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junk electric guitar workshop – sat feb 5

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It’s almost time for instrument-a-day month again, and I’m celebrating by doing a bunch of instrument-making workshops at NYC Resistor in Brooklyn. First up on Saturday February 5 (1-4pm) is Junk Electric Guitars: make a primitive–but loud!–electric guitar. Here’s video from a previous workshop:

Sign up here.

Coming up later in February:
Laser Whistles – Saturday, February 12, from 1-4 PM
Learn how to use the laser cutter by making wooden whistles, recorders, or ocarinas.
Fun with Sensors – Saturday, February 19, from 1-3 PM
Assemble vibration, light, and magnetic sensors and use them to pick up hidden sounds from the environment and to hear objects and musical instruments in a new way.
Handmade Electronic Noise – Saturday, February 26, from 1-4 PM
Make simple synthesizers and sequencers from dirt-cheap integrated circuits.

that’s all!

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Just the little “that’s all!” from the ends of a bunch of Annette Hanshaw tunes.

download link

upcoming stuff

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Some upcoming events that I’m involved with:

July 29-31 (Thursday-Saturday) Odd Act presents Peter Pan at the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, Princeton, NJ
They’ve borrowed a bunch of my homemade instruments for this musical adaptation of Peter Pan. I’ll be there for the Thursday night show!
September 19 (Sunday noon-6pm) Move About Myrtle Festival along Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, between Clermont Ave & Hall St.
The Case of the Curious Pedestrian is a one-day exhibition of performance art and ephemeral installations as part of the Myrtle neighborhood festival. I’ll be hiding a bunch of little mechanical music machines along (above) the avenue- can you find them all?
August 2010-June 2011 Wind through the Trees – an outdoor sculpture exhibition of sound & motion at Jenkins Arboretum, Devon, PA
I’ve got two pieces in this show of environmental and kinetic sculpture – good old Trumpet Marine and a new one, Spiracles, that’ll twist its way all the way up into the treetops. The opening party will be the evening of Saturday October 2.
September 23-26 Festival of Music for People and Thingamajigs, Oakland, CA.
This year I’m helping to curate this festival of handmade instruments and alternate tunings, but I’ll probably have some sort of noisemaker in there too!
January 20-30, 2011 Pulse Art and Technology Festival, Telfair Museum of Art,, Savannah, GA
I’ll be conducting some instrument-building workshops, and possibly performing. Don’t know the exact dates yet.
January 24-February 25, 2011 Artistic Mediums at the New Art Center, Newton, MA.
My sound and micro-radio installation Songs from the Portugese will be part of this exhibit about mysterious phenomena and things that go bump in the night

…and maybe some other stuff.

vexbot survived!

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Vexbot in the loft at NYC Resistor
My little toy piano robot survived about 20 straight hours of playing “Vexations” (see previous coverage). Though I did find a few retaining nuts in the bottom of the case that had been shaken loose by all the vexing. You can see & hear an excerpt from the performance on ustream.

I spent a few hours listening to the audio streams from both the robot performance and the human Vexations marathon in Seattle. It was kind of eerie and kind of comforting. What was it like? Like this: [19 minute mp3]

The human and robot performances were mentioned in Seattle’s weekly, The Stranger, here and here.