Monad design studio goes on tour with its range of ecosystem-inspired instruments
Sharp, sleek and futuristic, the latest offering from Miami’s Monad design studio looks more like an instrument of fear than of music. Yet instrument it is – a 3D-printed two-string piezoelectric violin that owes its otherworldly appearance to nature. As Monad’s Eric Goldemberg and Veronica Zalcberg reveal, the contorted shape is a nod to ecosystems in which “strange roots grow over other trees and become one with the host”.
Having taken to the stage with its equally intriguing siblings – a one-string bass called a monobarasitar and a cello – at the 3D Print Design Show in New York in April, the violin will begin a worldwide tour in Tokyo this month. Spectators are in for a treat, as two new instruments will be making their debut – a small didgeridoo and a larger one, dubbed a “hornucopia”, which Goldemberg describes as coiling around the musician “like something out of the film Alien”.
Yet Goldemberg and Zalcberg insist the instruments’ unusual forms, and sounds, are not alienating to those more familiar with their traditional counterparts; the studio has already been approached by classical musicians keen to create their own designs. Indeed, with 3D printing enabling designers – and musicians – to manipulate sound in ingenious and novel ways, Goldemberg believes the technology could strike a chord with many performers. “It’s like DIY on steroids,” he says.
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