Interview Max Farnea / Creator of The Sound Destruction Unit

I've been admiring Max's work since (again, I know I am obsessed with them!) CDM posted about this incredible modular synth from their flickr pool back in August. Here is the "The Sound Destruction Unit" if you haven't seen it in action.



I have just conducted an interview with not only Max the creator, but also Audrey his wife and fellow artist. These two co-exist with music making, circuit bending, robots, recycled art, dancing, photography and japan. Amazing. It's an interesting and long read, it's in full over on my mog.

Here's more,

"MAX: since I was younger, in the early 80s, electronic music, video games and home computing were my first interests and I lived electronics and computer technology always with a creative point of view. I went deeper in my hobbies studying for some years electronic engineering and taking piano lessons for seven years. Thanks to my studies in electronics I went addicted to robotics and I built a mini-robot for a couple of national competitions."

"AUDREY : my interest in making art with recycled stuff has started when I was watching Max making his electronic experiments and all the junk or surplus material he left on the table. Since now I like finding shapes like faces or body parts in every plastic or metallic piece I take in my hands. After I find such shapes, assembling them is really a natural process. It’s funny when you image me into skip diving in Verona, really funny indeed, but it’s incredible how many unused things can be found simply at home. One of the most beautiful aspect of this kind of art is giving a second life to things...Watching max working on his instruments I’ve found a lot of ideas to make my robots more alive and interactive with little lights and circuits."

"MAX : More than half of my retro and vintage stuff was mine when I was child or teenager. Other hardware comes from friends or eBay bids. The line in balancing the old and new when I’m making a new instrument is always different and is traced putting the old stuff in a modern context, and if needed ignoring also the original rules on which it was based on."

I am really impressed with these two. Everything they make is done in their spare time, and not for profit (though they are both planning to sell work in the future). I wish them the best and hope that they find more avenues to show off their talent.

For more about Max and Audrey. My mog interview.

- C

"Free Beer, Free Speech, Free Jazz" / IXI Software

Read on the always excellent CDM, I bookmarked the ixi software page for John and I to discuss tonight and hopefully explore soon. ixi is an experimental project with digital music instruments. The visual interface being essential to the music creation, enhancing the process.

Peter Kirn says it best,
"There have always been echoes of that in instrument design: buxom, carved women on viola da gambas, the way a piano keyboard reflects a system of tuning and pitch relations, and fantastical landscapes painted on virginals and other instruments. But I suspect we’ve only begun to see how this area could be blown up with digital instruments."

Here's more info from the ixi about pages to give you a better idea of what they are doing,


"ixi audio is an experimental project concerned with the creation of digital musical instruments and environments for generative music. We are interested in the computer as a workshop for building non-conventional tools for musicians..."

"We acknowledge the constraints that software puts on the musician, the limits that the tool sets for the creative process and we therefore promote and try to disseminate technologies that open up the limits of software (or define new boundaries). We think it should be the artist that defines the scope of his or her instrument (and therefore music), not a commercial software company."

Their free programs are available for download on their website. Check it out!

ixi software page

- C

(photo from Create Digital Music)