Art & Inspiration

Work that the lab’s tools can lead to. Some of it is for looking at, some explains how it was made. Add things you find.

Music and sound

• Watch: Herbie Hancock jams with his Fairlight CMI. A jazz pianist playing one of the first sampling synthesizers, an early digital instrument.
• Watch: Modular Synth (not a spaceship, this is an instrument) by Rob Scallon. A guitarist’s tour of a modular synthesizer, which is the idea VCV Rack is built on.
• Watch: 1969: Introducing the Moog Synthesiser from BBC Archive. A television report from when the synthesizer was new.
• Watch: Generative ambient music in SuperCollider by Tomer Baruch. Music made by code that never plays the same way twice, in one of the lab’s tools.
• Watch: Moritz Simon Geist and his sonic robots from Electronic Beats. A tour of the workshop where robots play electronic music, and how they shape the way he works.

Influential electronic artists

Starting points for people whose work shaped electronic music. Each link goes to a reference page, so look up their records and live sets from there.

• Read: Kraftwerk. A German group from Düsseldorf that built electronic pop from synthesizers, drum machines and machines of their own design, starting in the 1970s.
• Read: Aphex Twin. The name Richard D. James records under. He builds his own instruments and software, and his music runs from ambient to some of the most intricate electronic rhythms.
• Read: Caterina Barbieri: Minimalism, Modular and Live from Ableton. An Italian composer who makes long, hypnotic pieces from modular synthesizers and sequencers, with an interview about how she plays them live.
• Read: Suzanne Ciani. An American composer and a pioneer of the Buchla synthesizer, in concert halls and in sound design for film and advertising.
• Read: Hiroshi Yoshimura. A Japanese composer of quiet, spacious “environmental music” made to sit in a room rather than be listened to head-on. His album Green (1986) is a good place to start.

Physical computing and kinetic art

• Explore: Wooden Mirror by Daniel Rozin. A camera and hundreds of small motors tilt wooden tiles to draw your reflection.
• Watch: Sculpting waves in wood and time by Reuben Margolin, a TED talk. Sculptures where one motor moves hundreds of points to make a wave, with an explanation of how they work.
• Watch: My creations, a new form of life by Theo Jansen, a TED talk. The wind-driven walking sculptures called Strandbeests, designed with code and built from plastic tubing.

Code as art

• Explore: p5.js examples. Short sketches in JavaScript that run in the browser, each with its code beside it.
• Explore: Hydra. Live-coded visuals in the browser. Type a few lines and the picture changes as you type.
• Watch: The Coding Train by Daniel Shiffman. Friendly video tutorials for making art with p5.js and Processing.