Seven years of collaboration: from a contact microphone on a found object to a family of instruments, software, and session scores.
Sagittarius A began with contact recordings of objects and an interest in what a recording leaves behind: touch, the resistance of a material, and the ability to shape a sound as it emerges.
Those experiments grew into a hybrid-instrument workshop. In NACRE, energy returns to the strings; in GRAIN, tine movement triggers electronic events; in HALO, an acoustic strike gains a digital extension. A shared approach connects instruments with distinct mechanisms and sonic characters.
We have three working spaces: a bench for assembly and repair, a measurement rig, and a listening room. Every design passes through all three. A beautiful spectrum is not enough if an object is awkward to hold; an expressive gesture is not enough if the settings are lost between sessions.
Ivan Salamin and Daria Salamin found the laboratory. Their first contact recordings and resonator mock-ups explore the relationship between material, performance gesture, and room.
Adelheid Von Fliegen introduces shared measurement and calibration procedures. Daria Salamin turns temporary test rigs into assemblies that can be taken apart, allowing the same experiment to be revisited after reassembly and relocation.
Emanuel Galois adds measurement electronics, and Nina Vetrova a system of playing studies. The first active string assemblies and touch maps emerge.
With the arrival of Denicio Del Mosca, individual patches come together as REGOLITH, MODEFIELD, and a shared environment for sensor mapping. Sound, control, and power are routed separately.
NACRE and GRAIN move beyond a single studio specimen. The criterion becomes repeatable assembly and servicing, not just a successful recording of one instrument.
The collection brings together six instruments: four small-batch models and two working prototypes. Four software systems connect material, gesture, and composition; the session scores show how they work together.
This diagram explains why a touch sensor does not replace a microphone, and music software does not replace a power driver.
A string, membrane, or air column vibrates physically. A microphone or contact sensor converts those vibrations into an audio signal. It can be recorded separately, sent to MODEFIELD or REGOLITH, and mixed with the processed branch.
Two ways to sustain sound ↗Touch, position, pressure, and distance become control values. SOMATIC sets the ranges and the response to data loss. The same hand can change a sound’s brightness or its position in space; this is a mapping, not a property of the sensor.
SOMATIC gesture maps ↗NACRE’s coils and TESSERA’s strikers require their own drivers. Current, temperature, and permitted duty cycles are limited on the device. Musical commands request actions within those limits; the computer does not replace local protection.
Engineering approaches ↗A prototype already plays, but some decisions still depend on the person at the workbench. For a small batch, we fix the assembly drawings, parts list, calibration sequence, and test procedure. Another specimen should reproduce the playing principle without a lengthy search for an accidentally successful setting.
NACRE and SEREIN are assembled four at a time, GRAIN five, and HALO three. These numbers describe one assembly cycle, not an identical total production run or permanent stock on a shelf.
Two prototypes remain in session use. TESSERA’s next steps address mechanical noise and strike repeatability; AER’s address air-channel maintenance and the sensor attachment. A prototype has a specific working role even while its design continues to evolve.
We design the acoustics, mechanics, and electronics, write software, and assemble and calibrate the instruments. Specialist workshops manufacture circuit boards and carry out selected processes, including ceramic firing, using our files and samples. We inspect the incoming parts and complete final assembly and listening tests in the studio.
Wood density, membrane tension, and local resonances do not become identical because they share a revision number. Each instrument’s record connects the common design with its tuning, sensor settings, replaced parts, and original recordings.
Names such as NACRE, SEREIN, and HALO evoke a sound or material. Technical records use separate identifiers for the design revision, individual instrument, software build, and gesture mapping.
Inside an instrument record ↗A successful recording is only part of the result. The conditions that produced it need to stay alongside it.
We save dry channels, the microphone layout, tuning, photographs of component positions, the software version, and the control map. For a generative session, we also save source files and the random generator’s initial state. This archive helps reproduce the working logic, but does not promise a bit-for-bit match of a live performance.
Three published session scores show how the devices meet one another. Inputs, outputs, and pauses matter: what excites the material, what sustains the sound, and which action brings silence back.