Playing Fold Loud involves folding origami shapes to create soothing harmonic vocal sounds. Each fold is assigned to a different human vocal sound so that combinations of folds create harmonies. Users can fold multiple Fold Loud sheets together to produce a chorus of voices. Opened circuits made out of conductive fabric are visibly stitched onto the sheets of paper which creates a meta-technological aesthetic. When the sheets are folded along crease lines, a circuit is closed like a switch. Thus, the interface guides participants to use repetitive delicate hand gestures such as flipping, pushing and creasing. Fold Loud invites users to slow down and reflect on different physical senses by crafting paper into both geometric origami objects and harmonic music.
‘Dipping Duck Orchestra’ by Kitty Clark.
8 Dipping ducks (a.k.a happy birds, drinking birds…) and their respective drinking glasses are wired up to the 8 notes of a modified keyboard. Each time a duck tips down and touches the water to ‘drink’ the circuit is completed and a sound is produced. Being thermodynamic, the ducks continue to produce random compositions depending on temperature.
‘Audi Symphony’ is an audio visual composition created by the promotion agency Bullet for the launch of the Audi R8 in Brasil. It was performed during ‘The Art Of Performance’ event in São Paulo. 41 musicians, 1 meastro and 3 Dj’s took the stage, backed up with 3 large video projections. The result is the perfect soundtrack to the videos of the Audi R8.
‘Touched Echo‘ is a project developed by Markus Kison, a student of the Digital Media Class at the University of the Arts Berlin. It is an installation at the Brühl’s Terrace (Dresden, Germany) to remember the terrible air raid on 13th February 1945. When visitors lean on the balustrade and they cover their ears, they can hear the sound of airplanes and explosions. The swinging balustrade is transmitted through their arm directly into into the inner ear.
I think this is a fantastic project, it’s not obtrusive at all and the visitors are forced into a similar position as the people who had to stand through this horrible event.
Yuri Suzuki is a Japanese product designer and electronic music artist living in London. Here are 3 projects by him.
Sound Chaser
A train-style record player. Users connect the chipped pieces of records together to make new tracks. The records pieces are from cheap records bought at jumble sales or used record shops. This record player revives forgotten, old records.
Prepared Turntable
A turntable that focuses on actively composing and playing music.
This record player has 5 tone arms, each of which can have its volume controlled by its own fader.
This is an analogue answer for the digitalized DJ.
Finger Player
I guess that the video and the pictures explain everything.
The Tapehead Inspector allows you to read magnetic tapes manually. You can scratch your old tapes with this device! I really like that they payed attention to the casing, the hardware is hidden in an old videotape. Switching ‘tapes’ is no fuss eather.
I mentioned this project of David Byrne ‘Playing the Building‘ before. I’m still amazed by this installation. Xeni from Boing Boing TV had the chance to have and interview with David Byrne himself. It’s always nice when the artist explains his work.
An other one is the ‘BeggingBot’ by Alexander Gurko, it plays music just by floppy and hard drive mechanics. A 3³/4 and 2²/5 inch floppy drive and a very old hard disk represent different instruments playing a nice tune by just moving their heads and motors. When the tune is finished the CD drive opens asking for money. Just pay some cents and the bot plays again.
found at Aram Bartholl’s Blog
Radiohead held a remix contest for their song ‘Nude’ from their latest album ‘In Rainbows’. The original title of was ‘Big Ideas (Don’t get any)’, James Houston took that as his inspiration. He recreated the song with quite a different lineup: Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Guitars (rhythm & lead), Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer - Drums, HP Scanjet 3c - Bass Guitar and a Hard Drive array - Act as a collection of bad speakers - Vocals & FX.
‘Playing the Building‘ is an amazing sound installation by David Byrne, yeah you might know him from the Talking Heads. I copied the orginal description because I could not formulate it better. You can visit it at the Battery Maritime Building in New York City till August 10th.
Playing the building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.
