Cassette-tape DJ battles are just one of TradeMark G.’s retro, regressive, subversive musical creations. He also likes to put on glasses, a white lab coat, and interactive sewing thimble gloves, in order to produce illegal, copyright-crushing musical performances.

Many of the techno-gimmicks seen here on CDM are one-offs and prototypes. The Evolution Control Committee, by contrast, has been producing “illegal art”, often with the aid of technology, for some 20 years. They’ve been “culture jamming”, dropping Napster bombs (remember Napster?), infamously attracting the ire of CBS, and dressing up as giant pairs of trousers and cans of Parmesan cheese ever since. (I’m especially fond of the giant pants costumes.)

For the last few years, they’ve been perfecting the Thimbletron, a glove with sewing thimbles attached to a hacked M-Audio Oxygen8. (I always knew those Oxygen keyboards would be good for something.) The interface gives them newly-expanded powers of sample triggering. Happily, unlike Wired Magazine, they don’t overuse the term “mash-ups” to describe what they’re doing. Try, instead, “plagiarhythm” or “plunderphonics”: “In the world of The ECC’s music, Public Enemy duke it out with Herb Alpert while TV news anchor Dan Rather is the new frontman for AC/DC.”

Thimbletronic Energy Technology Page (video link at the top)

TradeMark will be performing with the Thimbletron at the Maker Faire, as well as running the cassette tape DJ battle we saw earlier:

Call for Cassette Jockeys @ Maker Faire, Cassette Tech Roundup

CDM (meaning me) will be at Maker Faire all week, sending as much coverage and causing as much havoc as possible. I’m hoping Dan Rather shows up.

More glove music controllers:

Controlling Music with DIY Interactive Gloves

Interactive artists and musicians have long experimented with sensor-packed gloves for controlling music, sound, and video. There’s Laetitia Sonami, who controls Max/MSP with her Lady’s Glove, and many other projects like the Hypersense Complex flex sensor glove-cum-gestural software as seen here this summer. Laetitia’s glove is elegantly sculptural, as seen below, and with years of practice performing with it, she’s built a whole performance practice around the glove as an instrument.

Eric Singer deserves special credit in this category. (See link for projects and videos.) In the early 90s, he hacked the Mattel PowerGlove, a controller for the Nintendo NES, for music. He followed that in 1999 with a Wireless MIDI Glove (right), which sends pressure and bend data for each fingertip.

So, what’s next?

Flex sensors are fab: these cheap strips send varying voltages when you bend them, seen in use in projects like Eric Singer’s sonic banana (basically, a bendable tube for triggering sounds). The trick is turning that flex data into something useful.

Hypersense Complex is a three-person collaborative working on new musical interfaces, and they’ve been nice enough to post details of the hardware and software they’re using. Hardware — all cheap, off-the-shelf stuff you can play with, too. Software — they’re doing fancy Python script interpretation to turn gestures into music in the free sound app SuperCollider. Check out details, sounds, and gallery. Not much aesthetics to their flex sensor glove — any fashion designers out there? But the exploration of musical gloves continues. Via Turbulence.org’s networked_performance blog.

Friday we looked at a big roundup of game controllers for music, courtesy Chris O'Shea. Ready to look like a cyborg when making music? Want to keep your entire budget under US$20? Here's where to get started (thanks to atariboy for some link pointers here):

1. Get the hardware: Pick up a P5 virtual reality gaming glove. (Check Froogle and the like; they're easy to find. I just picked one up for US$15.)
2. Get something to make music with: Get something to control, like plasq's free/donationware sampler instrument Musolomo.
3. Watch a video demo: Don't believe it will work? Take a pause for inspiration from this geeky video of P5 and Musolomo in action, courtesy OCP)
4. Dig into the research: Check Audiomulch's page for info on P5 research. You've got Melbourne ensemble Simulus to thank.
5. Windows drivers: Windows users will want P5 Glove MIDI.
6. Mac drivers: Mac OS X user will probably need two pieces of software, depending on their setup. P5osc supports new-wave protocol OSC, but not standard MIDI as you'll need for Ableton Live, most virtual instruments, and the like. To convert to MIDI, get P5osc and a copy of DoctorOp's
   Max/MSP-based P5 Glove MIDI Assigner, so you can assign the inputs of
   the P5 to MIDI data. (Click on the software tab to find it. Available
   as standalone in case you don't have Max/MSP.)
7. Start practicing: You're set! Assign the MIDI controllers
   to something interesting, like a sample loop point or filters or a
   synth, and play! Now you just have to figure out a way to make good music. :-)

More music & gaming coverage coming soon; there's simply too much to cover here.

Game controllers have some serious advantages for music:
they're simple, flexible, fun, and because they're shipped in volume,
often cheaper than DIY or even manufactured music products.

Our friend Chris O'Shea has an ongoing roundup of game controllers as instruments:

• Part I

• Part II

He wants more help: if you see some he missed, drop him a line! (between CDM readers and near near future,
we should be set!) Meanwhile, CDM is rounding up some ideas, too; I
just have to get through some paid writing now but expect something
next week.

Good news: White Noise Audio Software's free Memory plug-in
lets you sample loops of audio in real-time, adjusting both loop length
and filter cutoff for some crazy live loop-playing. Did I mention it's
free?

Insanely great news: You can control this mayhem using a $20-30 P5 Data Glove
game controller. I leave it up to your colossal stage presence to make
sure you look cyber-awesome and not just like a dork, but either way
I'll bet you have a great time.

One thing you probably didn't see last weekend at Miami's WMC: this DJ. (via audioserve) Call it world's cutest scratching. Netherlands-based Lejo
specializes in this unique hand + props marionette theater. And the
show tours — if you happen to be passing through, say, Segovia or
Mechelen.

What, you say? You don't think DJs are real musicians? Fine. Check this rockin' accordion duet.

Too shy to make funny voices while using your sock puppet? Be
the life of a party, with a MIDI sock puppet that can make silly
'singing' noises or play a synth. A single flex sensor (we're guessing)
can even manipulate pitch in a mode. Brought to you by UK's Matthew
Irvine Brown and, of course, via near near future. HP's DJammer has nothing on this.

Link (with videos and tech details)