srijeda, 7. siječnja 2015.

Artists and writers were invited to imagine a musical instrument of 2214.



Glazbeni instrumenti budućnosti? Primjerice: mješavina sintesajzera, kolekcije ploča i golfa.
Fikcionalne + gotovo nadrealne, ali tehnološki izvedive ideje.

Humans have been making music since the dawn of time. It stands to reason we'll continue making it until the end of time.

In the same way that dubstep would have likely forced listeners from the 1800s into immediate cardiac arrest, the music of the future will likely be unrecognizable to us in many fascinating ways. The Red Bull Music Academy, an organization dedicated to cultivating and sharing progressive music, created a feature series to discovering what those new sounds might be.
The year 2214 is their target. Curator Todd Burns invited some of today's most promising, future-conscious creative minds from a variety of disciplines to share their visions for the instruments we'll use to create music 200 years from now. Rapper Tyler, the Creator, Detroit techno legend Jeff Mills, industrial designer Konstantin Grcic and many others weighed in. The ideas they came up with are brilliant fuel for the imagination.
Renowned graphic designer Kim Laughton illustrates each of the ideas. Burns told Mic that Laughton's unique style was a partial inspiration for the project. 
"His designs are some of the most eye-catching things I've personally seen in the past few years," Burns wrote via email. Laughton's illustrations really bring the ideas, which range from plausible to dystopian, feel far more urgent and attainable.
There should be no doubt in anyone's mind — the future of music will be beautiful.

"Shout Box" — musician Tyler, the Creator



There will be no more singing, no more bass, guitars or keyboards in the future. Tyler, the Creator believes the future of music will be screaming. Of course he does.
But this won't be any ordinary screaming — it'll be screaming that one can pitch-shift and pan in a million different ways to make a massive variety of sounds an instrument called a "Shout Box." 
"Am I into it?" Tyler writes on the project's website, "Fuck no, but as time passes the younger generations are going to be so hyped on it that it doesn't matter what I think. I'll be old and dead."

"Glass Bead Orchestra" — SETI scientist Douglas Vakoch



Vakoch is the director of Interstellar Message Composition at SETI Institute or Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. His idea imagines the possible trajectory of his institute's work as it relates to finding alien life. 
Instead of sending out standard music, speech as an attempt to contact alien life, humans in 2214 will send "celestial music" made up of "ethereal thoughts." Terrestrial music, he suggests, will exist mostly outside the realm of audible sound. It will be "contemplated" and felt with the body, but not experienced in the traditional way by the ear. For those playing along at home, this sounds, more or less, like the plot of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

"The SPINE" — musician Seth Woods




"Inspired by the decades of research and development in wearable technologies and biofeedback, the SPINE is a wireless, digital exoskeleton worn and used by both dancers and musicians alike," Wood writes for his entry in the series. 
The SPINE will translate the movements of dancers and musicians into beautiful sonic landscapes. Numerous inventors have already begun to experiment with music created by the natural movements and rhythms of the body. A full body instrument might be a lot closer than 200 years away, and similar technology has already begun penetrating dance.

"Gan" — writer Adam Harper



As music creation software gets progressively more accessible, Harper believes the boundaries between artist and listener will begin to blur. People will make their own music by interacting with software and other music-creating landscapes, both physical and digital. 
"Gan" is a hybrid physical and digital landscape. One creates music with it by moving through it with a controller. The music changes depending upon the way one interacts with their environment. This is an idea a lot of people have already begun exploring with incredible music apps.

"Clone 101 Reality Player" — musician Jeff Mills



The Clone 101 Reality Player is a full-body "liquid" suit that one will allow one to experience music as a fully immersive sensory experience. 
But beyond just stimulating the sense neurons in one's skin, it will also include a synchronized visual aspect. This will allow a "listener" to see and feel what the musician was feeling when he created the piece. 
"Understanding how anything is created has enormous benefits to any art form," Mills writes. Consistently allowing listeners a direct experience with the creation of musical works may help to lift our potential creativity to entirely new heights. And the urge to participate in the creation of a beloved artist's music is already its own market.

