Isabella Hong – Looking Outwards – 11

For this week’s post on sound art, I chose to focus on Sound Machines, an instrument that was created for performing electronic music. Sound Machines was unveiled in 2011 for Volkswagen at the reveal party for the then new Beetle.

The device itself is composed of three different standard looking record players that are synced to an additional sequencer. The three discs each track a different sound. The visual patterns on the discs were produced manually by “reverse engineering” the music that had been customized for the event itself. The tracks were then controlled by the softwares Arduino and Processing.

I admire that The Product, the Berlin based creators of the device, took into consideration the music itself when designing the device. It adds a personal touch and connection. In addition, the SoundMachines was only the beginning – The Product wants to take it one step further and implement the device at music festivals in the future.