In addition to Halloween-themed music mixes to entertain you this weekend, sounds and images from experimental to trance are echoing through the Internets this week. We’ve got the details on Create Digital Motion.

For visualists and a range of out-there-leaning audiovisual and sonic acts, France and the rest of Europe have a festival streaming online:

Festival Stream: French and European Visualists at Cinesthesy 1.0 Today and Saturday

And 11:30p US Eastern is SWiY, with more gear than we have (as pictured above):
Halloween Stream Tonight: SWiY Live Trance and Gearlust

Scare your cat and your significant other and keep the sounds going all weekend, I say. That is, if you’re not roaming America scaring up votes (that’s important, too).

slotMusic.org | Press Release

See also GearLog, which notes that SanDisk previously did a free promotional SD of music

Wired News asks, “but why?”, to which I’d answer – it might well be easier to load music onto a phone in parts of the world other than the US, you might more easily distribute videos, and artists looking to increase the value of their CDs could innovate on revitalizing album art.

First, let’s start with the players, as that’s basically the big news here.

Hardware: SanDisk, the folks who invented flash storage and make more of it than anyone else

Labels: A huge set of the majors – EMI Music (which includes the likes of Angel, Capitol, Blue Note, and Astrelwerks), Sony BMG, Warner Music (including Atlantic, Nonesuch, Rhino), and the world’s biggest music company, Universal Music Group

Retailers: Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and other US retailers, with Europe to follow – keeping in mind, Wal-Mart remains the biggest brick-and-mortar seller in the US

When it’s happening: Exact date TBA, but officially by the holidays

Which artists: Most likely, lots of them. An EMI representative who spoke with CDM confirmed two chart-topping examples: Coldplay’s Viva la Vida and Kate Perry’s One of the Boys.

Now, you’d be right to be skeptical of how this format will be received, but it’s certainly a big distribution play with that arrangement of labels and retailers.

The hardware in question is basically SanDisk’s tiny removable flash memory format microSD, rebranded and repackaged as slotMusic. (A representative of SanDisk tells us there are some other subtle technological differences; more on that soon.) The important thing about this is that the hardware you buy has no DRM on it at all; it’s just standard flash memory you can plug into phones and mobile devices, or, via a tiny included USB sleeve, a computer.

SanDisk’s format specifies DRM-free, 320 kpbs MP3s as the music format. Gruvi, SanDisk’s previous attempt at turning their lucrative flash memory business into a music format was a miserable failure, but by contrast, it was locked with DRM features and, excepting a big release by the Rolling Stones, lacked support from labels and retailers. (I see Gruvi has even been largely erased from SanDisk’s website.)

What’s the Business Angle?

My colleague Eoin Rossney sent me this story under a headline on Ireland’s SiliconRepublic.com that screams “SanDisk and big labels in tech deal that could save the music business.” That’s obviously hyperbolic, but it’s also wrong. To me, it seems to be about three things:

1. It’s an experiment. Music labels want their music everywhere they can get it – as, frankly, they should; that’s their job.

2. It’s a massive end run around iTunes. Remember, part of what helped prompt some of the more stubborn labels to remove DRM was the realization that their DRM deal with Apple had placed Apple in the position of dominating download sales for the device most people owned.

3. Most phones aren’t iPhones. Labels will continue to do business with iTunes because iTunes is selling their music – but they’d be nuts to turn their back on the rest of the mobile phone market, which is far bigger. The press release notes 1.2 billion phones are due to ship this year, a number Apple can’t approach even with all their iPods and iPhones put together. In fact, it’s hard to wonder if, on a global scale, iPod won’t slip into the shadows with the number of increasingly multimedia-savvy phones out there.

Despite the hip factor of the iPhone, Apple has a tiny slice of an exploding global market for mobile devices. Instead of using a cable and a fancy vendor-specific store, you can just give people music they can pop directly into their phone, which – from vendors other than Apple – typically has a microSD slot. And as I noted last week, Apple’s alternative is a store/software sync arrangement that they control exclusively.

Music Everywhere, and Back on Objects

I’m not sure slotSD will be the “new CD,” or that it even needs to be. I think it’s better to see this as one of a variety of options you’ll see for music distribution. And, of course, even slotSD is best understood in the context of a growing amount of music showing up on flash memory, because it combines the flexibility of digital formats with physical objects.

“This is one of many initiatives to make our music available in as many different forms as possible,” Jeanne Meyer of EMI Music tells CDM. “Our big MO is to experiment with as many as possible.”

