INTONARUMORI - URBANSTEW’S NOISE MACHINES

Intonarumori: In 1913 Italian futurist Luigi Russolo built noise machines to recreate the sounds of the Industrial Revolution. In honor of the 100 year anniversary of The Art of Noises, urbanSTEW built noise machines to recreate the sounds of our current Digital Revolution. The final installation is a set of six machines, one for each of the classified “noise-sounds” found in Russolo’s manifesto. By playing with simple buttons, cranks, and levers users can create and manipulate sounds that are a familiar to our current digital soundscape.

Project Inspiration: 
Brief History of Intonarumori

The Intonarumori came from a futurist art movement fathered by experimental painter and composer Luigi Russolo.  Russolo was considered to be the first “noise artist.”  In 1913 he wrote L’Arte dei Rumori, translated as The Art of Noises.  In this Russolo stated that the industrial revolution had given modern men a greater capacity to appreciate more complex sounds. He found traditional melodic music confining and envisioned noise music as its future replacement.  Russolo’s Art of Noises classified “noise-sound” into six general groups:

  1. Roars
  2. Whistles
  3. Whispers
  4. Screeches
  5. Bangs
  6. Voices of animals and people

Intonarumori machines were designed to recreate the industrials sounds of the early 20thcentury.  Shaped like a box with a speaker on the front face, performers could generate sounds by manipulating levers, knobs, and buttons.  Futurist composers created symphonies for the machines, although early performances were often met with disapproval and even fist fights.  Since the Italian Futurist movement, many people have created their own Intonarumori machines, often with an open or translucent side so that the internal workings of the device are visible.

For the Spark! Festival of Creativity at the Mesa Arts Center, urbanSTEW proposed an interactive sound installation inspired by machine instruments called Intonarumori (in English “noise intoners”). The festival commissioned the work, and we have built and presented six interactive sound box instruments! The project was a great success in many regards. For us, it was months of fun experimentation in areas we have never tried before, like the Raspberry Pi computer and wood construction. Against all expectations, it resulted in six different box instruments that not only worked but survived five days of repeated onslaughts of eager children and adults. The boxes provided a new way to play and explore music making for folks of all ages and diverse backgrounds. Judging from comments like “Wow, this is so cool!” and “Mom, let’s go home and build one!” we even inspired a few kids to want to explore electronics themselves.