SOUND SPACES 2026 - FABIO MACHIAVELLI - LECTURE

Composing the Instrument: Electromechanical Lutherie and the Compositional Process

What happens when the musical instrument ceases to be a given starting point and becomes itself material to be composed? From this perspective, the construction of the instrumental apparatus, the act of lutherie, does not precede composition but is a constitutive part of it. To design an acoustic body and integrate into it sensors, transducers, solenoids and real-time electronics is already to make compositional decisions: to define the set of available actions, the ways in which the instrument responds to gesture, the dynamic and timbral thresholds within which it operates. Every constructive choice, the material of the resonating body, the placement of an actuator, the mapping of a sensor, narrows or opens up a field of sonic possibilities, and as such already belongs to the writing itself.

The work presented is grounded in a practice of electromechanical lutherie and augmented instruments, in which the acoustic body is placed in relation with mechanical actuators and with control systems developed in Max/MSP and Arduino. Here the augmented instrument is not a traditional instrument onto which a technological layer is superimposed, but a hybrid system in which lutherie, performative gesture and writing condition one another. The figures of the builder, the performer and the composer, usually distinct, tend here to coincide: construction becomes a way of composing, and performance a way of testing and redefining the instrument. On a theoretical level, the notion of the instrument as prosthesis, an extension of the body operating on multiple levels, provides the framework within which composing the instrument and composing with the instrument take shape as a single process.

The lecture will present a number of self-built and augmented instruments born from this approach, retracing the path that leads from the sonic idea to physical construction and ultimately to the score. Through concrete examples, from actuation mechanisms to their integration with real-time electronics, it aims to show how lutherie can constitute a method of artistic research, capable of generating at once sonic objects, repertoire and knowledge.

Read more about Fabio Machiavelli's project at IAC here.