Masayuki Akamatsu has taught sound/media arts at IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences/Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences, Gifu, Japan) since 1997. He has exhibited multimedia electronic installations and performed throughout the world, and is also a member of The Breadboard Band, a group that performs electronic music made from circuits on solderless breadboards. His numerous installations incorporate sound, visual manipulations, and many other forms of mixed media. Continue reading

Hardware-Hacking & Circuit-Bending Workshop - An Interdisciplinary Sound Arts Workshop with Nicolas Collins :: Artcenter / South Florida, 924 Lincoln Road Mall, Room 203, Miami Beach :: Dates: March 28, 2008; 10 am - 6 pm - Part 1: contact mikes, coil pickups, tape heads, bending radios and toys :: March 29, 2008; 10 am - 6 pm :: Part 2: make an oscillator from scratch :: March 29, 2008; 7:30 pm - free outdoor performance on Lincoln Road Mall. Continue reading

Spatial Z by John Bowers, Ann Rosén and Sten-Olof Hellström :: February 17, 2008 2:00 pm :: Fylkingen, Torkel Knutssonsgatan 2, Münchenbryggeriet, Stockholm, Sweden :: Part of the Stockholm Music Festival.

Spatial Z is a collaborative composition, jointly written and performed by experimental instrument maker John Bowers, sound artist Ann Rosén and composer Sten-Olof Hellström. The piece explores the spatiality of sound and problematises music as a physical and perceptual phenomenon. What is the connection between music and space? Between instruments and the environments they find themselves in? Between the spaces in which performers interact with their instruments and each other and the audience’s listening space? How wide and high is an abstract sound? What is the relationship between the concert (architectural) space and the (imaginary) spaces suggested in the music itself? Continue reading

Immersion - Alex Mein Smith, Con Brio, Gabriel Da Piaz, grohs, SS_R, and Suero :: February 7, 2008; 7 - 11 pm :: The Flea-Pit, 49 Columbia Road, London.

Immersion is a free-entry experimental music / sound-art event featuring a soundtrack of electronic atmospheres, noisescapes, pulses / rhythms and tones / drones. Immersion is an arena for new and established international artists performing live experimental electronic music; using laptops, synthesizers, field recordings, circuit-bent electronics and prepared/processed instruments. All sounds are partnered by stimulating projected visuals processed live and tailored for each performance. Continue reading

Mr. Resistor is an innovative class in which students are taught how to create musical instruments from found electronics and other objects. Armed with two toy robots named Freddy and Teddy, a violin with a bow made out of cassette tape, and a synthesizer assembled from a 1960s electric guessing game, last weekend students at Parsons the New School for Design took to the stage to perform rock songs they created out of these and other found objects.

The performance took place at The Openhouse in SoHo and was born out of a burgeoning DIY music movement where artists take the debris of everyday life, for example an amp made from a Ritz cracker box and instruments made from Gameboys, irons and electronic toys, and turn them into musical instruments to play at events such as Handmade Music Night and Music for People and Thingamajigs. Continue reading

Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 17 (2007) - With an introduction by Nic Collins: My Favorite Things: The Joy of the Gizmo — is now available. With contributions by Bert Bongers, Eric Leonardson, David Toop, Peter Blasser, Phil Archer, Andy Keep, John Wynne, Richard Garrett, James Saunders, Richard Lerman, Brett Ian Balogh, César Dávila-Irizarry, Vic Rawlings, James Fei, John Bowers and Vanessa Yaremchuk, Guillermo Galindo, Jane Henry, Neil Feather, Robert Poss, Jeremy Hight, Kyle Lapidus and Tali Hinkis, hans w. koch, Kazuhiro Jo, Laura Emelianoff, Marc Berghaus, Bruce Cana Fox, Michael Duffey, Charles Stankievech, Juraj Kojs, Stefania Serafin and Chris Chafe. Plus new reviews from the Leonardo Reviews panel. Continue reading

Circuit bending is the creative short-circuiting of low voltage, battery-powered electronic audio devices such as guitar effects, children’s toys and small synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators. (Wikipedia)

There’s lots of information on circuit bending in an October 13 createdigitalmusic.com article,”Want to Get Started Circuit Bending?”, including a link to Reed Ghazala’s Circuit Bending Primer. Continue reading

SCREEN MUSIC 2: Mechanical cinema-veritè, circuit bending, electric / electronic audio-video :: Festival della Creatività :: 25 - 28 October 2007 :: Fortezza da Basso - Teatrino Lorenese, Florence :: Free entrance - Screen Music is a project born from an idea of Gianni De Simone and curated by Marco Mancuso founder and director of Digicult and Andrea Mi, director of Videominuto.

Screen Music is part of the program of the Creativity Festival, an event promoted by the Tuscan Region and organized by Fondazione Sistema Toscana. With an exhibition space of approximately 40,000 square meters, 400 events, 1,600 artists and speakers from over 40 countries around the world, the Festival program includes meetings and debates with great representatives of modern culture, the world of art and design, and the Italian and international music scenes. Continue reading

Open Space introduces a New Music Workshop Series facilitated by an array of local and visiting composers, musicians and sound artists, each offering their unique perspective on the creation of real-time music. All workshops are hands on, offer musicians of all abilities a place and time to explore their craft and practice in a group setting.

Workshop: Music Improvisation – gadgets and non-traditional instruments :: Presenters: Gayle Young, Jeff Morton, Tina Pearson :: Date: October 29, 7 pm, Open Space. Drop in fee - Focuses on alternate objects, tools and ‘instruments’, and discusses the authority of musical gesture. Gayle Young’s Amaranth and Columbine, tuned tubing, circuit boards, circuit bent electronics, circuit boards, no-input mixer, contact mics, toys, bells and other gadgets will be available to explore – and bring your own stuff. Continue reading

Massaging the Machine: Circuit Bending with Ben Goldstone — by Ollie Moltaji.

Often thought of as complicated and coldly precise, electronics can be manipulated to one’s advantage with less technical skill and more creativity. Such is the philosophy of our class’ guest speaker on circuit bending, Benjamin Goldstone. To Ben we can explore electronics by “massaging circuit boards” through touching the connections and “destroying the mind of the machine.” Continue reading