- Takeaway Festival 2006
- Takeaway Festival 2007
- Takeaway Festival 2008
- Takeaway Festival 2009
- Mini TKW
Owl Project - portable instruments
Date(s):
Wed 20 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
Host:
Simon Blackmore
Detailed text:
Since 2004 we have been developing a range of portable instruments that mimic the desirability of handheld gadgets but are more comic in appearance and obscure in functionality. Examples being the iLog Rustle which records up to 20 seconds of sound and reduces it into distorted fragments, the iLog Photosynthesiser which converts light into audio and the m-Log (a wooden gestural computer interface).
We have performed across Europe with these instruments and they have featured in design books,magazines and blogs globally. Shifting between being desirable design objects, musical instruments or simply logs, they raise questions about the use of technology within live performance and their value as objects, their potential for mass-production and our refusal to do so.
Rather than standardise production in the face of working with uneven logs and unusual electronics we prefer to let these objects resist mass-production and thus no two are ever the same. Embracing this limitation we invite participants to join us in making their own variation. Through this social process our customers become developers rather than consumers and our range of instruments continue to evolve, placing an emphasis on cultural and social capital rather than the physical.
Biography:
Drawing on influences such as woodworking, hobby style electronics and open source software to create music-making machines, we take a craft-based approach to designing our own interfaces and objects. The result is a distinctive range of musical and sculptural instruments that critique human interaction with computer interfaces and our increasing appetite for new and often disposable technologies.
We have performed and exhibited the Log1k nationally and internationally since 2001
We developed the Sound Lathe in 2005. First shown at the Gathering Moss exhibition at Q Arts (Derby, UK). The Sound Lathe has been performed widely, including headlined at the Sonic Arts Network EXPO 2006 and shortlisted & exhibited for the SHARE prize (Torino, IT) 2008.
In 2007 we were commissioned to work with leading green woodworker Mike Abbott (Lovebytes, 2007, Sheffield) to produce a chair using the Sound Lathe. The chair has an embedded MP3 player containing the sounds of its production.
After launching the original iLog in 2005 a new range of iLogs were shown at Futuresonic (Manchester UK) 2006, and then at Digital Wellbeing Labs (London) and performed at "Musikprotokoll" (Graz AU), TEKS trondhiem Norway) & the Serpentine Gallery stage.
In 2008 we were awarded a major Arts Council award to radically develop the iLog & m-Log technology. Working with artists, Leafcutter John, Kaffe Mathews & Thor Magnusson. We exhibited the out comes of this at Ding Dong, FACT, Liverpool, December 2008-February 2009 and at the Owl Project curated evening “Night of the Owl”.
Images:
