Abstract (Poster)

Keywords: Hacking, Appropritation, DMI, Embedded Hardware

The D-Box is a novel digital musical instrument that can be modified and hacked by the musician, subverting its original design. The possibility to rethink and appropriate a musical instrument in unexpected ways is not common when dealing with digital circuits and hard-coded software. In this short work, we first briefly introduce the details of the hackable design that characterises the D-Box; we then describe how 3 musicians transformed their D-Boxes into 3 radically different instruments, according to their own artistic needs. Finally we argue why and how this is relevant to the domain of instrument design, music and creativity. This work comes together with a demo session, during which the audience will have the opportunity to replicate step by step the 3 hacked instruments and make music with them.

• Victor Zappi is a Marie Curie Fellow in the MAGIC Lab at the University of British Columbia (Canada)  and the ADVR Department at IIT [Italian Institute of Technology, Italy?]. As an electronic engineer and a New Media artist he is focusing on Music Technology research, designing and developing new musical instruments and exploring the usage of novel Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies in live performances.
• Andrew McPherson is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London, UK. A composer and electrical engineer by training, his research focuses on new musical instruments, especially augmented instruments which extend the capabilities of the piano, violin and other familiar instruments.

Full text (PDF) p. 957-959