I think this post ought to be an annual thing around here. Since I’m addicted to the “interwebs,” I’ve seen more than my fair share of biased, whine-inducing, velveeta-laden so-called “Best-of” lists that I need to control myself on the number of adjectives I use to describe them. Here are a sampling of some of the worst lists I’ve seen out there so far. Oh yeah, and happy new year and all. (^_^)

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Tags: 2008, 2009, Best Of, New Year, The Worst Of, Top Lists

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 8:42 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

I once worked with someone who referenced their alleged array of technical skills frequently, and when the topic of schooling arose, I asked, “What did you study in college?”, to which she replied, “Engineering.” In response to this generality, I inquired a bit further: “What kind of engineering?” She felt threatened. “Why does it matter? Engineering is engineering. I’m an engineer.” I paused to think, then spoke again too soon. “So then why are you just a painter now?”

For those who have studied engineering, I would assume that the scientific principles learned would lead to an obvious conclusion: specifics matter, and while certain fields of engineering may overlap, an engineer is never just an engineer. There is no ambiguity here. There is a clear difference between a sound engineer and a geopolitical engineer, just like there’s a difference between the sub-genres of IDM and dubstep. Even though my colleague may not have a problem with generalizing herself, it would be ignorant for me and other artists to assume that we’re all just bathing in one big pool of electronica.

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Tags: acousmatic, avant-garde, DUB, dubstep, Electronica, HIP HOP, house, IDM, musique concrete, pierre schaeffer, pop, pythagoras, techno

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 1:52 am and is filed under Artists, Music, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This is something I’ve been hearing about for a couple months now but haven’t seen anything about until today. Emotiv Systems‘ Tan Le (pictured above) gave a presentation on her mind control device at The Entertainment Gathering on December 12th, 2008. With the help of an inspiration of hers that was attending the conference, Marvin Minsky, she demonstated the potential that the EPOC had by having Marvin rotate a 3D-generated cube on a computer screen counter-clockwise. After a successful attempt, Tan had Marvin try out the “disappear” feature, which makes the cube, you guessed it, disappear. Marvin, being the inquisitive mind that he is, asked if he could try out both functions simultaneously, which was executed to a wave of applause.

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Tags: 3D, brain, control, creation, developers, emotiv, EPOC, Game, GE, marvin minsky, mind, Music, play, power, systems, tan le, technology, testing, the entertainment gathering, video

This entry was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 5:34 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Hobnox™ is probably one of the most versatile, and innovative online collective of individuals coming out of Germany. They offer such a wide variety of online tools to use, it’s insane; really, they’ve created their own world. Although they’re still in beta, they’ve made leaps and bounds over other social networking sites & tools. Just to name a few, they offer an online tool, titled “Livetool”, and with it, you can create and broadcast your own webshow; it’s pretty impressive.

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Tags: Audio-Visual, Color Cubic, Colorcubic, DUB, Electro, Electronica, HIP HOP, Hobnox, IDM, International Music, Música Internacional, Nueva Forma, NuevaForma, Software Synths, Virtual Synths

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 25th, 2008 at 11:29 am and is filed under Music, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The geniuses behind Auditorium at Cipher Prime have outdone themselves. Auditorium is a great, free online puzzle game that successfully melds audio with visual. Basically, light streams shoot across the playing space. The goal is to direct these lights to their perspective receiving boxes and to fill them up completely. The game gets more interesting when you factor in different “controls” to redirect the light source, sometimes having to pass through multiple color-wheel-esque changes.

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Tags: Audio-Visual, Game, MIDI, Online, Reason, Sound Design

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 8:55 am and is filed under Music, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I’ve always been a fan of David Lynch. From his films to his artwork and photography, he is truly an original. Blue Velvet had such an impact on me I remember almost every detail about the whole night. I remember how everything looked different afterward. How everything was different. I was hooked. Eraserhead and Blue Velvet became the bible for me and my friends. Naturally Dune and The Elephant Man were in rotation as well and when Twin Peaks happened I was the happiest person in the world. David Lynch has a TV show? Are you kidding me? It was an exciting time.

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Tags: david lynch, eraserhead, Nueva Forma, transcendental meditation

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 8:03 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

FYI for anyone making digital download purchases through our shop; since we’re still in beta, you’ll probably notice a lag time if you try and navigate our shop while simultaneously downloading your purchased digital orders from your account. This is one of the very few outstanding bugs that we’re working closely with Colorcubic™ to eliminate from our shop. We’ll be spending the majority of our weekend fixing this problem, so hopefully by Monday, the problem will be eliminated completely. Just so you know, this will NOT affect your orders, or any of the files that you download. This is merely a fix that we’re implementing to help optimize your shopping experience with us.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

team Nueva Forma

Tags: Color Cubic, Colorcubic, Digital Downloads, Masmod, Nueva Forma, Shop Nueva Forma, Shopping, Shopping Experience, White Car

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 3:22 am and is filed under Music, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Energy is a big idea that isn’t going away any time soon. With our reserves on the downward spiral to doom, polar ice caps on the rise and the reality of vampire electricity on the move, it’s nice to know that Kayac, a Japanese design company, is putting their foot down to all of this. Then raising the ball of their heel up, then down, then up, then down again in rapid succession.

No, the YUREX™ device isn’t an energy generator in that sense. Instead, this device, when strapped to your thigh, monitors and interprets your movements into what they term, “Your Own ‘Creative Beat’.” In the most basic terms, this device registers when your crazy legs start acting up. Then they relay those movements and impulses via USB to your computer and the computer generates music set to these leg movements

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Tags: Energy, Japan, Kayac, Maywa Denki, Music, YUREX

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 6:14 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Tags: Coco, Color Cubic, Colorcubic, DJ Honey Dripper, HP Love Fader, Masmod, Mike Jedlicka, Nueva Forma, Pi-Rem, Poindexta, White Car

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 10:56 am and is filed under Artists, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.