarming way! Here’s a link to Sean’s page, where you can see a movie of the artwork in action. I found […]

A rare music typewriter that was patented in 1936, there are only about twelve Keatons known to be in existence. This one is going for $6000, which puts it out of my league! It was marketed in the 1950s and sold for around $225. The Keaton music typewriter was intended to make it easier for […]

My next workshop “Processing for Musicians” (or “Cool shit with Sound in Processing for Musicians and Non-Musicians alike”) is tomorrow night at Crash Space in Culver City. There are still a few open slots available! The workshop is 60 bucks, and the money goes towards a good cause (Crash Space). Among the topics covered: How […]

The Gameleste – a custom instrument for Björk from Andy McCreeth on Vimeo.

I’ve added a companion piece to the Circles, Spirals and Sunflowers tutorial I recently published. This new tutorial explains how to draw a double rainbow in javascript (with a little more finesse than the usual). You can use these highly sophisticated rainbows for good or evil. The choice is yours! A processing version of the […]