Stephan Meidell

In my Artistic Research project «Sound~Currents» (2020- ) I employ improvisation in electro-acoustic music-making – musicking – through a methodology of resonance, vibration, and transduction. I explore how resonance, technologically engendered through vibrational transduction, unveils other pathways to co-creation and alternative modes of listening – providing an expansion and diversification of current improvisational music practice.

Mounting transducer speakers and microphones inside musical instruments in ensembles, the sounds from one can vibrate the surfaces, membranes, and strings of the other. This practice opens the possibility of «sounding through» and «playing» the other and establishing a new interwoven sound ~ relational ecology.

A drum can sound through a piano, becoming «drumiano», or a guitar through a harpsichord, becoming «guitarichord.» These new alloys drive the improvising musician to revisit and reassess ingrained knowledge and memories and meet their own – and the other’s – augmented instruments anew.