EMI, for one, has a record of trying just this sort of thing. There was a re-release of Radiohead’s studio albums on memory stick, though that seemed to cause some controversy. EMI has even toyed with big retail, with a release of UK superstar Robbie Williams at England’s own big box, The Carphone Warehouse. (It’d be interesting to know what sales were like.)

Of course, you can easily download files. Physical media is all about the object. A SanDisk representative confirms that labels are planning physical liner notes and album art in the package. You can also expect the memory to be loaded with digital extras, in the form of artwork, videos, and the like. Given the middling quality of online video, and the fact that bandwidth costs aren’t going down at the rate many had hoped, I think that could mean higher quality and more access to video via physical formats than online.

Indie Artists and Digital Contents

So, I imagine for many of you not on Sony BMG, and listening to many artists who aren’t, this won’t be terribly earth-shaking news. But I do know SanDisk reassures CDM that they have worked with indies in the past on various promotional projects.

What can artists do with a format like this? Well, they can load it up with goodies that might actually be otherwise rack up bandwidth costs. One excellent example of an artist experimenting with this format is Sound Tribe Sector 9. They sent their latest release, Peaceblaster, to me. It’s loaded up not only with the files for the album, but extra images, podcasts, a screensaver, and videos. We saw these kinds of extras squeezed onto CDs at one point via formats like Enhanced CD, but there’s no question it’s more convenient on USB stick.

I think the big challenge will be how to make these contents interesting and unique, and even with bandwidth costs comparing unfavorably against increasingly high-definition media, how to compete with online alternatives.

Somehow, I imagine the slotMusic format winding up being a plain-vanilla blister pack that, stuck in a dull music department in Best Buy, just confuses consumers. I’m happy to be proven wrong there. But there is, in the meantime, plenty of room for independent artists and labels to innovate with short-run releases and ideas for what to pack inside the digital media that no one has thought of yet. And while majors have earned the skepticism of consumers and artists alike, I wouldn’t be surprised to see majors being more adventurous – especially once they discover that, in addition to the perils digital media pose, there could be a significant profit payoff for those experiments.

Actually, forget everything I’ve said in this entire article, and let me sum it up in one line:

If physical distribution brings art back to album releases, it’s a good thing, and it’ll work.

The generation of music lovers staring into album art wasn’t wrong.

Okay, readers around the world. There’s a convergence of electronic musicians and visualists here in NYC at Minitek this weekend. Here are your choices:

Music lineup
Innovation Day Artists
Visualists for the Innovation Night Lineup

I’ve got myself. I’ve got a video crew. You’ve got, I think, pretty wildly divergent tastes — and many of you aren’t electronic musicians. But I’m curious, which interviews would you most want to read / watch? (I promise we’ll ask probing questions, and we’re not just limited by celebrity, either.)

I’ve never put this out to readers before, but then CDM’s ability to cover events and artists is finally starting to expand to what I’d like. (Not that I ever get tired of talking tech, but I think it’s nice to cover, you know, music, too!) So I’m curious not just what I think but, given your combined experience and taste, what you think. Let us know.

Related: Teaser: Minitek in NYC Draws Huge Lineup, a New Tangible Music Interface

Minitek is a massive “electronic music + innovation festival” coming to New York this weekend. If you’re anywhere in the area, I definitely recommend finding a way to get out here. And if you’re far away, stay tuned, as we’re planning some epic coverage here on CDM. The events are split between Midtown Manhattan and the eccentric shores of Coney Island (above).

The music lineup includes some big names — think Richie Hawtin, Magda, M.A.N.D.Y., Audiofly, Audion (big highlight for me), Adultnapper, Heidi, Guy Gerber, and the like, with Francois K closing out the evening. But for those of you whose tastes tend in the more experimental, there’s quite a bit of that, too.

Under the “innovation” category, we’ll see works like James Patten on the tangible Audiopad interface, Norman Fairbanks jamming on the Tenori-On, Audiocube players, and more. There’s also a big lineup of generative visuals for the nights; we’re covering that on our sister site Create Digital Motion. You’ll also be able to chat up record labels and play with the tech during the day in the village on Coney Island.

Minitek Festival Site; ticket info (you will want to get a pass if you can!)

Set times are finally up, though that includes only the main acts, not the innovation. (I know some of the, ahem, “innovators” so when they find out themselves when they’re playing, I’ll pass it on!)

Details are constantly coming in, so you can watch the blog or mailing list on the site. And yes, Astroland just closed, but Coney Island’s other rides are up, in case you want to hop on the Cyclone between sets. (Artists playing, if anyone wants a CDM interview on one of the rides, I’m game. I think it’s be fun to do an interview mixed with screams on the coaster.)

