Awesome Music Tech Projects From Art Decade, of Montreal & Dry The River

While some musicians still grumble about Twitter, others are diving in and making or collaborating on innovative art that combines their music and new tech tools. Art Decade released an animated video created using the iPad and Procreate App. of Montreal integrated projections into their live show via the Kinect for XBox 360 and Google's SketchUp 3D visualization tool. And Dry The River took it to the streets with posters that included an audio component that one listens to through tin cans attached to strings.

The music tech connection is rather obvious in these examples but I hope the music marketing connection is also clear. These projects and videos could obviously get music blog and media coverage and, in this case, are getting music industry coverage, but they could also tempt a variety of other web publishing genres from tech blogs to visual art blogs.

Western Sunrise Animated Video by Art Decade
Using iPad & Procreate App

For the single Western Sunrise off the same-titled album, Boston-based Art Decade recently released a lovely animated video to match a lovely song.

The video was created using the iPad and Procreate, an inexpensive iPad app.

Director Whitney Alexander and animator Kipp Jarden take you behind the scenes and discuss the making of the Western Sunrise video.

of Montreal Live on Jimmy Fallon, Projections
Via Kinect & Google SketchUp

In preparation for their spring tour, Athens, GA-based of Montreal recently appeared on Jimmy Fallon to perform the single Dour Percentage off their recent release Paralytic Stalks. They also used the opportunity to test out their new stage show before an audience of millions and you can see the results above.

Wired's Angela Watercutter interviewed frontman Kevin Barnes and production designer Nick Gould who shared the process of creating the visuals projected during the live show.

They began with 300 images created by Barnes, his wife and his brother. Gould then used the Kinect for Xbox 360 to "turn the movements on the stage — whether from the band or dancers — into data the computers operating the projected visuals can translate."

Visuals were then projected onto 13 screens. To design the stage set, Gould used Google's 3D modeling tool SketchUp. In addition to designing the set, he was able to check out how it fit the studio the day before tech rehearsal using SketchUp and his iPad. He says, "I was able to zoom around a scale model of what our performance was going to look like in their studio, right down to the inch."

Dry The River: Listening Posters (An electronic string art project)

London-based Dry The River, who are doing a number of shows at SXSW, are building to the release of Shallow Bed in April.

RCA contacted branded content agency FOAM, who previously worked with Dry The River on the Horses street art project.

They actually debuted the album with the above string art posters each depicting an animal, one for each song, on the streets of London:

"At the end of the string, the band used old fashioned Tin Can telephones to allow passers-by to listen to a song…Sophie [Yeoman] hand built each poster and fitted them with an Arduino / Wave Shield combo wired through the string to a speaker concealed in the bottom of a tin-can."

These are all cool projects that do a nice job of extending music into technological realms.

Which do you think would leave a bigger impact if debuted at SXSW?

Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith maintains his freelance writing hub at Flux Research and music industry resources at Music Biz Blogs. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.