RESEARCH / ACTIVE AMPLIFICATION
Organic Augmented Instruments
Non-Invasive Active Amplification for Acoustic Instruments
This research develops external, removable systems that allow acoustic instruments to receive, transform and re-emit sound through their own resonating bodies. Contact microphones, vibration transducers and performer-controlled amplification create a circuit in which gesture, acoustic matter and electronics remain physically connected.
RESEARCH PREMISE
Making the Instrument Itself Active
Conventional amplification projects sound away from the instrument. Here, sound is re-injected into the wood, strings, bridge, frame or soundboard. The acoustic body becomes simultaneously a source, a loudspeaker, a filter and a resonant processor.
Electronics do not replace instrumental resonance; they enter it.
THE SYSTEM
Three Interdependent Operations
01 — CAPTURE
Contact microphones and bow-mounted sensors reveal vibration at the point where the gesture meets the instrument.
02 — ACTIVATION
External vibration transducers re-inject sound directly into the acoustic body, activating its strings, wood, frame or soundboard.
03 — PERFORMANCE CONTROL
Routing, amplification, feedback and resonance remain performable parameters. The musician does not merely trigger a system but continuously reshapes its behaviour.
RESONANT CIRCUIT
From Gesture to Return
Capture, transformation and re-injection become parts of the same instrumental gesture. Rather than a linear signal chain, the system operates as a recurrent circuit. A gesture produces vibration, which is captured, transformed and returned to the instrument. The acoustic body filters and colours this re-injected sound before it re-enters the circuit. Each passage therefore changes the conditions of the next.
ITERATIVE RESEARCH METHOD
COMPOSITION ↔ TESTING ↔ DESIGN
DESIGN PRINCIPLE
External, Removable, Adaptable
Each system is mounted externally to the instrument and can be removed without permanent structural alteration. Its configuration is developed in response to the morphology, materials and acoustic behaviour of each instrument.
Rather than imposing a standardised device, the research preserves the construction and acoustic identity of the instrument while adapting capture and activation to its specific resonant properties.
Non-invasive
No permanent modification of the instrument.
Removable
Sensors and transducers can be installed and removed.
Adaptable
The system changes according to instrumental morphology and mode of vibration.
COMPOSITIONAL APPLICATIONS
Works as Research Environments
The system does not precede the music as a fixed technical solution. Each work becomes a research environment in which instruments, performers, amplification and compositional form are developed together.
The following works explore active resonance, reciprocal resonant exchange, feedback, contact capture and expanded instrumental configurations.
RECIPROCAL RESONANT SYSTEM — PIANO AND CELLO
Solar Winds
Solar Winds creates a reciprocal system between piano and cello. Each performer can activate both the interior of their own instrument and the resonant body of the other.
A contact microphone attached to the bow captures friction at its source, while vibration transducers return processed material into wood, strings and soundboards. Recordings derived from solar winds and magnetic fields enter this circuit, where they are filtered through instrumental matter.
ACTIVE PIANO SYSTEM IN PERFORMANCE — PIANO RESONANCE, AMPLIFICATION AND LIVE ELECTRONIC CONTROL.
Bow-mounted contact sensor.
Vibration transducer attached to the cello soundboard.
Research Excerpts
Selected passages
From the score
Notation of resonant exchange and performer-controlled transformation.
Score excerpt — Active amplification, effects and piano preparation, contact microphone friction.
Score excerpt — active amplification and bow-controlled feedback.
CONTACT CAPTURE, FRICTION AND FEEDBACK — FLUTE AND DOUBLE BASS
Emergence of Speakings
Building on the reciprocal resonant system developed in Solar Winds, Emergence of Speakings brings augmentation closer to the physical production of sound. Flute breath and an augmented double-bass bow establish a dialogue between two contrasting modes of excitation, extending non-invasive augmentation through discreet, performer-controlled electronics.
Breath, friction, instrumental mechanisms and feedback move continuously between acoustic gesture and electronic transformation. Flute and double bass become active resonant bodies whose sounds are captured, amplified and reshaped while their physical identities remain central.
RESEARCH DETAILS
01 — Gesture-Controlled Feedback
Bow contact and performer movement shape emerging feedback within the acoustic–amplified blend.