"Body Modulator" — Web developer Mike Guppy



Guppy also believes the boundaries between musician and listener will all but dissolve in 2214. His body modulator is essentially a fusion of the "Clone 101" and Harper's "Gan." Listeners will create music by passing a "Body Modulator" over different parts of their body. The music will enter the Cloud where others will mix in their own sounds and add music in a continuously evolving musical stream. It's the extreme extension of the modern thrust toward streaming music.

"Prophet 2214" — instrument designer Dave Smith



"Being a synth designer, I'm going to describe what synth might look like in 200 years," Smith writes.
He elaborates a display system for synth keyboards, which he says are the future. However, current screen displays are difficult to use mid-performance because musicians actually have to look at them and scroll and click to change the sound. His Prophet 2214 introduces new technology so that physical knobs can rise out of a screen display to help musicians get tactile feedback while they play.

"THE HUMAN INSTRUMENTS" — visual artist Akihiko Taniguchi


Taniguchi believes body modification will be commonplace by 2214. People will embed electromagnets under their skin so as to feel music in a more visceral way. They'll also be able to use them like pick-ups on an electric guitar to amplify sounds made on or near the body. We'll all be able to plug ourselves into amplifiers and have the sounds from our bodies blare out. And if the illustration is any indication, we'll all look horrifying as we do it.
Embedding a sixth sense of electromagnetism is already a possibility for humans. Sharks do it naturally.

"Zen Sonic Satellite" — artist Yoshi Sodeoka



Sodeoka believes music will be ever-present in 2214 but not always perceptible.
It will beamed to Earth by satellites and will be barely audible. But through "advanced radio microwave technology" it will communicate directly with the spirits of all living things, instead of simply their bodies. In this way, music will hold more sway over living beings. Sodeoka believes it be able will "neutralize nations at war, quell rising crime rates in urban and suburban areas and reverse environmental damages."

"Post Singularity" — graphic designer Kim Laughton


Laughtin's vision of the future of music is far bleaker than any of her peers. She believes there will be no humans living on Earth in 2214. The only music will come from the humming and whirring of massive supercomputers, which have since dominated every inch of the Earth's surface. The Earth will be abuzz with sound, similar to pieces musician and programmer Matt Parker made by remixing sounds taken from the humming of data centers at the University of Alabama. 

"Summer" — industrial designer Konstantin Grcic


Grcic offers something closer a Zen koan to relate his vision what the future of music sound like be.

"What does it do?

It breathes.

What does it sound like?

Humming...

What is the world like at this point?

Still round.

What is the music world like at this point?

Still turning."

It's a bit oblique, but he has a point. Whatever music sounds, looks or behaves like in 2214, it will still be music. It will still make people feel. This might be the most powerful and profound truth about the future of music out of all of them — our instruments change, but our art doesn't.

Tom Barnes mic.com/articles/104800/these-11-incredible-instruments-could-be-the-future-of-music

future.redbullmusicacademy.com/ :

Since 1998, the Red Bull Music Academy has brought together forward-thinking minds from across the globe to challenge pre-existing notions of what music can or should be. Music technology and its ongoing conversation with human intelligence has been an integral part of the process - as evidenced lately by the Academy’s involvement with the GiantSteps research program.
As the Academy touches down in Tokyo, we asked some of the brightest and most futuristically-inclined artists of the present to share their vision of what a musical instrument might look like in the year 2214. Between Odd Future’s Tyler The Creator, Detroit techno pioneer Jeff Mills, award-winning industrial designer Konstantin Grcic and a diverse range of other creatives, their conceptions cover the full spectrum between utopia and dystopia.
Acclaimed graphic designer Kim Laughton gave visual form to their ideas, providing us with a glimpse at music’s future through the eyes of those shaping the music and art of today.

