2025 Kick-OFF: An Exuberant Celebration of Body-Driven Musical Mayhem
Are you ready to liberate the knob, emancipate the fader, and unleash the untapped potential of your elbows, knees, or even your eyebrows? Then this is your moment. This is “Out of Control”, an event where the boundaries of musical expression are shattered, reassembled, and gloriously reimagined.
Organized by the Tangible Music Lab, this is your chance to join a wild, experimental, and slightly absurd journey into the world of digital controllers. We’re calling on artists, tinkerers, inventors, and dreamers to create the most outrageous and delightfully bizarre controllers the world has ever seen.
### Out of Control?
Out of Control is the exaltation of critical controllerism, the carnival of MIDI, the liberation of the fader and the knob. It’s a space where we laugh at ourselves, our digital instruments, and the absurdity of it all, to uncover the new, novel, emerging, radical, unthinkable, and deliciously weird controllers of tomorrow. This is a celebration of musical instruments, their technologies, and the bodies that play them. Expect concerts, presentations, drinks, and a whole lot of fun. Expect to leave inspired, confused, and maybe a little out of control yourself.
### The Challenge: “Hands Off”
We’re looking for instruments that defy convention. The only rule? No hands allowed. That’s right—your creation must be played with any part of the body except your hands. Feet, shoulders, noses, foreheads, or even your left earlobe—anything goes!
But wait, there’s more:
– Your controller must be fully functional. No half-baked ideas here; we want to see your creation in action.
– It must produce MIDI notes and CC values. Let’s keep it digital, folks.
### How to Participate
1. Step 1: Submit Your Creation
Send us an email at master@tamlab.kunstuni-linz.at by 23 June 2025. Include:
– A photo of your project (bonus points for dramatic lighting).
– A short description of your creation (make it poetic, make it weird, make it unforgettable).
2. Step 2: Present It Live
Bring your masterpiece to the Jam Session on 26 June 2025 at 7 PM at the Tangible Music Lab (Tabakfabrik Linz). This is where the magic happens.
### The Prizes
Our esteemed jury—Alex Murray-Leslie and Darsha Hewitt—will award three prizes:
1. The “Most Mind-Blowing” Controller (because “interesting” is too boring).
2. The “Most Likely to Get You Stopped at Airport Security” Controller (we’re looking at you, duct tape enthusiasts).
3. The “Best Controller for Lovers” (because romance deserves MIDI, too).
### Join Us!
Whether you’re a seasoned artist, a curious student, or someone who just really wants to play music with their left knee, we want you. Let’s make some noise, break some rules, and redefine what it means to create music.
Email your submissions to master@tamlab.kunstuni-linz.at by 23 June 2025.
Let’s get out of control.