Focusing on musical creativity, Pugs Luv Beats offers a refreshing change from the standard karaoke-style music games currently on the market. Instead of forcing a player to accurately recreate an existing song, the game encourages exploration and musical composition – playing the game will create original music, different for every user.

In the game, the player controls an alien breed of pugs. Once the masters of a wondrous and highly advanced civilization, these pugs are the victims of their own greed. They loved nothing more than to collect beats, which they cultivated with their special brand of “luv”. But an ill-advised scheme to grow the biggest beat of all time spun wildly out of control, and their home planet was destroyed. The player must help the pugs to grow more beats so they can rediscover new planets, build houses, and recover their lost technology.

Head over to the Pugs Luv Beats website to see lots of videos, screenshots, and information. Give it a download and let me know what you think!

You can RSVP on the New Media Scotland Facebook Group or Eventbrite page.

Hope to see you there!

edit: as I’ve said in the comments, thanks to all who came by! I’ll post photos as soon as I get them from the Apple Store, in the mean time here is one of the mushrooms set up with the laser:

Working with Sarah and Peter Gregson, cellist extraordinaire, I developed some custom software (using Arduino, Max/MSP, and Ableton Live) which allowed Peter to manipulate his own playing through his movements in real time. Here’s a video we made during rehearsals:

I don’t have a video of us showing it off at the conference, unfortunately…it was just too busy! But I think it went really well and if all goes well we’ll be developing this project further.

This trip was possible thanks to support from the Scottish Arts Council and New Media Scotland.

The rest of the conference was absolutely fantastic, the highlight for me being an incredible “bodyhack” studio workshop with Daito Manabe + company. The TEI folk made a great little end-of-conference video about the studio workshops (featuring music by yours truly!):

Mujik Classik is a free introduction into the wonderful world of Mujik, where fireflies inhabit a musical library full of books and balloons…a curious world which you can explore to make your own music in a fun and lovely way! Mujik is brought to you by Lucky Frame, which is made up of myself, Jonathan Brodsky, and Mike Greer.

Go and download now! It’s free! And lovely!

This update is once again the result of lots of hard work by the Lucky Frame team – myself, Jon Brodsky, and Mike Greer. If you already own Mujik the update should be available in your iTunes account now…if you don’t already own it you can go now and get it for yourself!

For those of you who don’t know, Mujik is an iPhone app that company recently released. We are now working on an update that should be available in a couple of weeks. Thanks to Mack for sending this in!

2. I had the final sound check with Gol, my Iranian electronic jazzfunk band, for our show today at the MELA Festival right here in Edinburgh. We’ve prepared a brand new specially commissioned set, full of awesome live audio/visual triggering and sampling and Santurs and percussion and other amazing stuff.

3. I went to the opening of Rough Cut Nation at the National Portrait Gallery. I was lucky enough to be a part of the show, having built some fun little UV LED contraptions that allowed people to interact with the artwork…the opening was absolutely phenomenal, and was a testament to the amazing work by all of the artists. I was extremely proud to be involved, I can’t say enough positive things about the whole experience.

I have tons more to say about all three of these projects (and even a few more coming up next week), so I will expand on them very soon. I’m now off to Pilrig Park for the Gol festivities. Wish me luck!