Glass Bead Orchestra

Douglas Vakoch
Beginning in 1960, astronomers had been searching the stars for signals from other intelligence, but had found nothing. By the late twenty-teens, as the search for messages increased in pace and scope, a new strategy was added: Humans began to transmit signals in earnest, letting any civilizations around nearby stars know that we were ready to make contact.
As the centuries passed, these transmitters became more sophisticated, and by 2214 messages were sent from an instrument called the Glass Bead Orchestra. It was named in honor of Hermann Hesse’s fictional game developed in Earth’s distant future, in which glass beads were strung on musical staffs, each bead standing for an abstract concept – an idea, and not a sound. In the Glass Bead Orchestra, celestial music was “played” as a combination of ethereal thoughts, not mere audible sounds.
From the outside, the Orchestra looked like any other array of radio transmitters. Metallic, glistening in the sun by day, whirring in the dark night, its dozens of dishes moved from target to target, ever sending signs of our existence into space. But watching the displays of the outgoing data streams, it became clear these were no usual transmissions.
The tones emitted from the Glass Bead Orchestra were not like those repeated, strong signals at a single frequency, used to track Earth-threatening asteroids. Instead, each antenna dish was tuned to its own frequency, each like a separate key on a piano. But when the dishes were played together, the combined array created a polyphonic message, imbuing the universe with a harmonic code not known since Kepler’s Music of the Spheres.
To the human ear, the Glass Bead Orchestra was inaudible. It sang at radio frequencies, far too high to be heard by our species directly. But over the decades and centuries, the melodies of the Orchestra played across the cosmos, travelling between the stars, silently ringing through space like an acoustically perfect concert hall.
By 2214, terrestrial music had taken on diverse forms that earlier generations could never have imagined. Music had become sensuous in realms that go far beyond audition, as when we feel the rhythm of a concert in our bodies, its percussive quality beating to the core of our being. By 2214, in the gustatory realm, master chefs made music with food, as they blended seasonings to reflect their idiosyncratic translations of chords, with spices finding harmonic resonances with one another in major and minor keys heard only by the tongue.
Yet other communities of musicians eschewed the corporeal, reveling in music that could be contemplated, but never sensed. Tracing their roots to the conceptual art movement of the 1960s, these musicians composed works that were never intended to be played. Except, perhaps, by the Glass Bead Orchestra.
The most surprising discovery by 2214 was not that there are extraterrestrial life forms out there, transmitting to us endless streams of their own music. Though scientists still sought those radio signals, they had found no evidence of other intelligence. In the process of contemplating how humans could make their own music meaningful to the denizens of other worlds, however, Earthlings created unexpected forms of music themselves. Music that gave them new insights into, even new experiences of, the exotic Others they had become, right here on our home world.

Douglas Vakoch is the Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute.

The Shout Box

Tyler, the Creator
In the year 2214 everyone I know, including myself, will be dead. To be honest, I think the world would have already ended by 2214, and if it hasn’t, there probably won’t be a lot of music being made. But let’s just say music is being made. What it’s going to sound like is a question that a lot of musicians tend to ask themselves. With all the genre-blending in 2014, one can only imagine what human ears will be accustomed to 100 years from now. Will the tempos be sped up? Will subject matter like love and cars still be a thing? Will humans still be using the same instruments? Probably not.
We have keyboards with every sound with the push of one button. And with the rise in popularity of EDM, most of those instruments aren’t even used, which leads me to believe that in 2214, the popular instrument will be the human voice. Screaming. Yes, screaming. Different ways of screaming. Pitched up, pitched down, panned to the left, and so on. Someone will create a small cube box where the artist can scream into it, and it will have every single effect possible to make the scream distinct from other ones. 1,000 buttons on it. No more drums, synths, strings or basslines. The cube will have the option to change your screaming into one of those instruments, similar to a MIDI keyboard, but overall, screams are going to be clogging the radio.
Am I into it? Fuck no, but as time passes the younger generations are going to be so hyped on it that it doesn’t matter what I think. I’ll be old and dead. Oh, and the cubes will come in pretty colors, to wear on your head or make it easy to fit in your pocket.

Tyler, the Creator is a rapper and part of the Odd Future collective.


