Yuri Landman – String Helicopters
April 29 – May 1
With a group of 10 students we will design an abstract sound minature park consisting of motors, strings, guitar pickups and whatever other material that inspires us audio or visually.
This is the first time this workshop will happen, but it is basically an extended version of the Malevich string plate workshop, Landman has done the past 7 years (also in Liepaja, MPLab in 2013).
The group gets an introduction course how to build an electric experimental musical instrument. The learning process is dominant above achieving the best result in the world. Failing is succeeding is part of the philosophy, since then you learn the skills in the fastest possible way.
The original string plate workshop is a musical instrument that must be played actively by musicians. For Sound Days festival we aim with this new alternate workshop of a sound art installation that is played by the build in motors. On Wednesday evening the group has a presentation with the result.
For inspiration besides the pics, here a YouTube of a sound installation by Landman, that might help getting a bit of insight of what you can build during the classes.
About the host:
Yuri Landman (1973) is a musician and an inventor of musical instruments. Based on prepared guitar techniques, he built his first instrument in 2001 to solve the inaccuracy of instant preparations. He has build experimental for acts such as Sonic Youth, dEUS, Melt-Banana, Rhys Chatham, Ex-Easter Island Head, Half Japanese, Kaki King and others.
Besides performing and inventing instruments, his main co-activity is giving instrument building courses and lectures. Since 2009 he has given over 200 DIY-instrument building workshops in Europe and the US at music festivals, music academies, art academies, concert venues and art spaces. In 2012 Yuri Landman and Bart Hopkin published Nice Noise, a book about string preparations and extended techniques for guitar. In the same year he started his band Bismuth with Arnold van de Velde as well as doing solo performances. In 2017 he was commisioned by the sound art org iii to develop the motorized sound art installation Helicopters.
Institutes such as MIM (Phoenix), Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, WORM, Extrapool, Radiona, Matrix, Sonoscopia own collections of his instruments. Articles about his work have appeared in Pitchfork, The Guardian, CNN, Libération, El País, Frankfurter Algemeine, and many others.