Zach Sokol at the Creator’s Project profiled Artist Maskull Lasserre’s new project Beautiful Dreamers. The project, a musical grenade, is part interactive sculpture, part sound art.
Each grenade is wound and set, and can only ever be “played” once—much like how a grenade can only explode once. “Music expands outwards from its source in compressive waves, just like detonated ordnance” he explained to The Creators Project over email. “Both possess the power to affect people at great distance.” But rather than releasing a surge of distortion or feedback (i.e. explosive music), his crafted bronze objects play “America The Beautiful” and “Beautiful Dreamer” by Katharine Lee Bates and Stephen Foster, respectively.
“The ephemeral quality of music is at the heart of this piece,” explained Lasserre. Just like music that’s played live, once the instruments stop vibrating, the sound is final. “Its poignancy rests with its vulnerability, its finality, but also its promise of beauty.” We are teased with an explosion, or something epic or climatic, but ultimately these sculptures—both in form, and what they release—are more delicate than violent.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
This is an excellent piece of e-journalism. More and more often I find that the mainstream news outlets are forgetting what a true “Human Interest” story is. Bravissimo!
This is an excellent piece of e-journalism. More and more often I find that the mainstream news outlets are forgetting what a true “Human Interest” story is. Bravissimo!