Zen Sonic Satellite
Yoshi Sodeoka
In year 2214, satellite-based musical instruments will orbit the Earth playing melodies 24/7. These instruments will be fully self-controlled, interacting with the collected data of global environmental conditions and mental states of people all over the world. They are the Zen Sonic Satellite 3000.
Melodies played by the Zen Sonic Satellite 3000 will be able to reach virtually everywhere on Earth in real time. They will be barely audible to the human ear. But through advanced radio microwave technology, they will directly communicate to the spirit of all living things. Therefore, the Zen Sonic Satellite 3000 will have a much higher influence over everything on Earth than any sonic device ever created. The main purpose of these satellite-based musical instrument will be to neutralize nations at war, quell rising crime rates in urban and suburban areas and reverse environmental damages caused by decades of wrongdoing by flawed human beings.

Yoshi Sodeoka is a Japanese audio and visual artist based in New York City.

The SPINE

Seth Woods
Inspired by the decades of research and development in wearable technologies and biofeedback, The SPINE is a wireless, digital exoskeleton worn and used by both dancers and musicians alike. Contrary to the normal exoskeletons seen amongst insects, this one still senses and maps the movements of the performer and relays that data back to a computer and it is then synthesized to make a beautiful sonic landscape. Made mostly of dense and sturdy acrylic vertebrae that closely resemble the endoskeleton of humans and reinforced with animated titanium. It is indestructible. For the sake of stage performance and artistic aesthetic, it has LED lighting installed in the north and south polar points that only illuminate once the SPINE is engaged. The SPINE is worn by attaching the top of instrument to a headband and the bottom is clipped into an expandable harness. This type of suspension of the instrument allows for an extremely flexible, animated and fluid performance when worn.
Armed with an arsenal of sensors built into the SPINE, it senses and maps the movements of the performers and translates it into music. As well, there is the possibility to map and measure blood flow, bone density and muscle tension of the performer and use it as part of the data set for sonic translation. It’s sort of a complete bio-kinetic instrument that allows the performer to really be in control of the expressive and artistic output in ways one could never dream of. This instrument has come out of a need to find a new embodied sense of expression that is no longer conceptual. You can finally play what you feel and hear it. To add to the fun, the SPINE has the capability to be turned into a walking installation piece, where the SPINE detects the surroundings and amplifies the sounds on a macro level. The sonic output can resemble deep listening gestural sweeps, stagnated waves (coming from the blood flow), crackling sounds. Though, this is all relative as each body will react differently with the instrument.
The SPINE can be used in a large array of concert settings from improvised music with other acoustic instruments, to noise concerts, computer music, as well as combined with another acoustic instrument to perform as one unit. The SPINE can be seen in concert halls, museums with proper sound diffusion systems, festivals stages, outdoor (open air) venues, as well as underground clubs.

Seth Woods is a cellist and PhD candidate at CeReNeM, the Centre for Research in New Music. During a stint as researcher in residence in the CIRMMT Institute at Montreal’s McGill University, he worked with Ian Hattwick and Joseph Malloch, creators of a prosthetic spine that now forms the focus of Woods’ current work.

