Post Dyski, pre Superbooth
A quick update about prototypes and retreats and stickers.
This week it’s Superbooth in Berlin - Thonk will be at the show and I’ll be running a DIY workshop on Friday afternoon.
We’ll be in tent Z160, near the circus tent, sharing space with RYK, Worng, ALM, Zlob and Sebsongs (what a lineup!).
I’m not showing anything new this year - but I am working on an exciting new thing, currently called the Music Thing Workshop System, which I’d be delighted to chat about if you’re there - say hello.
The first prototypes were in action at the Dyski: Sound Maps retreat in Cornwall a few weeks ago, which was a huge expansion of my Album in an Evening post from 2016.
This was a fantastic experience, at least for me. Thirteen musicians with diverse backgrounds — a folk singer, a Hollywood sound designer, a classical composer, a drum’n’bass producer and and and — came together and made music, using graphic scores, field recordings, laptops, tape loops, handmade instruments and mysterious new Music Thing things.
By the end of the week, we (they, really) had recorded three albums.
Sound Maps is the most intricate, group and individual interpretations of graphic scores.
Sine Wave Portraits are surprisingly beautiful, an attempt to make the simplest possible electronic music.
Dyski Orchestra is the sound of 15 sine wave generators in a room after a few glasses of wine.
If you’d like to come to a future event, sign up to the Dyski mailing list.
And if you’re a lecturer or teacher or arts funder or event organiser, and maybe would like me to talk or run an event, do get in touch - tom.whitwell@gmail.com
Anyway, I learned a lot in those days in Cornwall.
The job of an instrument designer is making tools that are open, outward-looking, fun and inspiring. Things that are deep - so they stay interesting for months or years - but also immediate.
It’s hard to predict how someone else will react to a concept or a physical design — very hard to see it through their eyes, feel it through their fingers. Some things landed immediately, other things seemed much clearer when they only existed in my own head.
So the Workshop System will appear once it’s finished, and I’ll try to update here every so often.
Best wishes,
Tom
I am so jealous of the people who were able to attend the workshop. It sounds amazing.
Also, I really want the new thing… whatever it is.
Sounds fascinating — I’ll try and catch up with you at SB… along with the rest of the world!