Graph mining and music

By gavin | Published: May 14, 2010
Earworm from Echo Nest

“Earworm (thanks to Jonathan Feinberg for the name) makes it possible to extend or shrink a song to any length you might desire, without changing the tempo. It does this by constructing a network graph of the piece, using The Echo Nest’s analysis data. Each node in the graph is a beat in the song, and an edge exists between two nodes if the two beats, and the several beats that follow them, sound similar (close in timbre and pitch).” The Echo Nest Blog

They use a tune from Phoenix for the samples. Check it out!

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Octane Render Samples & Video

By gavin | Published: May 12, 2010
Octane Render Sample

CDM brings us up to speed on Octane Render, a GPU renderer from Refractive Software.

This isn’t a demo of some futuristic research tech at SIGGRAPH, though: it’s a product in beta right now you can use, today. (A beta license, amazingly, costs just EUR99 during the beta.) Friend of the site Marc has kept us posted on his new employer, and it’s amazing stuff. Refractive Software’s Octane Render does photorealistic rendering right on the GPU.

Go check out the complete gallery and demo videos too. Pretty amazing.

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Phaidon Design Classics iPad Edition

By gavin | Published: May 10, 2010
Phaidon Design Classics

Special introductory price: $19.99USD.

The application offers, at the touch of a finger, access to an encyclopedic, illustrated history of 1,000 timeless design classics by not only renowned designers, such as Marcel Breuer, Achille Castiglioni, Le Corbusier, Jasper Morrison, Dieter Rams, Eero Saarinen, and Philippe Starck but also anonymously designed pieces, such as the clothes peg, the corkscrew, and the chopstick, that have stood the test of time.

Again, for emphasis: the book version is $175. The iPad version $19.99.

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Logorama

By gavin | Published: May 9, 2010
Logorama Intro

“What better way to kick off our brand new film feature, than with Logorama, the winner of this year’s Oscar for animated short. Created by French animation studio H5, Logorama sees a universe and its inhabitants created entirely from globally recognised brand names and symbols. The film opens to Dean Martin’s ‘Good Morning Life, revealing a Malibu island and MSN butterflies forming the landscape of LA, going on to show towering skyscrapers of Colgate, buildings of LEGO and even a Hot Wheels carnival.”

Logorama Evil Michelin Man

Just started re-reading some William Gibson, in particular “Pattern Recognition.” This would’ve made Cayce quite upset.

All from the usually quite awesome We Heart Stuff. They’ve got the full video too.

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Spring cleaning with a CDN

By gavin | Published: May 8, 2010

So after tweeting I was giving up on Wordpress, I’m still using Wordpress! I spent a few weeks looking at alternatives and playing around with some custom stuff (written in Clojure of course). I found plenty to like with Squarespace, Typepad & Posterous and was ready to slap down the credit card. But! For instance, my ideal workflow involves simple bookmarklets and simple editors. TypePad and Posterous have great bookmarklets however I could never get the Squarespace one to work. But in the end, I just wanted the flexibility that running something yourself can bring.

I started from scratch with Wordpress. Trashed a bunch of plug-ins I thought where necessary (they aren’t!) Got something fancy going with Amazon Cloudfront (it’s faster!) And upgraded my MarsEdit (awesome!) Back to blogging.

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Sync/Lost

By gavin | Published: February 11, 2010

Sync/Lost from 3bits on Vimeo.

SyncLost is a multi-user installation for immersion in the history of electronic music. From a complex timeline, rhythms and sub-rhythms merge to create new sounds.

The project’s objective is to create an interface where users can view all the connections between the main styles of electronic music through visual and audible feedback. The choice is individual and leads to a collective consequence in the spatial visualization of information.

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The Oscars of Type by Ellen Lupton

By gavin | Published: February 10, 2010

Calluna.jpg

Best Serif: Calluna, by Jos Buivenga

Ooh I like it a lot. Looks quite nice set in a book as well.

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Emigre No.70: The Look Back Issue

By gavin | Published: January 22, 2010

1764BED8-779C-4884-B32E-7E2FA27922E6.jpg

Emigre and Gingko Press are proud to announce the publication of Emigre No.70: The Look Back Issue – Celebrating 25 Years in Graphic Design. The 512-page book covers the best of a quarter century of Emigre magazine – one of the most influential design publications ever.

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Polar Employees (1966)

By gavin | Published: January 14, 2010

Polar Employees (1966)

I want to redo my home office. I think this’ll do.

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ImaginArt: an interactive book concept video

By gavin | Published: January 13, 2010

ImaginArt from recreat on Vimeo.

…is an installation that invites you to a new reading of some of the best albums published and illustrated in catalonia (ES). A comprehensive limitless reading, allowing you to know, moreover, the process of creating the book, other versions of the same story, play with literary precedents or invent new ones.

…is a game in two bands: The pace of reading the marks as you turn the page. The sound, images and voice run on us.

Very fascinating–the book as an interface.

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