MTI² postgrad and adjunct Sam Topley is one of the winners of the Workshop Prize at the NIME 2020 conference, for their project '10,000 Musical Instruments for a Semi-Connected World':
This year’s ‘New Interfaces for Musical Expression’ conference was hosted online by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
Topley collaborated with 8 artist/researchers from universities around the U.K. and Europe, to co-author and facilitate a workshop for the conference participants. The aim was to design and catalogue 10,000 absurd and fictional musical instruments, as a playful and unconventional approach to advancing the debate around the complex, interdisciplinary and multifaceted nature of contemporary musical instruments.
Topley's contributions included a “Build Your Own Lockdown Organ” – a handmade musical instrument constructed out of panic-bought toilet roll tubes – and a “Carpet Sample(r)” - a stain resistant and bleach cleanable textile interface, made out of a carpet sample book.
