The Legoloop installation developed by Marc Widmer in 2006 is essentially a novel musical interface comprising computers, amps, loudspeakers and 2 customized turntables, each equipped with 2 cameras and a special support on which blocks of Lego can be assembled. It’s possible with Legoloop to directly process sound samples at the turntables. The cameras register the position and colour of the Lego blocks or rather, the sequence or pattern that these make when revolving with the turntable. Samples can then be selected, and tone frequencies, filters and effects be determined. As a co-organiser of the Zurich Copy Festival and the media laboratory dock 18, Widmer has a particular interest in current controversy around issues of copyright and the act of copying. He sees his Legoloop project as an heir to traditional HipHop sampling and appropriation strategies, and cites journalist Charles Mudede in this regard: “Real HipHop doesn’t use natural noises as a sample – such as the flushing toilet used in Art of Noise’s "Close (to the Edit)’ (1984), but music for which a copyright has been registered. For the HipHop DJ it’s not a case of putting original sounds together to create something that’s recognisable as music but about moulding information into a sound that is to be understood as meta-music.
Once Marc Widmer has introduced and demonstrated Legoloop visitors can experiment with the interface.
Marc Widmer is a media artist, who graduated in New Media from Zurich University of the Arts and is a member of the evolutionary network’s atelier, anorg. He lives in Zurich.
> http://www.anorg.net
