Intelligent Instruments Lab

Recap video of a visit last month from an incredible group of artists whose music we deeply love! They explored our instruments and made sounds no one has heard before, and we think they had fun in the process… We played @halldorophone by Halldór Úlfarsson, stacco by @privatonicola and Giacomo Lepri, augmented @keytam.drum by @jdkarmitage , and many of our open source RAVE neural audio models trained on voices and animals. They gave us important feedback on our instruments, which turned into a provocative discussion about the future of music and AI (let’s put artists and art first!). Thank you to our visiting artists for stopping by! Let us know if you might be next! Caroline Polachek @carolineplz Sega Bodega @segabodega Eartheater @eartheater Aidan Zamiri @aidanzamiri Vidar Logi @vidarlogi Miles Greenberg @miles.greenberg Kiss Facility @kissfacility Julia Delaney @juliavdelaney Matt Copson @mattcopson Vasso Vu @vassovu Millie Turner @millieturner Yuma Burgess @yumaburgess (thanks for the 3D-printed Ocarina!) Dominik Zwyrtek @zwyrtek__dominik #openlab #intelligentinstruments #instrumentdesign

Open Lab 120: Vegetal Media Pub Quiz 🌴📡🎙️🤖🌱 - For this Open Lab 120, PhD researcher Thomas Pausz will present recent experiments under the topic Vegetal Media, including experimental vibratory interfaces inspired by buzz-pollinating insects and the current design of a library of sensors for greenhouse ecosystem exploration. The session will be followed by a participatory pub quiz on the history of plant technological mediation. Bio: Thomas Pausz is a speculative designer and doctoral researcher at the Intelligent Instruments Lab, and a professor at the Iceland University of the Arts. His interests span more-than-human ecologies, interspecies media, and ecofiction. In his doctoral project, he designs and tests multimodal dispositifs for co-sensing and co-creating with non-human agencies, while exploring the philosophy and ethics of our mediated relations with the environment through the lens of vegetal life. - More info: https://iil.is/openlab/120 Where: University of Iceland. Veröld, Room: VHV-104 From 4:30 to 5:30 PM We look forward to seeing you! Free entry, accessible to all.

Open Lab 119 will be led by our three Visiting Researchers: Cagri Erdem, Chris Kiefer, and Chloë Sobek. --- Cagri Erdem: Presenting RhyGlyph as an application and interface that embodies our perspective of seeing rhythm as motion. Chris Kiefer: Machine Learning and Mapping Design with the MEMLNaut. - Live demo of the most recent developments of the MEMLNaut machine learning instrument.  Chloë Sobek: Fracturing Musical Hyperreality: Collage and More-Than-Human Relations in Instrumental Practice. Research examining the phenomenon of musical hyperreality; a condition in which cultural forms cease to mediate social, ritual, or political relations and instead circulate as self-referential signs. --- More info: https://iil.is/openlab/119 

 When: Friday, March 6th, 3-6 PM
 Where: University of Iceland. Veröld, room: VHV-104

 We look forward to seeing you!
 Free entry & accessible to all.

Open Lab 118: with Florian Goeschke. Far from equilibrium: a messy approach towards sound spatialization. I am presenting my ongoing research into spatial and environmental sound interaction at hand of a nameless shape changing sculpture, a mechanism that oscillates between two states, and that at the moment I’m writing this text is still unassembled in parts, unfinished and messy. Yet, I’m confident that by assembling its components it shall find not only its shape but also its meaning – becoming an interface, an instrument, a sensing device, a sonic sculpture? Starting from there I will present the larger framework of my research, and discuss the potential role of technologies not as tools mediating between a subject and its environment, but as processes of becoming-environmental (Hörl) — where the boundary between instrument and space, between technology and ecology, continuously dissolves. More info: https://iil.is/openlab/118 When: Friday, february 27th, 3-5 PM Where: University of Iceland. Veröld, room: VHV-104 We look forward to seeing you! Free entry & accessible to all.

