• The Brief
  • Let's Complicate Things

Music has existed as long as humans have. We use it to tell stories and to create bonds.

Eight artists and hackers were tasked to create a new musical instrument. Some use shadows, some use light, some use your whole body.

Cave of Sounds is an experiment in unmediated musical collaboration.

Delve Deeper

Visitors interact with each instrument in a radically different way, embodying the dynamic and creative hacker scene that this piece of work emerged from. Each instrument was designed with simple and primal input methods in mind, much like the prehistoric music makers that inspired this project, yet are capable of producing diverse and complex sounds. The musical possibilities become even greater when played together.

Learn how emergence relates to music here.

The Instruments

Cave of Sounds began in November 2012 at London’s Music Hackspace as part of Tim Murray-Browne’s Embedded artistic residency with Sound and Music. The eight artists, led by Tim, each developed a musical instrument for what was, at the time, an imagined eight-piece ensemble.

Sonicsphere by Panagiotis Tigas

A palm-sized sphere with an embedded wireless gyroscope that you can use to warp and charter spaces of heavy digital timbres.

Joker by Wallace Hobbes

A punchy drum kit you play by tapping your fingers onto conductive tape.

The Animal Kingdom by Daniel Lopez

A world of sounds you awaken and shepherd by casting hand shadows in the shape of animals onto a tabletop, which are read and interpreted by an interior camera.

Generative Net Sampler by Tadeo Sendon

Experimental audio samples, created from digital field recordings of the internet, are triggered as you move through invisible cylindrical trigger zones, detected using a 3D camera.

Lightefface by Kacper Ziemianin

A deep drone you control by shining lamps over 24 light sensors, each of which modulates the intensity of a different harmonic of a fundamental frequency.

Campanology by Dom Aversano

Generative rhythms derived through the mathematics of church bell ringing patterns, controlled through free movement of your hands using a 3D camera.

Mini-Theremin by Susanna Garcia

Using hand gestures, you control a DIY theremin running through a pitch-tracker, turning it into a controller to mangle noise synthesis.

Wind by Tim Murray-Browne

A breathy flute sound you play by moving your hands around your body through a grid of harmonious notes, sensed using a 3D camera.

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