This Thursday evening, June 1st, at the Center for New Music in San Francisco, the opening reception for the Maker Music Festival exhibit will take place. We’ve assembled a group of projects from the large body of works submitted over the past three years. The exhibit runs through the months of May and June. At the reception, starting at 7PM, MMF founder Joe Szuecs will chat a bit about the festival and show a video montage of the bounty of projects that make up the MMF virtual ‘campus’. Afterward, there will be a live performance honoring Bay Area artist Tom Nunn who passed away in 2022. A group of musicians that were friends and collaborators of Tom will perform – David Samas, David Michalak, Gary Knowlton, Sudhu Tewari and Bart Hopkin.
Currently, MMF is a virtual community of over 300 makers from around the world. The website is composed of a campus of “buildings” that each house a collection of exhibits. Every year, the campus grows as more exhibits are added
“Samson, Drummer in a Suitcase”. “Samson” is a portable percussion unit housed in a vintage suitcase. It can be remotely controlled by any Bluetooth MIDI enabled sequencer. Maker: Josef Szuecs. Location: SF Bay Area
What is a music maker? Needless to say, there are many types of projects that fit into the mold. The fundamental music maker has crafted their own unique musical instrument. It may be made from traditional materials, scrap materials, modified electronics, altered playback devices, electromechanics, or an AI driven robot. The works also include non-physical works like algorithmic music and interactive applications.
“Cicadas, Sound Sculpture Devices”. A Cicada is a noise~rompler, and rompler is an electronic musical instrument that plays pre-fabricated sounds based on audio samples. Each of Cicada has two ways to change prefabricated sound: by a potentiometer and by photoresistor. Different Cicadas can be connected to each other and mix their sounds directly, without a sound mixer. In addition, also, it is possible to make more complex noise~sound~design and connect into Cicadas prepared modules from children’s toys.