Patterns + Pleasure Festival :: a new festival for adventurous electronic music in Amsterdam :: organized by STEIM ((Studio for electro-instrumental music) :: September 26-28, 2010 :: Theater Frascati, Nes 63 Amsterdam, Netherlands ::

For 42 years STEIM has helped local and international artists build their own dream instruments. The Patterns + Pleasure Festival will feature some of the newest and most adventurous approaches in today’s live electronic music. Every artist brings their own unique rendition of musical styles and genres - from Industrial Drone to Instrumental Hip-Hop and Tuvan singing to Boogie-Woogie-Noise. Continue reading

PUBLIC SCULPTURE SOUND | NARCELIO GRUD from Yeah on Vimeo.

In Ceará, Brazil, Narcelio Grud has created one of the more impressive alternate uses for street signs the Urban Guide for Alternate Use has seen, and they’ve seen plenty. Narcelio transforms street signs around the city in to public instruments as part of his Musica Livre project. As the video above shows, the project is exceptional not only for its merits of installing DIY musical instruments throughout the city, but also for the range and inventiveness of the instruments themselves. From stringed instruments to xylophones, the city’s street signs’s new identities bring a smile and tune to anyone who passes by. You can’t ask for much more in a reworked sign than what you see below. The images below and many more can be found here.

Sunday Sound Waves :: July 24 – August 28, 2011 :: Galerie8, E8 3NJ London :: Janek Schaefer opening: Sunday, July 24 2011 :: Guest curated by Alexa Kusber ::

Throughout six weeks in July and August, the Sunday Sound Waves series will aim to critically engage with the surrounding environment through sound, and to explore the influences it has on new ways of making and experiencing visual forms.

The series includes a broad range of artists and creators who are increasingly blurring genre lines and sensibilities in the realms of sound and visual culture. Participating artists will do this by recording the sounds of architectural spaces, re-inventing musical instruments, using sound as a sculptural material, or working with music and cinematography. Continue reading

Pianola City Music: Playing a Cityscape as a Piano Score ::

Pianola City Music attempts to overcome the almost inevitable urge to program and computerize our most imaginative ideas.

A physical model of the Dutch city of Eindhoven is rolled onto a drum and attached to a piano, so that its buildings hit the piano keys in a specific rhythm and the physical pattern of the city becomes expressed into a unique sound. The cityscape Eindhoven apparently produces a quite chaotic soundscape, although this might also be influenced by the methodology of it all, of which another beautiful example includes SolarBeat.

see video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_hrqJhF-FU&NR=1

Trimpin premieres The Gurs Zyklus at Stanford University’s Memorial Auditorium on May 9, 2011 as part of Stanford Lively Arts’ 2010-11 Season.

The Gurs Zyklus (Gurs Cycle) is a performance that combines instrumental and vocal music, sculpture, and spoken word. In some ways, it is a culmination of many aspects of Trimpin’s career and personal biography, drawing together elements of his childhood in Germany, his artistic practice as an instrument-maker and the history of the internment camp at Gurs, near the Spanish-French border. Born in Istein, Germany (now Efringen-Kirchen) in 1951, Trimpin was haunted by the camp at Gurs, where Jews from Istein were interned during World War II. As an adult, he worked with composer Conlon Nancarrow, who revealed that he had been held at Gurs during the Spanish Civil War. Continue reading

Object Lessons! - an evening of extraordinary audio visual performances :: Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. :: @ Secret Project Robot, 210 Kent Avenue @ the corner of Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY :: Created by David Linton, Lesley Flanigan, Marcia Bassett, Maria Chavez, David First, Jon Giles, Shelley Burgon :: $10 ::

In tacit compliance with the Flickering Fingers of Fate Friends of the Creepy TriAngle proudly presents:
* Lesley Flanigan - 9:00-9:30: speaker feedback instruments + voice performance

**Naval Cassidy - “instant cinema” performance - 9:45-10:15

***”MERCE” Maria Chavez & Shelley Burgon -10:30-11:00: Turntable / Harp & electronics duet with live visuals by Thomas Dexter. Continue reading

Quaderns d’audio (Audio Notebooks) is an online collection of publications related to Radio Web MACBA programming. In “Radio Music”, Jon Leidecker (curator of the series VARIATIONS ) connects three examples from the history of the potential of the radio receiver asa musical instrument, from its early beginnings in the twenties as captured on a comedy record, to formal art experiments in the forties and fifties, to its nostalgic presence in one of the very first song-based pop music collage albums, which heralded the now familiar practice of sampling.

Since 1990, Jon Leidecker has performed appropriative collage music under the pseudonym Wobbly, improvising live with prerecordings to coax the harmonies out of the recorded sounds of individuals from disparate cultures. Previous and ongoing projects include the bands Chopping Channel (with Don Joyce & Peter Conheim of Negativland), Continue reading

iPhone/iPod Touch instrument Workshop :: September 10, 2010 from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. :: @ NK Elsenstr. 52 2HH 2Etage 12059 Berlin :: Transform your iThing into a personalised sensor instrument! :: Participation is limited to 12 :: Registration: Pre-registration is recommended and can be done by sending an email to: Ko-Le Chen–k.l.chen@ncl.ac.uk :: Fee: Free

…This one-day workshop is intended to give people the skills to develop their own personalized sensor instruments on the iThing, without the need to purchase a developers license, learn much coding or ʻjailbreak’ their phone. Continue reading

LoVid and Trichrome Navigation :: Presented by LMCC Sitelines, as part of the River To River Festival :: August 9-12, 2010; 12:30-1:00 pm :: Broad Street, between Exchange Place and Beaver Street, NYC.

In Trichrome Navigation interdisciplinary artist duo LoVid lead a team of performers and audience members through an obstacle course, carrying electronic components from one side to another, building an electronic musical instrument that produces live sound. Beginning with minimal sound and movement, the performance progresses to a crescendo of increasing density and sound.

The Third Guthman Musical Instrument Competition :: Call for Entrees — Deadline: October 1, 2010.

Inventors, composers, creators, and designers are encouraged to submit their musical instrument inventions to the 2011 Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. The event is hosted by the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology and features a grand prize of $5,000. In total, $10,000 in cash prizes will be awarded to the best novel musical instruments. Entries will be accepted through October 1, 2010 via an Online Submission Form and notification of acceptance will be provided November 1, 2010. Continue reading