Gan

Adam Harper
The thing I’m most confident in predicting about the music of 2214 is that many of the categories and concepts we use today to differentiate and structure music-making will have eroded, and may no longer be in use. With a great deal of all creativity in 2214 likely occurring interactively, within basically the same kind of technological interface (a descendent of the book, the computer and the smartphone – I like to imagine sheets of smart paper, the lines between a musical instrument, a musical performer and a piece of music will start to blur. If you look at many music-oriented apps, they already have. Instead of buying physical instruments and using them to make records for listening to, the end result could be the enjoyment of using software to make music.
So instead of grappling with the constraints of a physical object, the experience would be much more abstract. People, perhaps no longer divided into “artists” and “listeners,” would simply be exploring spaces of musical variety that are not just so big as to be practically infinite, but practically infinitesimal too. Musical instruments of the future would be favoured less for what they can do (today’s software can already do an incredible amount) than how easily and accessibly they can navigate these music spaces, and how well they can apply productive constraints. And since I don’t think 2214 will have seen the death of the physical in human culture – it’s a concern many hold today, but there’s no such thing as non-physical music – I think there will be ways to link the exploration of these music spaces to physical activity.
Put most crudely for the fretfully hierarchical minds of 2214, Gan is a cross between a synthesizer, a record collection, and a game of golf. Taking its name from regions of ancient China and its language, old acronyms for telecommunications networks, the now-inundated villages of the Maldives and a childlike slang for “game,” Gan is both a musical instrument and a way of listening. It sounds like just about anything you can imagine, and most of what you can’t. To play Gan you need to visit a Gan Field with some smart paper (use your own or pick some up for free at the gate) running the necessary software. Rather like a park, the Gan Field is an attractive, three-dimensional area filled with grassy hills, sculptures, and unusual architectures. (One of the most popular ones is located half a mile above Vancouver, but its waiting lists can be long.)
The dimensions and sectors of the Gan Field correspond precisely to certain musical changes, and your smart paper is the map. Doubling as the membrane of a speaker, it always plays continuous loops of between ten seconds and ten minutes whose characteristics depend on where you are on the field. As you move through it (as an individual or in teams) and discover new areas, the loop accordingly changes and develops like a composition, and you can save the results.
There are also random variations in the sonic make-up of the Gan Field from day to day, known as “the weather,” but some elements always remain the same. What’s more, on the Field you can find and use pre-existing loops and recordings, interact with the other Gan players you meet as you roam, listening to and drawing on their loops, and employ props and vehicles for various compositional purposes. Gan is a musical instrument you walk around inside.

Adam Harper is the author of Infinite Music.

Clone 101 Reality Player

Jeff Mills
The Clone 101 Reality Player is a thin layer of liquid coating that a person puts on. Like a full head-to-toe body suit, the instrument not only allows you to hear and feel vibrations of the music, but also allows the person to experience the simulated creation of the music from the mind, sight and psychological feelings of the producer. The person would be able to see where and how the music was created through the visual lenses of the suit. Understanding how anything is created has enormous benefits to any art form. The thought process and mind-set of the creator leading up until and after the music was made could be a valuable tool in which to understand the true purpose and direction of the work.
A coating of the entire body, applied like sun tan lotion, the Clone 101 consist of thousands of invisible microscopic sensors that feeds the person physical information like body temperature, heart rate and all sensations of the body of the creator at the time the artwork was created.
What does it do?
It is a physical and mental Reality Player.
What does it sound like?
It sounds and feels like normalcy.
Why is it an instrument used in 2214?
This instrument was created as the result of all other previous formats falling short of thoroughly explaining to people [the listener] the absolute origins of how, why, when music is created.
Where is it used?
This instrument is completely transparent and can be permanently worn.
What is the world like at this point?
The world in 2214 is similar to Earth in 1914, 2014, 2114: At the brink of World War. Anarchy runs rampant. Economic and international relationships that will also include the colony of inhabitants on the Moon will still be problematic and difficult, but by the year 2214, the definition of what a military is will have changed. Average citizens will be enlisted to wage micro wars among themselves, attacking each other via personal and financial assaults. To the average human, Earth will be uncomfortable. To the fortunate people that are able to distance themselves from the constraint and national responsibilities, other planets in our solar system will better suit them as they search further and further out in space to find peace and tranquility.
What is the music world like at this point?
With the Clone 101 Reality Player, looking back on music will be its greatest advantage. Being able to explore things like when Miles Davis created Bitches Brew, Steely Dan’s Aja, or Led Zepplin’s Stairway To Heaven. Using the unit to explore the future of music is possible using an extra layered application. This will consist of intricate computation of various habits and styles of a producer to formulate possible future works. For instance, if Miles Davis were still alive, what would a theoretically produced album recorded in the year 2014. What would it feel and sound like? All this is possible now.

Jeff Mills is a techno producer and DJ, and one of the founding members of Detroit techno group Underground Resistance.

