Sound and Music

Last Wednesday STEIM (STudio for Electro Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam held an open get-together with a lot of local instrument builders / hackers.

I've just finished reading John Maeda's "The Laws of Simplicity" which although not as life changing as the blogosphere claims is still inspirational in its clarity and, well, simpleness.

Something I'm trying out as a pilot scheme is a series of professional development workshops. The sort of things I'm looking at covering are practical skills and techniques- like using software, hardware etc, more general professional advice such as promotion, fundraising and management of finance and also looking at the work of specific artists.

After stumbling across the brilliant Music Think Tank site, I discovered their 'Indie Maximum Exposure 100', which is essentially 100 valuable pieces of advice (in blog form) for artists to consider when trying to promote their music. It was created by a team of industry experts

"By directly manipulating the activity of individual neurons, scientists have given flies memories of a bad experience they never really had"

Read the full article

(via Rob Myers on Netbehaviour)

A simple idea, excellently executed, Ear Room is an online publication developing critical discourse and debate on the creative, and explorative use of sound in artistic practice.

Last January, Max for Live was announced but it is yet to be released. However, it represents an exciting opportnity for people using both Ableton Live and Max/MSP.

Problems processing visual information may stop those with autism interpreting body language, harming their ability to gauge others' emotions, a study says.

Researchers say people with autism have problems recognising physical displays of emotion, but also general difficulty perceiving certain sorts of motion.

RJDJ is an iphone app (and website) that allows you to create music from your surroundings. It takes the input from your microphone and processes it.

The widespread proliferation of computer games for children as young as 6 months of age, merits a re-examination of their manner of use and their facility to provide opportunities for developmental play.