What can you do with a button? What circuits can you bend? What software and hardware can you construct? Want to meet up with myself and fellow makers from the DIY music and visualist communities? I’m touring and looking for new works, we have one call for one-button objects that (if you can ship it) can come from anywhere in the world, plus upcoming events in New York, San Francisco, and — this month, Amsterdam at the planetary music tech hub that is STEIM.
STEIM + Handmade Music Amsterdam (Netherlands, February)
Handmade Music is beginning in Amsterdam. To kick things off, I’ll be visiting the legendary STEIM research center. The event will be open to anyone with inventions and self-built hardware and software you’d like to share. We’ll plug in and make a raucous noise. I’m really quite looking forward to meeting folks from this area.
When: Wednesday, February 17, 8p – ?
Where: Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Cost: FREE
STEIM Hotspot Lab Event Page
I’ll also do a short presentation of some work TBD; more on this next week.
If you’re attending and want to share what you’re bringing in advance or make sure you see me, use the CDM contact form.
One-Button Objects Call (SF + World, March)
What can you do with one button? In an age of ever-more-complex touch interfaces, we’d like to imagine what a single, tangible, hardware button can mean for a design. To celebrate the arrival of their Gamma game event in San Francisco, art game collective Kokoromi is teaming up with Create Digital Music and Create Digital Motion to launch a call for ONE-BUTTON OBJECTS.
So, sorry monome — too many buttons (unless you want to make a one-button monome, that is). The one-button game objects will incorporate a single-button-centered design and inspiration from the world of gaming into unique creations. Read up more on our sister site:
Call for Works: One-Button Game Objects
Then send your submissions for the gallery show in San Francisco to onebuttonobject@kokoromi.org
(see also Kokoromi
Receipt deadline: March 1
If you’re in the NYC or San Francisco, we’re looking to do some informal hackdays to play with buttons, HID interfaces, Arduino and microcontroller platforms, and the like — we just need a hackerspace to host us. And if you’d like to do that elsewhere in the world, let us know and we’ll promote it.
And of course, be sure to attend Friday, March 12 at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts if you’re in the Bay Area or attending the Game Developer Conference.
Handmade Music Brooklyn Returns; Your Inventions, Live Artists Wanted (NYC, March)
Handmade Music in its hometown of New York is being rebooted. We’re launching new workshops, new hacking, and a new quarterly performance series at a proper performance venue, Galapagos.
That means we need you.
For the quarterly party, we’re continuing to look for people to bring in your own creations. If it runs on a netbook, if you have headphones you can bring, if it’s made out of wood and you can play it, if you can plug into a portable amp and make some noise, if it’s a circuit-bent toy with built-in speakers, it’s a welcome guest.
But we’re also looking for live artists in the greater New York area who incorporate DIY instruments, hardware, software (and even wearable interactive costumes, if you’ve got them) into your act. We’d like to hear who’s out there. We can’t invite everyone to play, but that’s all the more reason to hear about what people are doing.
If you have a project or act to consider, send them here:
Official 2010 Handmade Music NYC Call for Works
The first event is Monday, March 8. Doors open 7p, live acts start 8p.