Body Modulator

Mike Guppy
In the not so distant future, humans will be hyper connected, via nanotechnology that will be wirelessly connected and interface directly with our neurons in the brain. Getting a piece of information will be as easy as retrieving a past memory. So, in this case, we would have instant access to all music everywhere. Everything would be collaborative. People won’t just consume music, but participate. As everything is hyperconnected, nothing is passive. Everything would contain feedback loops. We’ll be less likely to share whole songs, written by one person, but hooks and melodies and beats would go viral and be interpreted en masse, and the piece of music would be an emergent property of these patterns.
That said, hearing this music in your head will not be the same as hearing it via your own ears. People will want to listen to music as we did in the past, like with food, we will still want to eat crafted and delicious meals. Parts of the entertainment industry will be centred around crafted physical experiences. This will be the same for music. Concerts will be visceral, visual and sensory. The human body will be celebrated and conserved, we won’t want to give up our biological selves as easily as we will give up our individual minds.
This “instrument” will be an object that interacts with the body and its movement. It is held and moved over the body, triggering different spectrums of music, which is all generated via the collaborative music cloud, and is composed partly through algorithms and partly through human intuition. The dance will inform the music, as the music informs the dance, all in real-time, all in collaboration. The physical movement of the body will be what roots the performer, and reminds the listener that we are still human.

Mike Guppy designs and makes websites for Animade.

The Listeners

Kengo Kuma
We see the future instruments not as objects themselves. We see it as a future human capability to learn how to use our immediate environment, the tangible context we are surrounded by... whether it is in a natural or an anthropic context. That is, an advanced capability to understand the mechanisms of the environment we live in so we don’t need to develop, use, and sustain objectual instruments. And this context-instrumentalisation capability would apply also to the world of sound and music.
It won’t be us to decide where to perform... it will be the observation of nature and its phenomena that will lead us to the places where to establish this synergy with nature and – in the case we are talking about – where to perform music. Now the objectual instruments allow us to perform (in this case, music) wherever we want to, disregarding where it is appropriate or not; whether it is necessary or not.
Leaving behind objectual instruments would bring sense to the performance of music and transform us (and our musicians) into sound nomads. Music is not more than sound with an intellectual structure, but sound after all... and sound is something that existed before us, in nature, in its processes and phenomena, in infinite declinations. One day we will understand that sounds are all around us, and that there is no more essential music than the one we find and not the one we conceive. In the future we will climb mountains, carve the grounds, observe the clouds... to search for hidden sounds as we have done until now with tremendous efforts for finding food and wealth.
The way this future music will sound will be beyond our imagination, because every sound will become music as soon as somebody calls it music. And sounds will be seamlessly related to their contexts, making recordings useless. Music will happen, anytime, anywhere... musicians will not be those among us that have a skill of how to use an object to make sounds... musicians will be those amazingly sensitive among us that can feel the sounds of nature come and happen and tell us to be quiet and simply listen.

Kengo Kuma is a renowned Japanese architect, and Professor at the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Tokyo

Prophet 2214

Dave Smith
Being a synth designer, I’m going to describe what synth might look like in 200 years. The Prophet 2214 will have a keyboard; still a good input device that’s lasted hundreds of years already. The UI is what may change the most. I envision the entire panel being a display, edge-to-edge. Displays are great for allowing flexible instrument interfaces, but they are horrible for tactile feedback; you can’t drag a virtual slider very well unless you are looking at it.
So, there will be new 3D displays by then; not 3D visually, but mechanically. They can raise or lower edges to create channels for easy slider and control locating.
The synthesis will likely be digital; by then it should sound as good as analog! Maybe. You will be able to select a number of algorithms (including subtractive, which will still be around), and the models will be simplified with macro controls to make them easy to understand, manipulate, and customize.
Other notes: there are no wires/jacks/interfaces of any type; everything is wireless/auto-detect. Also no AC cable; runs for weeks on an internal battery, and charges automatically with everything else in the house.
Funny; looking back I’ve been designing instruments for 40 years, but with the analog resurgence (and modular synths) it can be argued that not much has changed since. But, technology marches on exponentially, so the future is anything but obvious.

Dave Smith is an engineer and musician perhaps most well-known for creating the first polyphonic microprocessor-controlled synthesizer, the Prophet 5.

