The D-Box: How to Rethink a Digital Musical Instrument

Symposium:

• ISEA2015: 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA2015:  

• The D-Box: How to Rethink a Digital Musical Instrument

• Victor Zappi
• Andrew McPherson

• Keywords: Hacking, Appropritation, DMI, Embedded Hardware

  The D-Box is a novel digital musical instrument that can be modified and hacked by the musician, subverting its original design. The possibility to rethink and appropriate a musical instrument in unexpected ways is not common when dealing with digital circuits and hard-coded software. In this short work, we first briefly introduce the details of the hackable design that characterises the D-Box; we then describe how 3 musicians transformed their D-Boxes into 3 radically different instruments, according to their own artistic needs. Finally we argue why and how this is relevant to the domain of instrument design, music and creativity. This work comes together with a demo session, during which the audience will have the opportunity to replicate step by step the 3 hacked instruments and make music with them.

• Full text (PDF) p. 957-959

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• Poster