Learning How to Listen – Episode 1 – Mad Scientists of Music

Mad Scientists of Music Documentary

Episode one explores how circuit benders, hackers and artists are building teaching and education into their practice. This is a culture as much about sharing as making, and all the artists interviewed run classes and workshops (often at no charge). Children and adults alike attend the ‘maker fairs’ and hacklabs where circuit benders share tips and show off their home brew projects. We look at how the history and technology involved are intimately connected to learning as a democratic horizontal practice, and how workshops facilitate access to these emerging technologies. We drop in on a circuit bending workshop at A4 Sounds with Andrew Edgar, and hear adults and children explore this new world of experimental sound. Roger Gregg takes us on a tour of his radio theatre laboratory, and tells the story of how he fell in love with the storytelling possibilities of sound. We join electroacoustic musician and instrument maker Ed Devane as he teaches musicians and non musicians alike how to improvise. Sebastian & Emma, of Dublin experimental duo ‘Deathness Injection‘ discuss their massively collaborative performance at Culture Night in Exchange Dublin.

https://garethstack.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/mad-scientists-of-music-episode-1-learning-how-to-listen.mp3

Download:
Episode 1 – ‘Learning how to listen‘

About the Series

Mad Scientists of Music is a six part, BAI funded documentary series on Near FM. The show explores the world of Circuit Bending, Chip Tune, and Electroacoustic music in Ireland. Low cost technology, recycled instruments and a new attitude to tinkering embodied by the ‘maker movement’ are helping to reinvent music. A new generation of Irish musicians raised around computers, the internet and video gaming, see noise as something to be hacked, taken apart, and reconstructed. These artists build their own instruments, whether by recycling toy keyboards, modifying video game consoles, or attaching electronics to traditional stringed instruments. They often share their music online for free, and in doing so challenge our ideas about copyright and ownership. Their playful attitude to technology finds new uses for obsolete devices and brings the collaboration of musicianship to engineering and the arts.