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The ICONS exhibition runs from 20th January - 17th March 2006 at the St.Pancras Hospital, London, NW1 0PE
Near King's Cross Station / Mornington Crescent Tube - Online Map
Open Monday to Friday 9am - 6pm, free entry.

There is a free launch night on Friday 20th Jan from 5.30 - 9.00pm, including a BugBrand performance.

For further info contact:
Peter Herbert – Exhibitions Manager
Tel: 0207 530 3328
Email:

Exhibition Press Release

This exhibition is supported by:
Improving Working Communities
The North Central London NHS Charitable Trust Fund

The BugBrand piece for the exhibition combines a unique touch sensitive MIDI control interface which controls a slowly shifting electronic soundscape.

An electronic sonic-scape runs constantly, shifting only very slowly under its own steam. But when a visitor begins to touch the control panel, made of copper circuit board allowing for touch-sensitive body contact control, the sounds become animated and the user can play the sounds in a unique and highly interactive manner.

The Sonic Post is built around a Doepfer Pocket Electronics MIDI Brain (available in the UK from EMIS). This takes in 16 voltages of 0-5v and converts them into MIDI control messages. Custom electronic circuitry has been designed to investigate different signal types for control including touch-to-midi converters and touch-controlled vari-speed LFOs.

The post is built into a large-scale (ie too darn big!) wooden box, much of which comes from a butchered hammond organ (hence the lush false wood grain effect). The box holds: on top there's the contact plate which connects to the Touch-to-MIDI brain which produces MIDI messages to control a patch in a MircoModular. The Micro outputs two audio channels which are fed to two custom amp & speaker combinations.

Hear the Sonic Post (mp3 - 3.57MB)

To celebrate the ICONs exhibition, a limited run of 5 ICONsWeevils has been built.

Sunshine yellow with a massive contact plate ICON, the twin ring-mod lofi oscillators of the ICONsWeevil love to click, drone and squeal. Bend the sound in supr-extreme manners with the 8 copper contact elements - lick your fingers and allow the electrons to flow via your body, causing the oscillators to wail and fight each other. The low-power knob starves the battery supply, simulating a battery running out and leading to wonderful sonic circuit malfunctions.

Sounds of the ICONsWeevil (mp3 - 4.63MB)