Creating musical instruments, software, robots and algorithms is an important part of my creative process and a subject of many of the lectures, workshops and classes I teach. Some of these tools are created as a novel way to compose or create music and art in an attempt to sculpt the creative process going forward. Others are experiments in creating sentient autonomous musical entities capable of generating music and competing with the composer to claim ownership of the resulting artistic expression.
These are the instruments I usually use when playing a Captain Credible show. The instruments have evolved from my earlier iterations and are a lot more focused on creating an audio-visual experience for the audience and more importantly for the user. The bright flashing responsive nature of these translucent tetrahedras serve to coax out excitement and energetic behaviour in the user.
Below is some footage of me using the instruments to create an ambient drone. To the right is some footage of me playing live with this gear.
Below you can see some of my older gear. This stuff was usually built into found objects and focused more on the functionality than the aesthetics of the tool. To the right is some footage of me using this gear live.
The micro:bit orchestra is a collection of makecode extensions, circuits, instruments and installations for teaching music, electronics and programming and also composing and performing.
There is a whole section about the micro:bit orchestra here.
On the right is a short excerpt of me playing on the installation I built at the science museum in Tromsø
Below is a robot piano.
