Last weekend MzTEK was joined by Guerilla Science and PhD student Shauna Concannon  in bringing the Hacked Human Orchestra project to Wilderness Festival!

This was the second workshop of the series, in which participants made wearable pianos and human beatbox machines! The piano instrument was a direct follow on from our last workshop at the Centre for Creative Collaboration  where participants created the initial circuit to be embedded into people’s clothing at the festival. Using this, participants at Wilderness carried the circuit around their T-shirt using conductive thread/fabric and adorned it with sticky felt to keep the circuit in place. For the human beatbox machine, participants hacked existing re-recordable devices and re-placed them on their clothing, using the same technique as the piano makers by using conductive thread/fabric with sticky felt (we love the stuff!) to carry the circuit round. Once finished, they all went into our amazing recording studio to play their instruments and be recording by our awesome composer, Florian Lunaire.

Below are some lovely pictures of the workshop, taken by Zoe and Louis from Guerilla Science. More can be found on their Flickr stream.

 One of the piano tops with the already made circuit on the back.

Testing a beatbox T-shirt.

Sticking down the remainder of the piano circuit with sticky felt. 

 Sewing in the re-recordable device for the beatbox T-shirt.

Sophie demonstrating her own piano T-shirt.

Our awesome participants playing their instruments whilst being recorded in the studio.

There is still one more workshop left for Hacked Human Orchestra! It is taking place at Shambala Festival during the August bank holiday weekend and will be running on the Saturday (25th). If you would like to attend the festival you can buy tickets here.

This event was supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Also a big THANK YOU to Kobakant and Lush Projects for helping us with the design of the circuits/instruments.