A conveyor belt as a musical instrument, based on the principle of a music box. That is the idea behind the installation Factory Music. The creators were inspired by the industrial revolution and the era of modernism. Thus the idea arose to use a real assembly line to create a piece of music with different building blocks: by arranging and stacking blocks on the assembly line, you create new music. The sound design is based on sounds of robust objects, such as a drill, metal pans, a grater or a countertop. Shaping, stretching, kneading and smoothing these sounds creates an industrial sound world.
You control how fast you turn the wheel to send the blocks under the bridge with distance sensors. Back and forth? Or should all the objects fall directly from the belt into the box that catches everything? That too is part of your composition.
Fabrieksmuzek was developed in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum from Muziekgebouw aan 't
IJ and Music and Technology students from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU). The
installation could be played between late February 2023 and early January 2024 in the Family Lab of the
Stedelijk Museum. The Music Building is home to the original SoundLAB where the focus is on discovering
new sounds with wondrous instruments.
Floortje Smehuijzen and Emma Harjadi Herman: concept
Team Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ
Floortje Smehuijzen: artistic coordination
Görkem Arıkan: music technology and system design
Temo Gonzalez: project supervision
Noortje Vredeveld: accessibility
WiKo (Wilbert de Joode and Koen Molenaar): woodworking
Team Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, Music and Technology
Thomas Postma: sound design, creative system design and algorithmic composition
Patrick Hiwat: object design, sample recording
Steven van Esch: creative system design, arduino programming
Team Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Margita van Vugt: project leader
Eva Heisterkamp: spatial and graphic design
Peter Stel, Marc Claeijs, Alex Fischer: construction and realization SoundLAB
In cooperation with
