12 episodes
Mad Scientists of Music Documentary Gareth Stack
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- Music
Ireland is home to a variety of underground music scenes, from electro acoustic, to new music to noise to free improv. I've interviewed dozens of Irish experimental musicians who are pushing the boundaries of what music is and can be. This series takes you on a tour of the fringes of music, and introduces you to a world of new sounds. It focuses in particular on circuit bending, chiptune and collaborative music.
The show explores the world of Circuit Bending, Chip Tune, and Electroacoustic music in Ireland. Low cost technology, recycled instruments and a new attitude to tinkering embodied by the ‘maker movement’ are helping to reinvent music. A new generation of Irish musicians raised around computers, the internet and video gaming, see noise as something to be hacked, taken apart, and reconstructed. These artists build their own instruments, whether by recycling toy keyboards, modifying video game consoles, or attaching electronics to traditional stringed instruments. They often share their music online for free, and in doing so challenge our ideas about copyright and ownership. Their playful attitude to technology finds new uses for obsolete devices and brings the collaboration of musicianship to engineering and the arts.
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The Life & Work of Roger Gregg – Mad Scientists Bonus Episode
Roger Gregg is a dramatist, poet, musician, actor and performer. Over a long career on radio and theatre, he’s had dozens of plays performed all over the world, and written and recorded numerous radio dramas as ‘Crazy Dog Audio Theatre‘. Today Roger continues to record and perform, with his ‘Bee Loud Glade Cabaret’. Bee Loud […]
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Mad Scientists of Music wins Sounds Alive Prize!
So last night I was lucky enough to see the incredibly talented radio producer Roman Mars perform a live episode of his show 99% Invisible, at the ever creepy Freemasons Hall in Molesworth St. The event was a part of the inaugural Sounds Alive festival, which brought together a bunch of radio folks like legendary […]
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Copyright Bonus Episode – Mad Scientists of Music
The Instrument of the Law‘ examined how changing technology and copyright laws are impacting music. This bonus episode fills in the blanks, addressing additional issues we didn’t get to talk about in detail, like creative commons, the legality of mashups, copyright as a promotional tool, and alternative business models at a time when music sales […]
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Postcards from the Edge – Episode 6 – Mad Scientists of Music
The final episode of the series looks at the future of Irish experimental music. We find out how techniques like ‘Live Coding’ (where computer programming during a concert, creates the music and visuals in real time), ‘Geocached Music’ (intrepid explorers following clues to discover hidden caches of music in the real world), and new interfaces […]
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Chipzel – Culture File Report
Chuffed to be able to present my first piece for RTE Lyric FM’s ‘Culture File‘ programme. It’s a short on Chipzel, the Chiptune artist profiled in Episode 2 of Mad Scientists of Music. The piece features much of the same material from that report, but presented in a more straightforward way, which was an interesting […]
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The Instrument of the Law – Episode 5 – Mad Scientists of Music
This episode looks at how innovative new ways of making and distributing music are coming into conflict with our legal system. Some argue that copyright and patent laws, created to encourage innovation, are no longer in touch with how artists remix and reinterpret our cultural landscape. Part 1 – Piracy We learn about copyright law, […]