CALL FOR WORKS: Futuristic Music Design Challenge - A live competition at Yuri’s Night Bay Area presented by createdigitalmusic.com :: Deadline: April 7, 11:59 PM EST (No exceptions!)

Online submission: Web entries accepted from around the world for the Web showcase. Limited entries will be chosen to compete live — To compete for the prizes, those entries must be present at Yuri’s Night Bay Area, Saturday, April 12. Submit DIY music performance projects – using custom software and/or hardware – for a live performance battle at the Yuri’s Night Bay Area party on April 12, sponsored by Yuri’s Night and createdigitalmusic.com. Compete for awards including a Yamaha Tenori-On grand prize. Continue reading

Analogos 10: a night of “vintage” analog synthesis :: March 22, 2008; 8:00 pm :: Diapason, 882 Third Avenue (between 32nd and 33rd Street), 10th floor, Brooklyn, NY.

Performances and informal discussions with Kabir Carter (MoogerFooger and Moog pedals and synthesizers), David Galbraith (self-built electronics), James Fei (Arp 2600 synthesizer), Kato Hideki (Octave “Cat” synthesizer, bass), Michael J Schumacher (Steiner-Parker Synthacon synthesizer), Sergei Tcherepnin (Serge modular synthesizer), Stefan Tcherepnin (Serge modular synthesizer), Ed Tomney (EMS VCS 3 “Putney” synthesizer, various).

Announcing DIY sound-workshop: Constructing live electronics with Jo FRGMNT Grys (de) :: March 25 - 28, 2008 :: Kunstarkaden, Sparkassenstr.3, Munich :: Registration Deadline: March 15, 2008.

The workshop is focused on the construction of sustainable, customized and networked instruments. Participants are invited to build up to three different musical devices: 1) Powerful analog Special Noise Unit (SNU), a kind of chaos - musical - noise - generator - touch - oscillator-instrument. (It’s even produces FM radio); 2) Simple step-sequencer SEQ8 to give electricity certain patterns; and 3) Mini-FM-transmitter to conquer your proximity. Continue reading

Once the domain of the few, creating and customizing sophisticated DIY controllers is now more accessible than ever. That means, if you can’t find what you want, and you’re ambitious and knowledgeable enough, you go make your own. Josh Boughey was impressed by the Monome enough to buy one — but the Monome, a grid of on/off buttons, doesn’t provide any kind of variable control. So Josh built his own, combining a series of parallel touch strips with LED indicators. (The lights are the tricky part, requiring an obscene number of connections.) Continue reading

Tiny Noise :: February 26, 2008; 8pm :: ZOOBIZARRE - 6388 St. Hubert, Montreal :: [metro Beaubien, orange line] :: with performances by:

Justice Yeldham (AUS) - What’s been described as “a trumpet player trapped in a two dimensional universe” is the unique work of Justice Yeldham who has an obsession with using sheets of broken glass as his musical instrument. Amplifying the sheets using a high end transducer designed for grand pianos, he presses his face against the surface whist employing various vocal techniques ranging from throat singing to raspberries. Continue reading

Douglas Repetto is a legend in New York City, where he has fostered a thriving electronic music and new media community. He is founder of the Dorkbot discussion series (which now has local branches around the world), the ArtBots Robot Talent Show, and Organism, a collective of people “making art with living systems.” By day, he is Director of Research at Columbia University’s famous Computer Music Center, and it’s unlikely he’ll ever be able to live down the glory of being deemed “sexiest geek” by Wired. But all of Repetto’s accolades and extracurricular activities unfold from his position as a respected artist whose captivating installations appear deceptively simple, only to convey complex sonic experiences. Continue reading

David Ellis was inspired by the player piano when he made his Owl.

Thanks to Becky Stern and Make: technology on your time.

N.I.P. - New Interfaces for Performance - N.I.P. is an interdisciplinary touring presentation, network and workshop series, developed by Teresa Dillon of the Bristol based media arts and research collective Polar Produce. As an artists lead initiative, N.I.P. currently exists as a three-year project and involves twelve artists drawn from across the UK, The Netherlands and Portugal. The current focus of the project is on gesture and movement based interfaces within live performance and interactive, mixed media installation.

N.I.P. artists at Pixelache 2008 Helsinki are: Teresa Dillon (UK), Kathy Hinde (UK), Torsten Lauschmann (UK), Ivan Franco (PT), Rudolfo Quintas (PT), André Gonçalves (PT) and Tom Verbruggen (NL). Continue reading

You’re Not My Father, by Paul Slocum, [Requires Quicktime plugin] is composed of a sequence of recreations of a 10 second scene from the television show Full House, overlaid with sound loops from the scene’s original music. The crews who re-shot the scene were recruited through Internet message boards and Craigslist; each was paid $150. Instructions for shooting the scene and delivering the footage were issued to the crews. To-date, the project includes participants from Austin, Cincinnati, Chicago, Dallas, Denton, London, and San Francisco. Continue reading

Mr. Resistor is an innovative class in which students are taught how to create musical instruments from found electronics and other objects. Armed with two toy robots named Freddy and Teddy, a violin with a bow made out of cassette tape, and a synthesizer assembled from a 1960s electric guessing game, last weekend students at Parsons the New School for Design took to the stage to perform rock songs they created out of these and other found objects.

The performance took place at The Openhouse in SoHo and was born out of a burgeoning DIY music movement where artists take the debris of everyday life, for example an amp made from a Ritz cracker box and instruments made from Gameboys, irons and electronic toys, and turn them into musical instruments to play at events such as Handmade Music Night and Music for People and Thingamajigs. Continue reading