After presentations in Wrocław, Lviv, and Minsk, two final showings this year of Paweł Janicki’s EU_tracer performance with internet and acoustic instruments will take place in Paris and Brussels. Continue reading

Music Hack Day is coming up!:: Microsoft NERD, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA. :: November 5th and 6th, 2011 :: Attendance is free but you need to register to guarantee a spot :: The site: http://boston.musichackday.org/2011/

The goal of Music Hack Day is to explore and build the next generation of music applications. It’s a full weekend of hacking in which participants will conceptualize, create and present their projects. Music + software + hardware + art + the web. Anything goes as long as it’s music related.

What happens at a Music Hack Day? Lots of hacking, lots of pizza, very little sleep. Send your questions to boston.musichackday@gmail.com Or, Sponsor the event :: We are looking for sponsors to help with the event. Interested? :: Contact us at boston.musichackday@gmail.com

Drawdio — by Jay Silver and Mitchel Resnick — lets you draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger.

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Performance: Lars Graugaard and Hans Tammen’s Infernal Machines :: October 19, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. :: at AC Institute 547 W. 27th St. #610, New York, New York 10001 :: Admission: $15; $8 Students and Seniors.

“These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy … in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left.” (John Phillip Sousa, testifying before the US Congress 1906). Continue reading

This video created by musician Mikael Mutti. Mutti likes to reverse engineer electronics and game controllers to create instruments and new sounds.

“When I find things like this, I am like a child. When I found that circular keyboard in New York, I immediately started playing it like a pandeiro (Brazilian hand drum) and the guy at the store was like, ‘what the %^(+!’” Continue reading

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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