Sonoridades Líquidas [Liquid Sounds] from Rui Penha on Vimeo.

Wonderful work in sculpting sound into beautiful handmade electronic-acoustical instruments is pouring out of Portugal. Now we get to see more of that work – and if you are in Portugal, you can share in person at a new event.

The Handmade Music project and community has found its second home – Porto, Portugal, at the massive Casa da Música! The first event will be held Tuesday, July 21. (Full announcement, English/Português).

De hardware a software feito em casa até circuit bending, kits personalizados ou instrumentos acústicos originais, todos estão convidados a aparecer na Casa da Música pelas 21h30 para montagem de instrumentos. Pelas 22h abrimos o evento ao público geral – a entrada é livre e recomenda-se -, ocupando a Digitópia e a zona do bar do Foyer Sul. Contamos convosco!

To celebrate the new party, organizer Rui Penha sends over a survey of some of the instruments and sculpture that are being homegrown in Porto. And yes, even first-time-creator high school students can make fantastic work (see after the jump). At top:

An interactive installation made for Casa da Música – Porto, Portugal – with João Ricardo de Barros Oliveira and Luís Girão. Shown here is the algorithmic composition and synthesis patch I made in Max/MSP and the Arduino-based sensor system, co-developed with Luís Girão.

What does it mean to truly democratize technology? When is DIY more than just the creation of an object? That’s the question asked by our friend Julià Carboneras, who curated the new Nerdeferences feature of the OFFF digital design conference in Portugal last week. DIY is more than just cool devices, argues Julià: it’s social hacking, too. He brought together myself, Instructables.com founder Eric Wilhelm, and musical inventor and artist Gijs Gieskes (who stole the show, showing some creations live onstage). But there was a bigger picture, too, that I wanted to share.

Julià wrote, in Catalan and English, an introduction to the idea for the conference catalog that I thought was really compelling. OFFF has allowed this text from their catalog to be reprinted here, and Julià has given us a Spanish translation, as well. (Spanish first, English second.)

I’m actually pleased that on CDM we have the chance to talk about radical DIY and open source ideas alongside more traditional commercial projects. In that way, you see design in a larger context. You can see the tools that allow people to be creative alongside one another. And my sense is that people do find ways to build business models and economic independence around notions of open source and DIY, which is vital in the capital-driven world in which we live. What draws together people, whether using commercial tools or building their own, is some desire for real independence instead of dependence, for expression and not just consumption.