Greensboro, NC-based art music band Invisible are indiscriminate about technology – in a good way. Plastic cups, keyboards, typewriters, machines controlled by robotics, if it’s in the trash or at a thrift store, it has a place in the band. Sequences are executed in physical, radial player instruments, without a controlling computer anywhere in site. As voicemail tapes get sampled and typewriters tap lines of absurdist lyrics as each typed letter plays a piano note, something magical happens. Perhaps it’s that, novelty aside, somehow these sound-making objects come together for a reason – the machines assemble in the way the band does. And then a chair is a marimba.

The Rhythm 1001 takes “tangible” to a whole new level — everything sequenced is mechanical, triggering found objects. The video above features the sequencer at Charlottesville, Virginia’s Second Street Gallery. (Gents, if you ever visit Brooklyn…) Thanks to Evan Hill for the tip.

Is it “Digital Music”? I think it is very deeply so, perhaps because the objects get treated as discrete musical events (read: percussion).

Incidentally, guys, I agree with a lot of things you’re saying about the use of computers for music, but HAL here tell me he won’t let me fr

Transmission ends.

Mari Kimura is an experimental string player extraordinaire, regularly venturing to the edge of what’s possible at the meeting of acoustic and electronic technology. GuitarBot is a “guitar”-playing robot (perhaps more reminiscent of a shamisen), an invention of Eric Singer, founder of the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. The two meet above in a lovely video – not new, but well worth watching any old time, as reminded to us by Richard Swelling’s Etherbomb blog. Mari writes in comments on YouTube:

HI, Mari here. For those wondering what’s happening: Behind the white box, there is a Mac and an audio interface. I am running a software MaxMSP, which is LISTENING to the pitch. loundess and the timing of the violin. The ‘patch’ I created in Max contains certain interactive instructions such as "listen to the E (highest open string on the violin)". For example in the beginning, if you listen carefully you notice when I play above E, it stops. Iinteractions change in predetermined time frames.

It’s a reminder that, technology aside, the key ingredient in electro-acoustic music is great musicianship.

Quite nice stuff! And the video is shot by my friend Liubo Borrisov; Liubo, if you’re out there, say hi.

THREE PIECES sound installation from Ziggy Campbell on Vimeo.

Digital music is extending more deeply into the physical world, thanks to sensors and robotics. The result: gorgeous acoustic sounds as part of the lexicon. When we last spotted Simon Kirby and the Found Electronics collective, they were taking the tangible interface out of electronic music and applying them to ambient sampled sounds out in the woods. Now, they’re talking to plants and channeling traditional Chinese instruments.

Found Electronics: Three Pieces Project Page

Simon writes with some of the details:

Eat your heart out, Microsoft Surface! Musicians are taking up interactive tables as new ways of making their creations physically accessible, so listeners can reach out and touch the work.

Etiquette is a new interactive installation at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, featuring a light box on which musical elements can be manipulated by moving around blocks. It uses the same underlying library that was developed for the ReacTable synth, currently made famous by its use on Bjork’s tour.

But what’s nice about the Etiquette is — surprise — the music. Rather than predictable electronic sounds, Etiquette echoes and vibrates with laptop-sampled acoustic timbres, such as stand-up bass, banjo, brass, flute, and even glockenspiel. It’s still digital music: fragments of music are reconceived in the digital world, overlapping into an ambient landscape. But the common criticism of installation art — that you wouldn’t want to sit and listen to the music produced — is answered here. Etiquette is available as a downloadable Creative Commons-licensed four-track album. I just sat and listened to it, and was quite happy! It’s real music played by real musicians that seems perfectly suited to its interactive counterpart; the free-flowing form of the music is ideal for rearranging in an installation. (In somewhat less interactive form, I expect I may have it on repeat here in my studio on and off for the next few days!)

Everything was produced on-location: many of the materials themselves were found on site, and recordings were made around the workshop.

The project is a collaboration between musicians and technologists: the band FOUND worked with computer scientist (and CDM reader) Simon Kirby.

Simon writes in with additional details of the setup, which features Ableton Live, Max/MSP, and the ReacTIVision library:

Those zany, wonderful YouTubers. A YouTube post in April challenged YouTubers to show off home-built instruments:

And there’s a terrific lineup of responses, like this performance on Tupperware musical instruments, by Adachi Tomomi:

Video is a natural medium, after all, for showing off DIY instruments. Now, if only we could start doing this on a service with less craptacular video quality. Blip.tv or Revver or Vimeo, anyone? (I’d love to start a CDM group, but we’d need to pick a service first. So far, I’ve been really impressed by Blip, as used by the folks at Make.)

… as seen via Beepglitch, who points out some faves.