Tangible Roots

One of the projects I’m most excited about is Roots, a new music/visual interactive installation for the Brick interface. Co-creators Jordan Hochenbaum and Owen Vallis took home a Tenori-On the last time they ran into CDM (video of that after the jump); this time they team up with London-based designer Memo Akten for some beautiful generative visuals. (They’re also behind the Arduino-based Monome clone we saw a couple of weeks ago.) Here’s a short teaser video; we’ll have more on this after the weekend.

Roots Multi Touch Tangible Installation Teaser from BricK Table on Vimeo.

And that’s just a taste of one of the innovation day projects, every single one of which have gotten a mention (or three) somewhere in the pages of CDM in the past (really)!
Here’s Jordan and Owen in the heart-stopping finish to CDM’s Futuristic Design Challenge, in the moments that won them the Tenori-On prize we gave up.

Brick Table @ Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2008 Lightning Round from BricK Table on Vimeo.

The rumor mill’s conventional wisdom is that iTunes 8 will be part of Apple’s music-themed press event next week. That’s a safe bet — iTunes 7 is clearly due for an update. But Allan White has some interesting speculation with which I’m inclined to agree. There’s an excellent change Robert Hodgin’s excellent Magnetosphere visualizer is going to become an official visualizer for iTunes 8. That’s be a big win for Processing (site | cdmo tag), the visual code “sketching” tool — and a likely time suck for your productivity next week, if true, as you stare into its hypnotic pulsing orbs. (Just fair warning.)

Allan White writes on his blog — a lovely visit for fans of music and visualization:

[Robert] Hodgins built a wonderful iTunes visualizer called Magnetosphere a while back – which mysteriously disappeared from his site a few months back. I wrote him, and he said that it had been sold to a third party. There’s strong evidence that this third party is in fact Apple, and that it may ship with iTunes 8, which could be shown as soon as next week at an iPod Event.

iTunes 8 Rumors: is Magnetosphere the New Visualizer?

One way or another, it looks like we will be getting the visualizer. And getting it officially would be terrific — it’s about time the fairly moribund world of visualizers was reignited. (Just remember, musicians, work with a real VJ/visualist when playing live for the full experience. End public service announcement.)

Magnetosphere Video
(Above, a reskinned take on the original — Robert does wonderful things with iterating his code)

Magnetosphere iTunes Plugin Page

Flight404 on Create Digital Motion

Jaymis Loveday sits down with Deborah Johnson for Create Digital Motion in a conversation about live visuals for music. Deborah (right), aka CandyStation, is touring with Sufjan Stevens, another of our favorite musicians. (If I could come up with more excuses to bring him into a "digital music" blog, I would.)

It really is a conversation, as Jaymis has plenty of thoughts himself, having toured with Australian Idol Bobby Flynn (and I think the two are kindred in aesthetic).

See Deborah’s visuals above, and check out the full interview on CDMotion:

Interview: Deborah Johnson on Sufjan, Singer Songwriters, and Content

Many artists tour with visuals, but use canned material. Seen any particularly terrific shows with live visuals lately? (Maybe someday we’ll be able to get together a matchmaking service for Create Digital Musicians and Create Digital Motionists — speaking as someone who does do both, it’s not always easy to split energies, and collaboration is more fun!)

Edirol V-8 Mixer: 8 Ins, 3 Outs, Computer Ins Mean V-4, The Next Generation

With this arriving this month and the boutique Vixid mixer to play with, it could be a great year for audiovisualists.

Texas, here we come. Before the armies of bands hit Austin for South by Southwest, we’ve got some events going during SxSW Interactive — the “spring break for Web geeks” festival of online tech.

Laptopists battle it out Saturday night 3/8: The Digital Showcase at the Austin Museum of Art is holding a Laptop Battle for Texan laptop artists. I’ll be judging, along with CDM reader favorite (and reader) proem, and two other judges. The night also  features performances from New Berlin and Richard Gear, plus live visuals from CDMotion contributor Dan Winckler. Details at AMODA, upcoming.org. (A paltry $4-$7, and even 18 year-olds can get in.)

Explore creative interfaces for data Sunday 3/9: My panel with interaction design pioneer S. Joy Mountford (Apple, Yahoo) will look at how Web information can become a fluid, artistic medium for visualization and sonification. Details at Create Digital Motion. (Requires SxSW Interactive badge.)

