DO NOT FEED THE ELECTRIC BIRDS · Marco Fusi & Scott McLaughlin
27 sept. 2026 · 17:30 – 20:00
Start at : 18:00
Strings that vibrate by themselves. Resonances that shift without warning. Two performers sharing control of instruments that seem to develop a life of their own.
do not feed the electric birds is an immersive performance of for viola, viola d’amore, Lorentz-force actuation and spatialised sound. Marco Fusi and Scott McLaughlin transform the string instrument into a volatile acoustic-electromagnetic system in which bowing, touch, feedback and magnetic forces continuously reshape one another.
At the heart of the performance is a Lorentz-force system developed in collaboration with Adam Schmidt at the Augmented Instruments Lab, Imperial College London. Electrical current is sent directly through conductive strings, allowing magnetic fields to set them into vibration. The electronics do not simply process the sound: they enter the instrument itself, activating its strings and changing the way it responds.
Fusi bows, stops, dampens and prepares the viola and viola d’amore while McLaughlin intervenes in the forces driving their vibration. Sounds emerge, collide, disappear and return in altered forms. Control is constantly exchanged between performer, instrument and system, creating a music that is unpredictable, physical and intensely responsive.
At MIAM, this unstable sonic world expands throughout the room. Spatialisation becomes an active part of the improvisation, sending resonances across and around the audience and turning the listening space itself into an extension of the instruments.do not feed the electric birds grows out of an ongoing collaboration between Fusi and McLaughlin around experimental string practice, feedback and instrumental transformation, developed in collaboration with HEMU Fribourg-Freiburg and the University of Leeds.
This event is supported by and made possible through the research project InstrAct, with the support of HEMU – Haute École de Musique, IRMAS, HES-SO, and University of Leeds
- Price with MIAM PassCHF 0.00
- Member PriceCHF 5.00
- PresalesCHF 10.00
- Box officeCHF 15.00
- Support PriceCHF 25.00