02 — The Instrument as Resonant Mixer
Flute and electronics are re-injected into the double-bass soundboard, where acoustic and processed sources merge.
03 — Body, Voice and Feedback
Voice and amplified breath activate the double-bass body, transforming feedback into bodily and theatrical gesture.
FILM BY THOMAS PUCARO
DISTRIBUTED CONTROL — ACTIVE PIANO AND SPATIALISED Ensemble
Feed the Monster
Feed the Monster turns the piano into a central resonant organism. Five musicians positioned around the space project sound towards the instrument. The piano receives, absorbs and re-emits this material through its strings, frame and soundboard.
Sounds enter the body of the piano and are transformed by its physical construction. The pianist controls the active system from inside the instrument, shaping amplification, filtering, feedback and the migration of sound between distant performers and the central resonant body.
The piano becomes an acoustic processor: a body capable of swallowing, transforming and returning the sounds that surround it.
FILM BY THOMAS PUCARO and Arthur Anger
RESEARCH DETAILS
01 — Spatialised Projection
String sounds are projected into the piano and shaped in real time through a performer-controlled volume pedal. As cello and violin material enters the piano body, it is filtered, reverberated and re-emitted, turning the instrument into an active resonant diffuser.
02 — Feedback Dance
Flute and clarinet sounds are projected into the piano. As the performers move closer to the instrument, feedback emerges and intensifies, turning spatial proximity into a performative parameter. Sound and movement enter a feedback “dance,” gradually building toward a dense, saturated texture.
The structure and interior of the piano become a performable and actively amplified surface.
Sound is projected into the piano while the pianist controls its transformation from within the instrument.
Resonance Beyond the Instrument
Performing the Spaces
Performing the Spaces extends the same principles of capture, activation and resonant return beyond conventional instruments, testing how architectural, metallic and landscape structures can operate as active resonant bodies.
Metal plates, parabolic surfaces, walls, stairways and other structures become resonators, filters and unstable loudspeakers. The principle remains related to the augmented instrument, but the instrumental body is no longer a violin, piano or double bass. It may be a surface, a fragment of architecture or an entire site.
Each work is composed in situ. The method begins with the acoustic behaviour, material memory and circulation of a place: monumental metal structures, ruins, water edges, exterior paths and unconventional interiors.
Sound is not placed inside a finished space. It is discovered through contact, movement, echo and repeated activation.
Performer itinerancy and audience movement transform listening into a route rather than a fixed viewpoint. Composition emerges from the distances between bodies, surfaces and successive acoustic perspectives.
PERFORMER MOVEMENT TOWARD THE METALLIC SURFACES SHAPES THE SPATIAL ROUTE.
Architecture, passage and the route between interior and exterior.
RESEARCH DETAILS
01 — Activating Architectural Surfaces
Contact amplification turns metallic and architectural surfaces into active resonant bodies.
02 — Site as Resonant Instrument
Resonance emerges through the interaction between performer, material surface and the acoustic conditions of the site.
Audience and performers move together through the site as a collective route.
EMERGING RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS
What the System Makes Possible
01
Resonant Integration
Acoustic bodies can receive, filter, transform and re-emit sound, functioning as active resonant processors.
02
Performer Agency
Capture, routing, re-injection and feedback remain directly connected to instrumental gesture and performer control.
03
Non-Invasive, Reversible Design
External, removable systems adapt to the morphology and resonant behaviour of different instruments without permanent structural modification.
04
Expanded Resonant Bodies
The principle can extend beyond instruments to architectural structures, metallic bodies and landscape elements.
CONTINUING RESEARCH
Toward an Ecology of Resonant Bodies
Organic Augmented Instruments is not a single device but a family of evolving situations. Each prototype begins with the physical behaviour of a particular body and asks how sound can circulate through it without erasing its acoustic identity.
The research therefore moves from instruments toward spaces while retaining the same central concern: the intimate relation between gesture, material, amplification and return.
PRECEDING RESEARCH
EXTENDED PEDAL
Relocating damper control and transforming the grand piano into an open instrumental body.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
SOUFFLE
Air and breath as physical, gestural and compositional material.