Arturia visited Portishead's Adrian Utley in his studio so he could check out their new MiniBrute synth. The result was two great videos. In the first he spends 25 minutes messing around with the impressive sounding MiniBrute. And in the second he showes off his collection of (mostly) vintage synths.
If you're a fan of Portishead you will love watching him coax huge sounds out of this tiny synth.
Not since I heard "Know Where" by Holy Other last summer have I been stunned by a song like this. Then I watched the video. Unreal.
Megafaun isn't really my cup of tea, but this Moog-ified version of "Hope You Know" performed at the Moog Sound Lab after last years Moogfest is really beautiful.
I agree with @dylannau in the comments. It would be really interesting to see Megafaun move in a more electronic direction.
Angelo Badalamenti describes composing 'Love Theme' while sharing a piano stool with David Lynch.
Man of his word.
Via GigaOm:
The policy was that only after the car was officially on sale and the price had been set could anybody reserve a Model S. They were about to open the meeting, so without saying a word I whip out my wallet, where I always keep one check, fill it out for the full price of the car, and then toss it across the table. Everyone was stunned.
Keeping a single check in your wallet is a really good idea.
If you're not following Steve Jurvetson's Flickr blog you should be.
I don't know how I missed this 2010 Brian Eno BBC documentary "Another Green World". I can not find it for sale anywhere but you can watch it here. Absolutely fantastic.
what you're seeing / hearing here is a monorocket mx-6 case (i.e. the lovingly-monikered "voight-kampff machine") chock full of digital & analogue eurorack synthesizer modules (360hp of designs by the harvestman, makenoise, intellijel, cwejman, synthesis technology, doepfer, tiptop, plan b, dave jones, 4ms, bubblesound, and division6) fed through a radial stereo direct inject box into a pair of old/busted event studio monitors (replicating the average club / gallery pa system, right on down to the "busted")
Awesome.
Nice Super Bowl commercial from Best Buy featuring Ray Kurzweil talking about text to speech technology. Also, check out his rings.
For the 2011 music portion of it's annual Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative Rolex paired Brian Eno with Icelandic musician Ben Frost.
Brian never, ever directly answers a question. He always comes back with another question, and I love that about him. He never solves anything for me or proposes anything or gives a straight answer – it’s always about creating a dialogue.
What an opportunity.
Read the full article, or watch the video.
Nearly three weeks after release I finally got a chance to check out the first episode of Tested: The Show from Will and Norm at Tested.com. It's fantastic!
The first episode is a primer on CNC machines (Computer Numerical Control) and features Norm and Will building a new MakerBot Thing-O-Matic.
Speaking of MakerBot, earlier this week they announced they're taking 10 million in investment from a number of angel investors including Jeff Bezos and Matt Mullenweg. It seems the MakerBot is here to stay.
Now I just need to buy one.
I was on my Segway and I was thinking about all the innovation and imagination it took to create that. So I called a friend Ron Conway, like, 'Yo, do you know who invented this?' He was like, 'A good friend of mine, Dean Kamen.' I was like, 'You know this guy? Can you introduce me to him?' So he introduced me to him via email, and that's when he told me about U.S. FIRST. He was like, 'I've got this program that I've been doing for 20 years, teaching kids science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- and we have robotics competitions every year.' I aid, 'How come I've never heard of that?' He was like, 'That's the problem.' So I said, 'Well, if you have a robotics competition every year, we're performing at the Super Bowl, maybe we could perform, make a halftime show at your robotics competition.'
So will.i.am went to ABC, pitched the show, and bought the airtime himself to show a robotics competition in prime time in hopes of inspiring kids to learn.
No one has talked more shit about the Black Eyed Peas than me. I'm going to stop right now. I can't wait to see the show.
"Bloomberg Risk Takers" profiles Elon Musk, the entrepreneur who helped create PayPal, built America’s first viable fully electric car company, started the nation’s biggest solar energy supplier, and may make commercial space travel a reality in our lifetime. And he’s only 40.
Markus Kayser, a snappily dressed graduate design student at the Royal College of Art, built a 3D printer that produces objects using only sand and sun. He shot this video outside Siwa, Egypt in May of 2011.
PV cells convert sunlight into electricity to power the computer, build platform, and other moving parts while a Fresnel lens converts sunlight into an extremely high temperature beam that melts the silica in the sand. The imprecise nature of the material and technique creates objects that have a beautifully handmade appearance, much different than the standard 3D printed look.
It's an ingenious project and a gorgeous video. I look forward to seeing more of his work.
Fun interview. Ray Kurzweil is a good sport.