I made a little sound sculpture - a sort of wind-powered banjo - for this weekend’s Figment Festival on Governors Island. Here it is installed on the island’s waterfront by Castle Williams, with a spectacular view of downtown Manhattan. (If you’re in the New York area, come to the festival this weekend - it’s free, and there’s eight million things to see.)
If the wind really picks up, the flowers will spin.
And here’s a video from when I was testing it on my deck.
Simple automatic instruments are constructed from local materials and objects on site. The system learns the sounds it can make by trying out its instruments, and then uses its range of sounds to try to reproduce the rhythmic and melodic qualities of sounds such as the voices of visitors. It then loops and alters these imitative sequences into improvised compositions. (That last part’s not done yet, so you won’t see it in the video.)
In this example, the source audio is a bit of the soundtrack from the movie Citizen Kane, and the noisemakers are a set of found object percussion machines and an electromagnetically fretted electric guitar.
I’ve got three noisy things happening or starting soon:
Friday afternoon (April 4): instrument workshop/jam session at The Tank, NYC
Opening Friday (April 4): Everything Must Go — the last ever show at Flux Factory’s current space in Queens, soon to be flattened by the MTA.
Opening Saturday (April 5): Artistic Mediums: Revelations of the Invisible — at the Museum of New Art, Pontiac, MI
FIRST OFF, this Friday from 2-5pm at The Tank in Tribeca:
I’m doing an instrument-building workshop and jam session with the electronic noise band The Loud Objects. They’ll teach you to program cheap industrial microcontrollers into noisemakers of wonder; I’ll be showing how to wind your own electric guitar pickups and make simple but surprisingly great sounding electric stringed instruments. You’ll leave with one or more new instrument made by your own hands! (There’s an optional donation for supply costs.)
The Tank @ Collective: Unconscious is located at 279 Church Street between Franklin and White. To get to The Tank by subway take A, C, E, J, M, Z, N, Q, R, W, Z, or 6 to Canal Street, or 1 to Franklin Street.
LATER THAT SAME NIGHT: opening party 7pm at Flux Factory:
“Soon, very soon, the Flux Factory space at 38-38 43rd Street will be demolished. In anticipation of this event, we are turning the entirety of Flux Factory into a giant installation of itself. For the past six years, Flux Factory has developed its gallery and aesthetics laboratory at our space in Long Island City. We have had scores of shows and many hundreds of artists have graced these halls. Now it must all be destroyed. Our entire block will be razed by the pitiless bulldozers of the MTA. Everything Must Go.”
I’ll be making a sound sculpture for the show based on the recorded voices of flux factory artists, residents, and friends. I can’t give any details yet because I’m going to improvise the whole thing tomorrow night. Will it work!? Only one way for you to find
out! If that’s not enough, there will also be live music and booze.
It’s gonna be a big crazy show, check it out. If you can’t make it to the opening, the show will be open weekends (and other times - check the web site) until the CLOSING PARTY on Saturday, April 26.
Flux Factory is in Long Island city near the N, R, V, G, and 7 trains. …directions
AND THEN ON SATURDAY IN THE MIDWEST…
Opening party 6-9 pm at the Museum of New Art, Pontiac, MI. The show is called Artistic Mediums: Revelations of the Invisible:
“Thomas Edison, the son of Spiritualists, proposed a telephone to call the dead. Contemporary post humanists seek to convert their souls into bits, or at least to prove that the meat is simply a container. Paranormal researchers, in particular those interested in EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena), argue that the electromagnetic spectrum is oft manipulated by the dead to communicate with the living - that intelligences live invisibly in the ether is a foregone conclusion.”
My piece for the show is a sound sculpture made of various junk and collaged audio, called “Sonnets from the Portugese.” Unfortunately I won’t make it to the opening, but if you happen to be near Pontiac, here’s directions to the gallery. The show will be up
until April 26th.
I’ll put documentation of all three of these noisy things up on this site after the weekend.
Thanks to everyone who came to the 29 Noisy Noises party on March 1 and helped me celebrate finishing 29 instruments in 29 days! Lots of great people came over and made a lot of great noise on the 29 instruments — you can hear some of it below.
This Sunday 3/16, noon to 4:30pm, the Coney Island Museum celebrates automatic music - organ grinders, player pianos, and more - at the Band Organ Rally. I’m building a brand new automatic instrument for the event, and bringing some older ones too. Sneak previews below.
Gonna have a party on Saturday March 1st to celebrate surviving the building of 29 instruments in 29 days! It’ll be 3-6pm (or so) in Long Island City, Queens, NYC - contact me for more info. There’ll be beer and snax and making noises. Bring your own noisemakers and/or ideas for noisemakers.
I’m going to continue with the instrument-building, making one every week forever. Or until I get tired of it. They’ll all be posted here.
I’m making a new musical instrument every day in February. On March 1st I think I’ll have to have either a concert or a bonfire. Follow my adventures at flickr or thing-a-day.com!
Create Digital Music, Etsy Labs and Make Magazine present
A Very Special Handmade Music Night
featuring Mister Resistor live in concert
Sunday December 16th, 2-5pm
at The Openhouse, 201 Mulberry St near Spring St in SoHo
$FREE
more info at misterresistor.com or createdigitalmusic.com
Bring your hand-carved ocarinas, homebrew synthesizers, circuit bent toys and tin can banjos to show and tell and jam.
At 4pm, enjoy the handmade sonic stylings of Mister Resistor- these Parsons students have spent the semester building and playing musical instruments made from cassette tape, microchips, oatmeal boxes, and much more.
To help newcomers learn how to make their own creations, Create Digital Music’s Peter Kirn will lead off with a workshop on musical electronics, with free kits from PAiA Corporation that uses pencil markings to produce circuits. (No soldering required, so total beginners can give it a try. Kits for the project are free, on a first-come, first-served basis.) Throughout the afternoon, New York’s top musical makers will meet and display their creations.
