Living Instruments v2
Living Instruments is a collaborative project between Swiss musician Serge Vuille (under the umbrella of the project WeSpoke) and the DIY science crowd of the community laboratory Hackuarium.
It is a musical composition for a series of instruments that use bacteria, yeast and other living organisms to generate music. By interacting with the organisms and recording the sounds, gas bubbles, pressure, and movements they generate, the artists can transform data into music, creating a live, semi-improvised musical piece.
This was the original Living Instruments wiki page documenting the project's early development and concerts.
We were invited to make the 'version 2' of this project for the open night of local museums. On a day we planned to do a special musical open evening, we got a message from La Musée de la Main inviting us to do a special Living Instruments event for the upcoming 'La Nuit des Musées' the 27th of September 2025.
Introduction
Context
This is a part of the Hackuarium project, Living Instruments
It is about experiments related to making music with living organisms.
One big hope is the the human brain will be the new 'living instrument' in time for the museum event.
People
Contact and lead: Esther
Participants: Serge, Robert, Rachel, Yngvar
Objectives
- To make beautiful music and inspire others to mix life and tech for culture...
- Pour créer une musique magnifique et inspirer les autres à mélanger la vie et le technologie au service de la culture... (traduction FR à venir)
Background & Inspiration
Inspiration
Inspiration:
Run / prototype #1
Setup description
General principle:
Materials & budget
- What, size | quantity | where to get it | price / unit
(If it’s a) Construction
Step 1 in pictures:
- Name-of-file 1.jpg
- Name-of-file 2.jpg
(If it’s an experiment) Parameters
- To vary | Values
- p1 |
- p2 |
- Constants (Key elements of set-up)
- c1 |
- c2
- To measure/ observe
- m1
- m2
Protocol (Plan)
Startup
Phase 1
do what | frequency | duration
Lab Notebook & News (Real)
We put our measures here: [link to other doc?]
Run / prototype #2
What's new compared to #1: