David Kanaga is a pretty interesting fellow. He’s got tons of free albums available, and his latest work, “Cybernetics,” is something of a study in free electronic jazz. I was checking out his website today, and found this computer program he designed in collaboration with Josh Bothun called “ada,” which acts as an “interactive album”—like a record you play yourself by experimenting with clicking and moving your mouse around the screen. It has eight original works contained within that are all really fun to mess around with. Takes me back to when I first saw Mouse on Mars’ amazing website for Idiology, where you could “breed” sounds and create loops and such. It’s also similar to Eno’s recent work with iPhone apps, but this is a bit different and more involved. I love the way Kanaga conceptualizes his sounds as colored shapes here, ones you can load with effects and manipulate with volume and pitch shifts. Way cool.
It took me a couple of tries to figure out how to get the sound to work. When you download the application, go to the “bin” folder and try opening the “ada_audio” file first, then open the “ada_java” file.
Download ada for Mac or Windows.