Summer

Konstantin Grcic
What does it do?
It breathes.
What does it sound like?
Humming.
Why is it an instrument used in 2214?
It needs nothing but air.
Where is it used?
My Own Private Idaho.
What is the world like at this point?
Still round.
What is the music world like at this point?
Still turning.

Konstantin Grcic is an award-winning designer who runs Konstantin Grcic Industrial Design (KGID) in Munich, Germany.

Post Singularity

Kim Laughton
“The physical bottom limit to how small computer transistors (or other equivalent, albeit more effective components, such as memristors integrated into Crossbar latches) can be shrunk is reached. From this moment onwards, computers can only be made more powerful if they are made larger in size. Because of this, A.I.s convert more and more of the Earth's matter into engineered, computational substrate capable of supporting more A.I.s. until the whole Earth is one, gigantic computer, except for a few nature reserves set aside on the planetary surface for those humans who decided to remain in their natural state.” - Ray Kurzweil
By 2214 there will be no humans living on earth and therefore no instruments as such. All music, if you chose to call it that, will exist only in the light flow of the computer. Externally the computer will have taken the shape most efficient for extracting the resources required for growth, both matter and energy. This will lead to a surreal semi-organic appearing landscape – not that there will be anyone around to see it.

Kim Laughton is a graphic designer. He has worked with Night Slugs, Lit City Trax, and more.

The Human Instruments

Akihiko Taniguchi
In 2214, body modification has become common. If you embed an electromagnet on your body, it is possible to listen to music more physically. You’ll also be able to use it like an electric guitar pickup, as well as do things like play a guitar string on your body. Fingers will become mono plugs, and sounds will appear when you insert a finger into a mixer or amplifier. It will be able to send the audio signal wirelessly, but the finger plug is cool



Amphitheater
Iasos
On the realms of the Ascended Masters, there might be an amphitheater where everybody is coming to experience a concert from just ONE musician – a Music Master. These amphitheaters are huge; they have enough space for 350,000 souls. These amphitheaters are so high consciousness, that when you first enter them, they have high consciousness plants at the gate that you walk past, or float past (you don’t necessarily have to walk, you can float if you like) and as you walk by, they telepathically tune into your consciousness and telepathically figure out what your favorite fragrance is. They quickly produce that fragrance, and as you walk past, they blast you with your most favorite fragrance.
Then you walk into the amphitheater and sit on benches made of moss. As soon as you sit on the moss, the moss releases more wonderful fragrances. There are beings there of all different sizes – humans, elementals, fairies, angels, archangels, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Ascended Masters. Different beings, all sizes and shapes. Then there is a hushed silence and the Music Master walks in. Just one person – no equipment at all. He stands at the focal point of the theatre… Everyone awairs in hushed anticipation. And then he transmits the entire symphony from his third eye!
And they all hear it. And they hear it not just as sound, but they hear it as color, as emotion, as fragrance, and a few other senses that we don’t have here on Earth. He doesn’t have to carry any sound equipment; he projects it all from his third eye! And there in the amphitheater, everyone is enraptured. They’re spellbound. They’re spellbound by just what this one Music Master can produce – just from his third eye! So, that’s where we are headed, to hop many generations forward. Everything is getting more telepathic. What do you need equipment for? Already, it’s all getting progressively more “virtual” anyway:
  • From a physical piano
  • to an electric piano
  • to a sound module or sampler that generates a piano sound when MIDI-triggered
  • to a software sampler in a computer that plays back a piano sound when MIDI-triggered
  • to physical-modeling software in a computer which generates a piano sound when MIDI-triggered
The next step will be telepathically-triggered melodies or telepathically-triggered CC (continuous controller) messages.

Iasos is a musician and one of the founders of the New Age movement



Musical Instruments Of The Future

Musical Instruments Of The FutureMusic has been a form of expression through the ages, culminating into an overwhelming wave of sensations for our ears.
The art has evolved, refined and perfected time and again with the implementation of various musical instruments, and yet, the undying quest to take it a step further has always pushed human innovation beyond its limit. Keeping that in mind, MensXP brings you a few musical instruments that are paving way for innovators and musicians of the future.

