Everyone loves music but making your own music is the most fun. Especially for young makers. Music can be a gateway to becoming a maker by learning how to build instruments and exploring different ways of making interesting sounds.
This Saturday, at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, we will have the third program in our series for Young Makers. In a collaboration with Pixar, TechShop, the Exploratorium’s Learning Studio, and MAKE magazine, the Young Makers program mentors middle and high school students in building projects that meld math and science with craft and creative inspiration. Our goal is to encourage more kids to engage in making things, and ultimately, create more opportunity for young makers to participate in Maker Faire.
This month’s program features makers exploring new and unusual ways of creating music. Our program kicks off at 11 am in the McBean Theatre, with performances and discussion with Ge Wang, Krys Bobrowski and Walter Kitundu. Then, all young makers are welcome to participate in several different activities organized by the Learning Studio. It’s an opportunity to discover new ways of making sound and meeting innovative and creative makers who are making their own kind of music. Please join us and make some music of your very own.
Ge Wang
An Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Ge Wang is the founding director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk), and the co-founder and director of the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO). He is also the designer of the popular Ocarina iPhone app, which turns the phone into a musical instrument. Ocarina is one of the products from Smule, which Wang co-founded. Ge Wang writes that his mission is to deeply explore new ways in which people think, do, and interact through sound, technology, and music.
More on Ge Wang
Krys Bobrowski
Photo courtesy of Exploratorium
Krys Bobrowski is a sound artist and musician. She has been featured at Maker Faire, playing her kelp horn, a musical instrument she made from drying kelp that washes ashore on the San Mateo coast. She is on the faculty at the College of San Mateo and coordinator for the Electronic Music Program there. As part of her collaboration with the Exploratorium’s Learning Studio, Krys played with air- and helium-filled balloons as resonators for her music, and with steel plates and electric conduit tubing as sound sources.
More on Krys Bobrowski
Walter Kitundu
Walter is a builder of musical instruments, a composer, a sound and visual artist, and a DJ. He is a multimedia artist-in-residence at the Exploratorium, and constructs elemental turntables that rely on wood, water, fire, and earthquakes for their power and pitch control. One of his most recent works is called the Ocean Edge Device. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2008.
More on Walter Kitundu.
Here’s a link to photos from our previous Open Make programs at the Exploratorium.
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