6 radios, 6 keys, 6 tun­ing dials, 6 vol­ume con­trols, 6 AM/FM switches, 6 LED lights, 6 ante­nas, 6 audio out­puts and 1 power socket… This is the AM/FM Key­board 6 — A unique instru­ment designed and con­structed by Vasco Alves.

The piano keys are wired up to indi­vid­u­ally trig­ger the tun­ing of 6 dif­fer­ent radio sta­tions. Sounds emanated from these sta­tions can then be manip­u­lated indi­vid­u­ally using the built-in con­trols to achieve what is prob­a­bly best likened to a sound-collage. This enables one to cre­ate / play sound pieces based on what is being broad­casted at that very spe­cial moment. Every speaker has a tuner under­neath which adds the option to seek for more radio sta­tions or ran­dom noise — what­ever fits best with the cre­ated sound piece. Watch the video below to see it in action.

As you have prob­a­bly noticed, the instru­ment in the video is slightly larger and bulkier in size, and is less portable in design. That’s because you are actu­ally look­ing at the FMk­brd, an ear­lier model of The AM/FM Key­board 6. Aside from being less refined in its design, the FMk­brd also lacks the vari­ety of con­trols its suc­ces­sor offers.

Vasco is a leg­end. I think he is prob­a­bly one of the few peo­ple I know who is sin­cerely ded­i­cated and pas­sion­ate about his work. He works full time as a graphic designer whilst pur­su­ing an active ongo­ing inter­est in inter­ac­tive sound art out­side of office hours. Always keen to col­lab­o­rate, Vasco has per­formed with a large and mixed bunch of cre­ative types. For a full list of his past live per­for­mances, click here. You can also lis­ten to record­ings he’s done with Noise=Noise at Gold­smiths Dig­i­tal Stu­dio.

This Sound Bed was his final year project at LCC, where he grad­u­ated with a BA in Inter­ac­tive Design. For more infor­ma­tion and pic­tures of other instru­ments / art projects of Vasco’s, visit his web­site at www.vascoalvo.com

Below is an inter­view he did with JOTTA which I’ve pil­fered from the world wide web. Enjoy and be inspired! (Please keep in mind that I did not con­duct this inter­view, and that it was prob­a­bly done quite some time ago so any events men­tioned has prob­a­bly already passed!)

—

When and why did you move to Lon­don?
I moved to Lon­don in Sep­tem­ber 2004 to do a BA (Inter­ac­tive Design) at the Lon­don Col­lege of Communication.

How does the city influ­ence or effect your work?
In Lon­don things work dif­fer­ently from what I was use to in Lis­bon. Out of the good and bad bits about it I def­i­nitely became aware of new ways and meth­ods of work from my expe­ri­ence while study­ing and from peo­ple and friends I met along the way.

The mas­sive cul­tural scene is also very influ­en­tial. I’ve been lucky enough to see, dis­cover and learn about a lot of stuff that I like since I’m liv­ing over here. 

All your art­work is related to sound and music– do you also make music in the con­ven­tional way? That is — do you play any instruments?
I’m an extremely bad player but I have a few “con­ven­tional” ones: an elec­tric gui­tar, a bass and a really nice Bon­tempi Har­mo­nium that I found on the bin in Whitechapel at night. It’s not fully fixed yet but it has an amaz­ing warm sound. But even these have been played by so many peo­ple in uncon­ven­tional ways in past. What does con­ven­tional really mean these days? Any­way I’ve used the gui­tar and bass in a band con­text but I guess I’ve been most of the time more inter­ested in explor­ing new sounds than fol­low­ing chord struc­tures, although I occa­sion­ally used them and they can be very reward­ing too.
Recently I’ve been more into build­ing my own instru­ments and sound sources. I like them a lot because there aren’t (most of the times) any pre­de­fined ways of play­ing them and this can lead to a pure and more gen­uine way of pro­duc­ing sounds that inter­ests me a lot.

How did the con­cepts of these alter­na­tive sound machines come about?
Nat­u­rally. From work and being con­stantly aware of what sur­rounds me, from what I lis­ten to, from sketch­ing, etc. You end up pick­ing ele­ments that you like for some rea­son out of all these sit­u­a­tions and even­tu­ally by link­ing or adapt them to dif­fer­ent con­texts you can get inter­est­ing out­comes. Then you keep work­ing towards the essence of that new piece. Try­ing to get your state­ment across as sim­ple as possible.

Can you explain your process? Do you doo­dle or achieve inspi­ra­tion first? do you do a lot of tin­ker­ing with machinery?
I tend to keep things in my head for a long time before I put it down on paper or some­thing. It’s like a long and painful fil­ter­ing process or maybe more like a diges­tive sys­tem as most of the times it’s just crap that comes out. This is also when most of my research is done. But I must admit it’s not a very prac­ti­cal way of doing things. Any­way once I have a bet­ter idea of what my aim or my tar­get is I do all the doo­dling, sketch­ing and experiments.

Have you had any peo­ple hav­ing strange inter­ac­tions with the sound bed?
Yes. In the end of my degree show I didn’t pick up the bed from the exhi­bi­tion space that was given to us at LCC when I was meant to. The next day when I got there I found that some­one had lit­er­ally ham­mered it down to bits and dropped it in the back­yard bin. I still regret the fact that no-one thought of switch­ing it on and record­ing the sounds, it would have been such a bet­ter experience!

What are you work­ing on at the moment?
I’m cur­rently redo­ing my web­site and turn it into a more com­plete plat­form in order to do updates with ease and with a more func­tional and up to date news sec­tion. I’m work­ing on some music too; it’s def­i­nitely one of my pri­or­i­ties at the moment. I’ve been think­ing for some time now, about mak­ing a new ver­sion of the FMk­brd, with more fea­tures but my elec­tron­ics’ skills are very basic and there­fore it will take longer than I wished. 
I am also help­ing some friends put on some gigs at The Sas­soon Gallery in Peckham.

Which artists are you into at the moment?
I don’t like to think about it that way. I like what I like because of every­thing I’ve seen until then. I would rather name a few moments I enjoyed recently, that had a strong impact on me. Chris­t­ian Marclay’s exhi­bi­tion at Bar­bi­can Cen­tre. The Dead C and Sonic Youth live at the ATP fes­ti­val curated by Thurston Moore. Jonas Mekas’ films (fol­lowed by his inspi­ra­tional talks) in Lon­don this sum­mer. Karl Kleim (light instal­la­tion) with Sleeparchive (sound) live. Derek Jar­man exhi­bi­tion at the Ser­pen­tine Gallery. Ger­ard Richter’s room at Tate Mod­ern amongst others.
I must men­tion some of my friends’ work too. I try to be into peo­ple like — Jucapinga, André Bas­tos, Miranda Ios­si­fidis, Pedro Rufino (and Andre Avelãs), Zul­mira Gamito, Guy Archard, Tom Kavanagh, Joe Pat And Jimmy Trevor — as much as I pos­si­bly can, they are one my biggest influences.

What do you like to do out­side of mak­ing art?
Work­ing full-time as a graphic designer, eat and even­tu­ally sleep.

What music do you lis­ten to?
This is a hard one; I don’t know where to begin…

Where do you hope to be in five years time?
Still work­ing with sound but hope­fully with much more time to spend on it…

What would be your ulti­mate brief?
A self ini­ti­ated one.

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