“The Reorganized Organ was a mentorship and collaborative instrument-building project that gave space for artists to consider the preponderance of e-waste in our culture by repurposing a discarded electronic organ to make an orchestra of experimental musical instruments.”
Because of the open-ended, exploratory nature of this project, it involved ideation… lots and lots and LOTS of ideation, and then discussion about our ideation. We had a large amount of ideas and for the most part they were very scattered and unrelated, and they all differed in terms of scale, achievability and preciseness.
Each individual in the group brought different experiences and knowledge to the table, but when planning the project time was allocated for all of us to learn an important skill for working with electronics: soldering. It was a very hands-on experience as each of us made our own “elektrosluch”, a small device that allows a user to listen to electromagnetic fields (read more about it here) .
We started playing with different electronics and pieces of organs and other instruments, informally splitting into smaller groups to pursue our relative interests. We took apart things, put them back together, broke them, fixed them, added glitter and eventually ended up with several instruments that were all unique yet connected.
After 3 months of ideation, collaboration, and fun times, the project ended with a final concert hosted at VIVO media arts centre. It was a unique and incredibly interesting show that featured other e-waste centered projects as well. Overall this project is nothing like I have ever done before, and it taught me to question the boundaries of music.