Live CDM music and motion party Monday 3/10: Bring your musical, visual toys, custom code, and DIY projects and hang out with other CDMers at 8pm, then stick around for live performances from musicians and visualists. Details below; let us know you’re coming at upcoming.org, Facebook, SXSWHERE party guide. Free, no badge required.

More on the CDM party — good chance to chill before SxSW Music unloads on you!

CDM Live Music + Motion @ SxSW Interactive

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/447754/?ps=6

Brought to you by CDM and Livid Instruments, makers of the Ohm. (See our interview last month; very curious to see Jay use this live in the party — will try to get some video of it in action, assuming I’m not playing at the time.)

8:00 PM — Open mixer / project share: bring your custom code, custom patches, favorite music and motion toys, and DIY hardware — finished or not — and hang out with CDM readers, Austin’s digital scene, and SxSWers.

Music

proem
http://www.proemland.com/

Peter Kirn
http://createdigitalmusic.com

Lila’s Medicine
http://www.myspace.com/lilasmedicine

Motion

Live visuals from Livid Instruments and Friends:

Jay Smith – Livid Instruments
http://www.lividinstruments.com/about_history.php

Kusser – Open Labs
http://www.myspace.com/kusser

… and surprise visualist appearances

FREE
Please RSVP
No SxSW badge required
(but you can wear it as a badge of honor, if you like)

And the East German judge says…

More specs on the AMODA party Saturday:

Squarely in the “things Ableton Live was not necessarily built to do”: animating visuals, one frame at a time.

Cousin Throckmorton whipped up a retro visual feast of Space Invaders, Pong, and other games classics, using MIDI to step through frames individually.

You can MIDI sequence Live’s locators to jump between frames, thereby giving the effect of animation. Sprites/frames are drawn using blank MIDI clips; unfortunately, the resolution is limited by the Y-axis size, as Live doesn’t allow you to resize that. Live’s skins are somewhat tied to MIDI already, so you can “ride” the skins field to change background colors (it updates on midi notes on(?) Audio track is made of samples of video games, trails effect at end achieved via hacked Live skin. Sets/skins available for you to toy with at my myspace: myspace.com/cousinthrockmorton

Mind you, this is unlikely to shake the visualists on Create Digital Motion from specialized tools for visuals — and you could just as easily (uh, scratch that for far more easily) use MIDI to trigger a visual app. But the work is really incredible, and I think as Live grows in ubiquity, users will increasingly show their Live chops by hacking harder than ever before.

And for the record, this is the same Throckmorton who gave us a ribbon controller made from a drivers’ license, a drum made from a laser, and pennies as drum pads, among others. More MIDI-as-visual-control tips, too:

db3ll Channel

Prescient spam comment: “i am so lonely, i just broke up with my ex” says cutechick90201. Worry not, uh, imaginary cutechick. You’ll be surrounded by boys as you seduce them with the siren song of your drivers’ license.

Thanks, Cousin!

In addition to the week’s worth of discussions and skillsharing classes, there will be two “showcase” nights, Saturday Jan. 19th and Sunday Jan. 20th. For those interested, I will be exhibiting two audiosculptural pieces, Octophonopod and Snowy Day during the event on Saturday. There’s a riduculous amount of talent on both nights, amounting to some of the most fresh and innovative people working in sound and motion graphics today.

[- Michael Una]

A full week of buzzing digital media creation will be showcased starting Tuesday, January 15th through Monday, January 21st 2008, at several venues downtown Chicago.

MGFest 08 features two world-premier theater screenings, multiple post-production studio tours, audio/visual art exhibits, a/v performances, six days of motion design / sound design / and motion programming classes.

These events celebrate creative minds and bright ideas within the emerging media landscape. Whether your a hard-core geek, a dedicated composer, a designer, film-maker, artist, engineer, programmer, educator, aficionado, prosumer, hobbyist, or just someone who likes being close to the creative community, mgFest is for you. The festival has become a destination for creative professionals from all over the Midwest and the nation by attracting the meshwork of companies and individuals that surround creative motion-picture design.

Socialize at one or all of the night events while experiencing multimedia art, video and sound in synch. Watch some of the past years most creative shorts or travel thru alternate dimensions in video art. Come mingle with local art directors and advertising executives, or discuss the technical operations of a professional edit bay and graphics shop with seasoned veterans of the industry. Listen to panels on the newest advancements in delivery technology affecting every media professional. Attend cutting edge classes of your choice within the realms of motion design, sound design and programming. Awaken your creativity at the Imagination College.

( Design | Sound | Code ) .: in motion

Check out mgFest.com for the most current festival information.