:theoreticalplayground.co.uk

I’m a big fan of last.fm, its a great way to discover new & old music. They’ve just upgraded the last.fm player but they’ve disabled the listen to multiple artists/tags feature, due to legal reasons. Anyway, here’s a cheap hack that you can use to listen to multiple artists. Type this into your internet browser address bar:

lastfm://multipleartists/sergei rachmaninoff,dmitri shostakovich,fats waller

Make sure you replace the artists with who you’d like to listen to! A similar method can be used for multiple tags:

lastfm://globaltags/electro,breaks,funk

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Following on from the Si Begg/Ho-Fun AV mashups we have Hexstatic under the alias Exactshit who are releasing a new DVD called ‘Now Thats What I Call Exactshit Vol 2′. Available from ninjatune shop in the new year or on a Limited DVD from ebay. Be quick though as the limited release will sell through very quickly!

There are lots of quirky reworks on the DVD from Long Haired Fool From Liverpool, to Sound of Music to Firestarter and even Ren & Stimpy. My personal favourite has to be the mashup of Papa with Hal from 2001:

To find more AV mashups from Hexstatic, check their YouTube profile page here.

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Back in late 2005 Si Begg & Ho-Fun released two audiovisual DVD mashups on the Noodles label. Originally there was going to be seven releases (according to a press release at the time), but no show of the remaining five! Long since discontinued, you can now find the first two on YouTube (along with some other HoFun goodies)!!

The first DVD had an AV mix of Charade starring Audery Hepburn. The film used to be available on www.archive.org but was removed for copyright reasons – see this forum post for further details. Anyway here is the remake from Noodles!

The second DVD had AV mashups of two Si Begg tracks on Novamute, Revolution and Revelation, released shortly after the singles. The Revelation video can be found here, and _this_ is the Revolution:

There are some more Ho-Fun AV mixes to enjoy, Mad As Hell…

…Discough…

…and Commercial Sucicide. It would be great to see the follow-up releases!

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Developed by researchers from Switzerland, Italy, Germany, France and the UK, Tai-Chi (Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction) is a system that can transform any real object into a touch-sensitive computer interface. A computer is used to read values via piezoelectric sensors which are attached to the object. A recent paper from Design 2006 discusses the system in further detail:

Principally, there are two kinds of stimulation of physical objects: passive and active modes. In the passive mode any change in the acoustic properties of an object, due to its vibration as a consequence of interaction (knocking, tapping etc.), is detected and then used to estimate the location of the interaction. With regard to the active mode, the absorption of acoustic energy at the contact point of an object surface must be ascertained.

Currently there are three passive methods under investigation for tangible acoustic interfaces: time delay of arrival (TDOA), time reversal and acoustic holography.

The paper discusses the implementation of Acoustic Holography using the Rayleigh-Sommerfeld algorithm. The following is an audiovisual installation called Sound Rose using the Tai-Chi system.

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A couple of examples of what we can expect from the Wiimote. Firstly a drum machine which uses two software programs from bobsomers. The user can play drums by flicking the Wiimote & pressing a button. The latest version of the GlovePIE program has support for multiple Wiimotes as well!

This second video shows a Wiimote controlling parameters on a Nord Lead by mapping the controller messages.

We’re looking forward to future developments and projects!

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A short version of a stopmotion video for minilogue for their hitchhikers choice track released on crosstown rebels. A longer version of the animation will be available on a forthcoming DVD. The animation was made by Ljudbilden & Piloten

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