The Sound Craft Summer School was a 10-day course with the Music, Thought and Technology (MTT) research group at the Orpheus Instituut, Gent. In Summer 2025 MTT invited sound artists, composers and performers to a practical, project-based opportunity to further their artistic practice. Participants from all over the world developed individual projects in conceiving and crafting new objects, interfaces and instruments, in both hardware and software.
I proposed to build a way of harnessing microbial electricity to create sound, as a way to tap into the lively agency of human-microbial relations. Through an experimental, iterative process, I developed a microbial battery that could run on fermented foods and landscape effluvia (including pond mud and river sediment), that will be used to power future installations.
Thanks to Magno Caliman, Elise Damai Salverda, Arabella Pare and Juan Parra for their advice, guidance, mentoring and moral support, and to all the other participants for inspiration and microbial material shared in service of the audio-bio-techno-life I was gestating.