From TheBeastBrothers on flickr, via matrixsynth:
“”His name was Martin (pronounced in spanish) and he liked the Cure’s disintegration album the most (for real)”
The Beast Brothers are also visual artists. You can check out their website www.thebeastbrothers.com or visit their shop. I liked Suavecita (watercolor) and the Shinin (sculpture).
The theme of this week’s Photo Hunt is digital. Rather than simply use a digital photo – which could be any photo ever taken of Luna – I chose a couple of images that demonstrate the unique opportunities of the medium. A digital photo is really just a stream of numbers, not unlike digital audio, and can be processed in countless ways using digital signal processing or applying other mathematical functions.
For a piece I originally did in 2007, I took one of Luna’s adoption photos from Santa Cruz County Animal Services and applied an algorithm that overlaid these colored bands, as shown above. The color bands were generated using a set of hastily chosen trigonometric and hyperbolic functions applied to the timeline of the animation sequence. These photos are stills from the full animation.
I did these using image and video extensions to Open Sound World – one nice feature of that work was that I could use the same functions for both audio and video, and “see” what a particular audio-processing algorithm looked like when applied to an image. And I would probably use the Processing environment for future visual work, perhaps in conjunction with OSW.
Weekend Cat Blogging #309 and Carnival of the Cats are both being hosted by Billy SweetFeets this weekend. Perhaps Luna’s animation could be part of one of the dance videos they often feature.
Photo Hunt #264 is hosted by tnchick. This week’s theme is digital.
And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.
A special note this week. Our friend Judi at Judi’s Mind over Matter (home of Jules and Vincent) has information on how to help animals affected the storms and tornadoes in the southeast US. They live in Alabama, not far from the place that was hit hardest by the tornadoes. We’re glad they’re safe, and able to provide this information for those who would like to help.
Another photo of Jackson with the Teenage Engineering OP-1, from Maggie Osterberg on flickr. You can see a previous post of Jackson here.
If you would like to submit your own cat+synthesizer picture, you can post on facebook, tweet us at @catsynth, or use our submission form.
From Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise:
“According to the notes in this new Naxos release…the photograph was taken on June 28, 1925, two days before the completion of the First. It comes from the DSCH Archive in Moscow.”
Have you encountered any other noted composers with cats? (John Cage is a well-known example.)
This weekend, we have another combined Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt. The theme this week is square. Geometric shapes, including squares, abound at CatSynth HQ. But with the exceptionally gorgeous weather, we turn our attention once again to the patio:
The patio is covered in square slate tiles on which Luna enjoys rolling around. We are still doing some work to fix things up for spring now the construction is in the past. New design ideas to emphasize the industrial and geometric aesthetic.
This weekend we are also joining our friends the Three Tabby Cats in Vienna ~ Kashim, Othello and Salome ~ in a Weekend of Remembrance. We participated when they hosted a similar weekend back in 2007, lighting a candle like this one.
As we have made more friends online, so we have also lost many friends. We said goodbye to Mickey only a few weeks ago. Last year, we lost DJ Kikovas, the feline companion of our friend and fellow electronic musician Vivi Pedraglio. We also said goodbye to Tali and Sniffie. It is interesting to look back and see the diverse collection of people, mixture of musicians, engineers and cat lovers, who cross paths in these stories. We have also lost many heroes in music, art and mathematics in this same period of time; and some personal friends. We remember them as well.
Our thoughts for all our friends who lost love ones (human and non-human) over the past year, and for those who are struggling in the current storms in southeastern U.S., recovering from the disaster in Japan, and living through the seemingly greater number conflicts around the world.
Weekend Cat Blogging #308 is hosted by Samantha and Clementine at Life From a Cat’s Perspective. They are dedicating their post in remembrance of Praline.
Photo Hunt #263 is hosted by tnchick. This week’s theme is SQUARE.
The Carnival of the Cats will be up tomorrow at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.
And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.
From hamsterdunce on YouTube, via matrixsynth (I missed this one earlier).
More music on umop.com! Background music: “O Face” by Parallax.
Get a look inside Analog Heaven Northeast 2011, an annual meetup for synth enthusiasts on the East Coast. Every year we bring a selection of irreplaceable electronic gewgaws from our respective music studios (you can spot my Customsynth Rolands in there somewhere) for each other to admire. Great turnout this year! We even had a visit from the God of Catsynth, apparently.
Cameo by the infamous “cat on a keyboard in space”.
From Maggie Osterberg on flickr:
More from this series in coming days. It is exciting to see the OP-1 in action (particularly being played by a cat). You can see my preview of the OP-1 from last year’s NAMM show.
“Trogotronic’s first module, the M 666 on top of Tiptop Audio’s ZDSP.”
From ibsendesign on flickr, via matrixsynth.
More info on Escape from Noise.
