HACKOUSTIC

A night of talks, demonstrations, performances and hands on experiences with some incredible instrument makers, inventors, hackers and researchers. This time we will have Gordon Charlton from Beat Frequency talking about generative music techniques. Oddballism will be bringing their amazing MIDI controller hidden inside a bouncy ball. Leon Trimble will be showcasing his Gravity Synth and Cutlasses will be talking about and performing on his DIY noise boxes and effects units!
Oddballism have created a product that uses bluetooth to send MIDI data from sensors inside a bouncy ball. Oddball comes in two parts, the ball, and the app. The ball behaves as the percussion trigger. Every time you bounce it off a surface, sensors at the heart of the ball communicate with the app via Bluetooth to play a sound through your headphones, speakers, or just the internal speaker on your phone. Oddball is pressure sensitive: the harder you bounce it the more intense the sound, the lighter you bounce it the more delicate.
Leon Trimble has been working on The Gravity Synth since 2016, it is a musical instrument combining the instrumentation used to detect gravitational waves, and a modular synthesiser. The experimentation with the scientific and musical equipment has been a collaboration between researchers at the Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy at University of Birmingham and audiovisual artist Leon Trimble. This is a parallel journey exploring the similarities between the processes of art and science.