The Tangible Music Lab is an artistic research group within the Institute of Media at the University of Arts Linz; founded by Prof. Dr. Martin Kaltenbrunner in 2018. Since 2020 the lab has been located at the Tabakfabrik in Linz. Together with Dr. Enrique Tomás and a handful of external lecturers, the lab is currently supervising sixteen master’s students and four PhD researchers from twelve countries. In addition to teaching, Tangible Music is also running several research projects with a focus on musical instrument design. At the moment, it is collaborating on the open multichannel platform OTTOsonics on design aspects of sonic environments. Its newest interdisciplinary program is the Postdigital Lutherie master’s program organized in cooperation with the Anton Bruckner University Linz, which is responsible for the musical aspects of its novel music instruments.

The core value of Tangible Music is a commitment to open arts and science with its research and teaching activities. The team believes that a publicly funded institution needs to provide results to the public. Therefore, they generally publish their projects and designs as open-source software and hardware. Their future goals involve solidifying collaborations with artists, composers and musicians who are interested in using their novel instruments for their artistic practice. For example, Prof. Kaltenbrunner is co-creator of the Reactable synthesizer, which has been used by renowned artist Björk in her past work. The Tangible Music Lab believes that this kind of collaboration strengthens the technical and artistic maturity of musical instruments and the art they produce.

Human-computer interaction, tangible user interfaces, interactive music design, postdigital luthier.

Main Photo by: Xavier Sivecas