Lucas Abela is an instrument maker who focuses on making musical sculptures that are playful and interactive. He has constructed several arcade like sculptures that use sound as a major element of their engagement.
“Imagine racing remote control cars with audio pick-ups attached to their chassis through a course constructed from a mass of disused vinyl records. Using vintage video arcade consoles and immersive video screens of the cars P.O.V. competitors will not only control the movements of the vehicles but also the parameters of the resulting sounds they create.” 1) 2)
Flip Off is a two player competitive pinball and foss ball hybrid. This sculpture is only somewhat a sound sculpture but is featured here because of its status as a precursor to the later instrument Abela will create using the same hybrid formula. 3)
“Pinball Pianola, a musical instrument constructed by replacing the hammers and front paneling of an upright piano with a pinball cabinet butted up perpendicular against its exposed strings.” 4)
“A multiplayer pinball game with five players stationed at each of the stars five points. The outer triangular walls of the star are made from ten guitars with their fret boards facing inward into the playfield, while in the central pentagon ten pop bumpers are connected to a drum machine. These are all connected to various audio effects triggered by targets positioned throughout the game.” 5)
“Resembling an ancient proto-pinball machine crafted eons ago and found centuries later in a Javanese burial chamber; Gamelan Wizard is an eight player pinball game housed in an intricately carved octagon pendopo that incorporates Gamelan instrumentation into it's playfield so as you play it plays. Unlike Abela's previous musical instrument/pinball hybrids this new machine is totally acoustic taking advantage of the naturally loud Gamelan Instrumentation resonating within the body of the game.
To execute Gamelan Wizard Lucas Abela has teamed up with two of Yogyakarta’s most celebrated musicians Wukir Suryadi and Rully Shabara in addition to working with famed Gamelan master Wibowo who, along with his skilled craftspeople, hand carved the cabinet and forged the Gamelan. By pitting together our two disparate icons; Pinnies and Gamelan, we have created a unique participatory installation meshing together our respective cultural identities.” 6)
Similar to Balls for Cthulhu and Pinball Pianola, Temple of Din is a pinball musical instrument that have 10 guitars mounted in a star pattern that act as the rails to the pinball machine. 7)
“Bass Balls (2016) is a bass orientated pinball machine / sub noise instrument with it's playfield is built directly into an iconic 215 Ampeg cabinet with a 410 backboard complete with a SVT4PRO head. Ramps formed by bass strings lead the ball to targets triggering a Digitech - Meatbox, Zvex - fuzz factory, Mid-fi - clari(not) & a Mooer - shimverb to induce rich cause and effect responsive subsonic audio during game play. Each effect has a custom circuit thats sweeps through 4 different preset resistances for each potentiometers giving the machine a total of 244140625 possible effect combinations!!!” 8)
“IV:BPM is a participatory instrument / installation that uses IV drips as the percussive source for a set of portable single beat organic drum machines.” 9)
“A swing-set / feedback generator that emits syncopated rhythms as children swing back and fourth over sets of speakers. Additionally each of the swing’s four microphones are connected to a bank of audio effects housed in toddler play-stations.” 10)
“Welcome to Fort Thunder; a touch play synthesiser built into a play-fort that generates electronic noise as you play. The bleeps and blurts emitted as your touch intersects the forts twenty two stainless steel poles are a result of replacing circuitry components with bodies. As an instrument the Fort is best played in groups, one person doesn't have enough arms to really get this thing going. The more paths you create for electricity to flow between poles the more complex the sound becomes.” 11)
12)
“Mix Tape provides its visitors with tactile playback of a sculptural mass of audiotape attached to helium balloons. These balloons, with tape tied to each like a ribbon are filled with helium and released into the ceiling, leaving the tape to unspool as their cassette anchors them to the floor.” 13)
“Paku-Paku is an audio mash up machine disguised as a real world Pac-Man game. It creates an aural zeitgeist by randomly mixing music, advertising and spoken word plucked from local broadcasts. The 8×8 meter recreation of Pac-Man's maze is comprised of 46 tiles with LED strip lighting. These lights are controlled by customs circuits that turn audio signal into light that are fed by various radio stations. So as the audience controlled hover Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man and their sworn enemies the hover ghosts Inky & Clyde, travel throughout the maze, photocells under their chassis convert this light back into audio acting as cross faders, mixing between stations.” 14)
A small synthesizer that is built inside of a VHS tape box for the film Aida. This synthesizer may have elements of circuit bending to it. Abela produced this instrument as part of a crowd funding campaign to build another newer Fort Thunder. 15)
Justice Yeldham is known for his unique, dramatic, and physically harmful performance methods. Yeldham performs with amplified shards of glass which he hold against his mouth and lips in various ways to create a unique set of sounds. He considers the tone of his work to be a collective anxiety that he shares with the audience who are spectators to his self flagellation. Recordings of him have been used by the group Death grips.
Abela has done a great job writing short descriptions of his instruments on his youtube descriptions so I have used many of them for the instrument descriptions on this page, why rewrite what is already clearly articulated?
I am unsure if the shards of glass that Yeldman uses should be viewed as found objects/readymade objects or if they fall into another category. He seems to be selective with the size and shape of the pieces he uses and he also seems selective with the shards as well. There is a very real potential that the selections he makes have effects on the sound output of his performances.
Website- 16)
Justice Yeldman- 17)
Youtube Channel- 18)
Interview- 19)
Bandcamp- 20)