Some interesting things I found on May 16th, 2008:

# Speaker Synth - A five-speaker array with no external audio input, created by Lesley Flanigan. The only components in the system are the instrument's speakers, piezoelectric microphones, amplifying circuits, and the hands of the performer.

Lesley Flanigan with Speaker Synth in performance at Monkey Town, New York City, January 2008

From the project page:

Speaker Synth is played by positioning individual piezo microphones with their corresponding speakers and manipulating their associated on/off and volume controls to induce a variation of feedback effects. During the performance, samples from both Speaker Synth and a vocalist are captured and sequenced to build a dense sonic pallet of rhythms and melodies. The performance explores music making through structuring noise, highlighting relationships between analog and digital sound synthesis and between human voice and the voice of an instrument.

Check Lesley’s website for audio and video performances and more cool projects.

# Tonefloat - A bit of a mutant mobile milkbottle xylophone. Each bottle has a small electrical hammer behind it, which is 'played' by a midi keyboard or drum machine, and a few strings of wire 'n chips.

# Plague Bearer - designed to infect, corrupt and pervert a signal beyond recognition. It contains four Voltage-Controlled Resonant Bandpass filters that were designed with the goals of maximum signal alteration and maximum parameter controllability.

# Steppers - Steppers were designed to get kids up on their feet, moving, and playing with sound and music. An external sensor sandal is worn over a child’s shoes, noting each footstep, and, in real time, playing back sound effects/music to compliment their movement.

# MIDI Glockenspiel - Using an Arduino make a computer controller MIDI Glockenspiel.

# Mozart from Scrap-Made Mechanical Glockenspiel - A weight-driven automatic glockenspiel made from assorted recovered materials.

# Toriton plus prototype: first look - A more complex version of the Toriton musical instrument. It involves using five lasers instead of just the one.

Some interesting things I bookmarked on del.icio.us on April 11th, 2008:

# Brockenspiel in action - Brock Craft's Brockenspiel reads the magnetic strip on credit cards and swipe access cards, zips them through an Arduino board and triggers solenoids which bash the chimes.

Left: working on the Arduino, right: the actual Brockenspiel

# pe lang + zimoun : untitled sound objects - The “Untitled Sound Objects” by Pe Lang and Zimoun creates acoustic architecture from organic objects and forms connected up to motors and gears. The duo began as laptop performers but were offput by the lack of physicality so they investigated how to create physical instruments that react to their immediate environment and each other.

# Black Flag Hair: A Timeline - Nice illustration of Black Flag's hairstyles from 1976 to 1986.

# little-scale: Arduino Beats - Sebastian Tomczak is working on a sample-based drum machine for the Arduino. At the moment, bars and patterns have to be programmed into the code manually, but he's looking to adding a small and simple physical interface for real-time pattern sequencing.

# Ten Thousand Cents - Behind the scenes of a mechanical turk project: 10,000 people drawing a small piece of a 100 dollar bill.

Some interesting things I bookmarked on del.icio.us on March 31st, 2008:

• Deviant Synth - Alternate MIDI controllers - roundup of alternative commercial (and vaporware) MIDI controllers, covering a variety of approaches to key-layouts and interface.

The Continuum by Haken Audio, $3390 for half-size, $5290 for a full-size board.

• Gloggomobil: Programmable Music Machine - The wooden barrel is spun by means of a hand-crank on the side. Small pegs are inserted into pre-drilled holes in the barrel to determine what note plays and when. The music plays on a small-scale metallophone or Glockenspiel (like a xylophone but with metal tuned bars rather than wood).
• Terje Isungset - Norwegian musician and percussionist who primarily plays intruments made from ice.
• Zizzle Zoundz - Zoundz creates a fusion of self- composed music with an accompanying light show. Create your own riffs by placing one of Zoundz's pawns on an interactive “hot spot” on the sound board.