Lev is named after Lev Termen (Leon Theremin), a Russian scientist who invented one of the first electronic musical instruments, an instrument which is played without touching, and which bears his name.
Lev is made out of an old floor lamp, some plumbing supplies, a few empty mint tins, and some microprocessors. Lev will never replace the human theremin virtuoso, although, as there are so few of the latter, a mechanical substitute may someday be vital to our economy.
“On March 25th, 2006 the Flux Factory space in Long Island City was transformed into a giant, interactive music box.
“A group of seven sound artists, musicians, and sculpture/installation artists gathered together by Flux Factory have created kinetic sculptures that all work together to play a single song. Viewers activate the box with a crank. Inside the Box, a veritable funhouse of sound can be discovered in each artist’s contribution to the overall song. The viewer becomes an active participant in the experience, subtly altering the song produced.” –flux factory
Nexus Gallery in Philadelphia commissioned the Silence Organ for Innovative Instruments, a show of artists’ instruments presented in conjunction with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Citycircus, a celebration of John Cage.
To exploit rooms full of interesting instruments making interesting noises, I wired the gallery with 13 microphones, each set in a resonating tube tuned to a note of the diatonic scale. The viewer would put on headphones and play a tune on an antique keyboard, in which each note was made of filtered sound from elsewhere in the gallery.
On July 30th I’ll be teaching a class at Etsy Labs in Brooklyn, making electric guitars out of junk. Check out the etsy class listing to register for the class, or look at this post on Make.
“The electric guitar is a sophisticated and highly evolved instrument. But you can make your own out of a few bucks worth of junk and parts. Learn to wind your own guitar pickups and build them into a simple one- or two-string junk guitar with a surprisingly nice sound. Depending on your ambition and experience, you can make your junk guitar as simple or as sophisticated as you want, but everybody is guaranteed to go home with at least a fun twangy noisemaker.”
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.
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.
It’s a dog. Eating from a metal bowl and then fighting with the blankets, he sounds like this.
If you’re in NYC and you’d like to meet this or other instruments-of-the-day, check this out.
I’m going to continue with the instrument building, one a week for as long as I can stand it. If you wanna keep up with the noise, bookmark or subscribe to my homepage. Thanks for putting up with the cacophony!
Lev is a machine for playing a theremin.
“On March 25th, 2006 the Flux Factory space in Long Island City was transformed into a giant, interactive music box.
Nexus Gallery in Philadelphia commissioned the Silence Organ for Innovative Instruments, a show of artists’ instruments presented in conjunction with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Citycircus, a celebration of John Cage. 
