Tag Archives: David Bowie

Make music with any conductive object – fruits, water, even your own body!

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While we have the miracle of technology, why not use it for fun and games too? Unusual designs like Playtronica show us that simplicity can be powerfully innovative too. Playtronica describes themselves as a digital playground that uses technologies to unleash a whole new world of possibilities for humans in terms of experiences with audio. Their purpose is to give sound a tactile dimension, and they rock it like Bowie! No really, the fruits literally rock it like Bowie and Let’s Dance is a fineapple (get it?!) song!

Playtronica’s most recent audio-tech is a midi device that can fit in your mom and lets you create music with pretty much anything. They have a list of 16 objects you can experiment in your first try but hey, let your imagination run wild because that is exactly what Playtronica was made – to encourage the creative genius in you. The midi device system has 2 boards with ample cables and alligator clips that you can plug into multiple objects like fruits, water, even your friends and then connect the other end to a computer. As long as the object is conductive in nature, Playtronica will have a sound for it. You can literally even measure the intensity of touch if you form a human chain which is actually the change of electric resistance. That signal can be captured with various online synthesizers via the web MIDI API – our minds are blown! Now you can connect with people in the literal sense.

The cool tech toy requires a 5 minute set up, anything in your house (including yourself) and a computer to hit your first note. I find this is something that the ASMR industry can take over and turn into a goldmine. It’s unique sensory experience really lets you see and feel sound in a whole new way, that is why you can find this stimulative piece of tech in museums like Pompidou, Exploratorium, and even at music festivals! Playtronica has collaborated with brands like Nike, Boeing, Mercedes Benz, Google in the past to conjure immersive audio experiences. Make music with anything – holding hands, your lunch, coffee (I am curious if the Monday cup yawns harder than the Friday one), the movement of paint on paper when you make art, or wind in your hair…curiousity will not kill this musical cat.

Designer: Playtronica

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Labyrinth Vinyl LP Pays Tribute to Henson and Bowie

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Jim Henson released the weird and cool movie Labyrinth back in 1986, and while it wasn’t a huge hit back in the day, it’s gone on to become a classic. Beyond the cool puppetry, one of the most notable things about the flick was David Bowie played the bad guy Goblin King.

The soundtrack included several songs by Bowie, along with music by composer Trevor Jones. However, the soundtrack went out of production shortly after the film was released.

ThinkGeek has your back if you want some of those quirky ’80s tracks with a remastered version. The artwork on the sleeve is replicated from the original, and features has 12 original tracks, including Underground, Chilly Down, As the World Falls Down, Within You, and Magic Dance.

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David Bowie: That Time He Was In A Video Game

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David Bowie Omikiron The Nomad Soul 1

We have just lost one of the most legendary figures in rock music, the brilliant David Bowie at 69 years old. Luckily, his work will live on forever, even his curious work in the 1999 game Omikron.

 

2016 has started in the worst possible way. A few days into it and we’ve already had our first legendary rockstar passing away – after a long, hard battle against cancer, the famed musician, painter, producer and personiality David Bowie (best known for albums like The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Honky Dory, or Blackstar from a couple days ago) has left this mortal soil, and we miss him so much already. In his constant search for innovation, experimentation and building new ways of expression, Bowie did much more than just music, and for example was one of the main characters in the movie Labyrinth, had a hilarious cameo in Zoolander, and was even one of the main characters in a 1999 video game titles “Omikron: The Nomad Soul”, which was Quantic Dream and David Cage’s debut in the gaming world (the team behind Heavy Rain, Farenheit: Indigo Prophecy and Beyond: Two Souls).

Bowie was far from the only musician to ever appear in a video game (the fantastic Brutal Legend had like half of the heavy metal pantheon and that’s just one game!), but his role in Omikron: The Nomad Soul was special for appearing right at the end of the 90s, when representing someone’s face using polygons was still a challenge –  but as ever, David Bowie was way ahead of the curve. This Eidos video game came out in 1999 for PCs and in 2000 for DreamCast, and although none of the versions were a resounding success, it did earn kind of a cult following despite never making it to the PS2, the best selling console of all time, which was making its debut around that time. Just like with every Quantic Dream game, Omikron is a weird, disjointed experience, and while it plays mostly like an adventure game (not unlike Deus Ex), it also combines many other concepts, ideas and minigames.

 

In this game, players will control a character living in the city of Omikron, which is under control of a tyrannic artificial intelligence – all very dystopic. Bowie appears as the face and voice of a character named Boz, the leader of a group that exists inside the net and fights the system from within. As Quantic Dream loved collaborating with David Bowie so much, they also created a completely new character for him, the frontman of a rock band called “The Dreamers”, which plays some of his songs, and that can be found hosting shows throughout the game which the player can attend as easter eggs. The experience was so positive for Bowie that he reused many of the concepts, melodies and ideas for his 1999 album “Hours…”.

Omikron: The Nomad Soul wasn’t exactly a success, but was enough to launch David Cage’s career, along with the rest of his team’s. The game spent some time as a forgotten gem, unplayable on modern systems until the GOG.com rescued it from oblivion and released it as a digital version for PC. If you like Bowie and gaming, maybe playing this piece of history will help tou cope with the pain of losing such a legend, and if this game is just too weird for you, it’s still okay, for Google confirms that David Bowie is in every video game ever. See you soon, Black Star!

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