1. Bricktable

Musical Instruments - Bricktable
Image Credit: wired (dot) com
Almost every DJ and live musician on the global music scene happens to plug in their iPad or MacBook into the console to dish out tunes. Bricktable takes the same concept and pushes it a step further by offering a complete table with touch-screen interface. A camera underneath, tracks the finger movements and placements and produces sounds in accordance. Something even a layman can play around with, the Bricktable sounds and looks the part by dishing out a wide spectrum of colors while playing an array of sounds for the player’s and listeners’ delight.

2. Swarmatron

Musical Instruments - Swarmatron
Image Credit: pbr2010 (dot) files (dot) wordpress (dot) com
This one will delight the vinyl-adoring hipsters. An analogue synthesizer sans-screen, the Swarmatron is loaded with bunch of knobs that you can tweak to perfection while offering two pitch ribbons to take care of the pitch. It looks classy and steam-punkish and gives the satisfaction of using pure analogue sounds while giving the artificial electric sound a ditch for good. Unfortunately though, this simple-looking piece of instrument is priced at $3,250 making it an instrument for the serious music aficionados.

3. Eigenharp

Musical Instruments - Eigenharp
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An instrument that can very well keep the purists as well as the innovative enthusiasts happy, Eigenharp is the future of musical geniuses. A handy saxophone-like device, the Eigenharp comprises of 120 keys, which are pressure and direction sensitive, meaning you can get the right tone with the right pitch at the right octave at any given point of time. A guitar-like fretboard, a mouthpiece and a tap-pad is what makes this instrument an all-in-one music piece for a musician.

4. Continuum Fingerboard

Musical Instruments - Continuum Fingerboard
Image Credit: hakenaudio (dot) com
A keyboard with a name straight from a Star Trek episode, the Continuum fingerboard is a surprisingly simple looking flat panel that does the trick of emulating an assortment of sounds through simple finger placement. The instrument gauges the finger placement according to the x, y, z co-ordinates and responds with a particular sound wave. It works on principles similar to those of a keyboard, while giving a wider and more precise range of soundscapes. Also, it can track 16 fingers simultaneously!

5. Electroencephalophone

Musical Instruments - Electroencephalophone
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Besides having a practically unpronounceable name, the Electroencephalophone or the encephalophone, works by measuring brain waves and generating or modulating sounds in accordance to it. In other words, controlling a virtual orchestra through your brain! A complex instrument, the encephalophone is worn over the head with various nodes similar to an ECG machine that reads brain waves and deciphers them into various sounds. A relatively difficult instrument to master, the encephalophone requires a user to have a sound and stable mind that can command the instrument in its totality without wandering off.
 - www.mensxp.com/technology/portable-media/9209-musical-instruments-of-the-future.html


www.virgin.com/music/electric-dreams-high-tech-instruments-of-the-future


future-instruments.net


Future-instruments.net is a collaborative research network active in the field of new musical interfaces and interactive technologies. It currently includes people from various institutions in Switzerland, the Music Conservatory of Geneva (HEM-GE), the  Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), and several Schools of the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO).

Future-instruments.net is a truly interdisciplinary network, where musicians and engineers are closely collaborating in order to define, develop and test what could possibly be the musical instruments of the future.

In this website you will find an introduction explaining the motivations underlying the present research, the latest news and events, a list of the people involved in the various projects, a list of publications, links to other researches and relevant resources, patches and programs that are available for download, and finally the address to contact us.




Last week, we showed you a glimpse into Imogen Heap's musical gloves. So, technology that means we can compose with our hands? We're sure the violin also looked pretty sci-fi when it came about in 16th century Italy. Here's another gaze into the future of start-up instruments that could shape our musical future.

www.virgin.com/music/electric-dreams-high-tech-instruments-of-the-future

www.future-instruments.net/fr/index.php

www.wired.com/2009/02/sneak-peek-musi/

www.theatlantic.com/video/index/256227/why-the-musical-instrument-of-the-future-might-be-the-3d-camera/

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