HyperOrgel Intelligent Instruments Lab í Hallgrímskirkju Laugardagur 7. febrúar 2026 Hádegistónleikar kl. 12:00 Orgeltæknitónsmíðaspjall kl. 13:20 (í Norðurdal) HyperOrgel á heila tímanum Verk fyrir tölvustýrt orgel flutt kl. 13, 14, 16 og 17 Tækni og tónlist mætast og gefa áheyrendum nýtt sjónarhorn á Klais-orgelið í Hallgrímskirkju. Ókeypis aðgangur allan daginn og öll hjartanlega velkomin! Sjá nánar um dagskrá og flytjendur hér að neðan. ~ kl 12:00-12:30 Hádegistónleikar / Matinée Örlygur Steinar Arnalds - r lego, 3m 52s Yulia Vasileva - nýtt verk Ronja Jóhansdóttir - nýtt verk Gunnar Andreas Kristinsson - nýtt verk Guðmundur Vignir Karlsson - nýtt verk Arnljótur Sigurðsson - nýtt verk ~ kl 13:00 Tónverk á heila tímanum: Dettifoss ~ kl 13:20-13:50 Orgeltæknitónsmíðaspjall í Norðursal Hallgrímskirkju: Áki Ásgeirsson leiðir umræður. ~ kl 14:00 Tónverk á heila tímanum: Victor Shepardson and Julie Zhu ~ kl 16:00 Tónverk á heila tímanum: Svartþoka ~ kl 17:00 Tónverk á heila tímanum: Sveinn Ingi Reynisson Áki Ásgeirsson, listræn stjórnun. Sveinn Ingi Reynisson, tæknileg umsjón. HALLGRÍMSKIRKJA – ÞINN STAÐUR --ENGLISH-- HyperOrgel Intelligent Instruments Lab at Hallgrimskirkja Saturday February 7th Matinée / A 30 minute concert @ 12:00 Introduction and chat with Áki Ásgeirsson @13 :20 in the North Hall (IS) HyperOrgel on the hour Pieces for computer-controlled organ performed at: 13:00, 14:00, 16:00 and 17:00 Exploring a new perspective of the Klais-organ in dialogue with technology Free entry all day and everyone is welcome! Hallgrimskirkja – Your place in Reykjavík

Open Lab 117: Discussions with composers, with demonstrations of computer-controlled organ works. Áki Ásgeirsson leads a discussion on MIDI computer connectivity with church organs. Composers participating in the HyperOrgel project at the Intelligent Instruments Lab will attend and present their approaches. // ÍSLENSKA Open lab 117: Umræður með tónskáldum, sýnd dæmi um tölvustýrð orgelverk. Áki Ásgeirsson leiðir umræður um MIDI tölvutengingu við kirkjuorgel. Tónskáld sem taka þátt í HyperOrgel verkefni Intelligent Instruments Lab koma og kynna nálgun sína. When: From 3-5 PM. 6th Feb. Where: University of Iceland. Veröld, room VHV-104

Vetrarhátíð verður sett fimmtudaginn 5. febrúar hjá nágrönnum okkar í garði Listasafns Einars Jónssonar, Hallgrímstorgi 3, kl. 19.00. Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir, borgarstjórinn í Reykjavík mun setja hátíðina ásamt því að Logi Einarsson, menningar- nýsköpunar og háskólaráðherra mun segja nokkur orð í tilefni af því að Listasafn Íslands og Listasafn Einars Jónssonar hafa nú sameinast. Opnunarverk hátíðarinnar er verkið Synergy eftir listakollektívið Mercury Maze Studio, sem samanstendur af Owen Hindley, Katerinu Blahutova og Þorsteini Eyfjörð og verður frumsýnt við setninguna og eftir setninguna er tilvalið að koma til okkar og upplifa ljóslist og tónlist . FIMMTUDAGUR 5. FEBRÚAR kl. 19:30 - 20:20 Dagskráin við Hallgrímskirkju hefst kl. 19:30. Verkið sem varpað verður á Hallgrímskirkju er eftir listamanninn Örn Ingólfsson og ber heitið Ljósamót. Hallgrímskirkja umbreytist í lifandi ljósform þar sem litir, mynstur og hreyfing leika um bygginguna og draga fram kraftmikla arkitektúr hennar. Ljósin fylgja línum kirkjunnar, brjóta þær upp og endurskapa, þannig að hið kunnuglega verður nýtt. Verkið er samtal ljóss og forms, þar sem rýmið titrar milli kyrrðar og orku. Verkið er á Ljósaslóð Vetrarhátíðar 2026. HyperOrgel / Intelligent Instruments Lab í Hallgrímskirkju Tónleikarnur hefjast í beinu framhaldi af opnuninni og þegar búið er að varpa verki Arnar Ljósamótum á kirkjuna eða ca. kl. 19:45 í Hallgrímskirkju. Flutt verða glæný gagnvirk tónverk með tölvutengdum hljóðfærum eftir Tómas Manoury, Steinunni Harðardóttur, Jesper Pedersen og Áka Ásgeirsson. Ókeypis aðgangur og öll hjartanlega velkomin á meðan húsrúm leyfir HALLGRÍMSKIRKJA – ÞINN STAÐUR À VETRARHÁTÍÐ

Open Lab 116, with Dr Charalampos Saitis: Ethnographic and discourse perspectives on timbre in digital instrument making practices Timbre, pitch, and timing are often relevant in digital musical instrument (DMI) design. Compared with the latter two, timbre is neither easy to define nor discretise when negotiating audio representations and gesture-sound mappings. In this talk, I will summarise findings across three studies: 1) semi-structured interviews with 29 instrument makers from commercial, research, independent, and artistic backgrounds, including composers and performers who build bespoke instruments as well as live coders; 2) a hackathon to prototype tools for supporting timbre exploration in DMI design, and an ethnographic study to explore how participants engaged with the notion of timbre and how their conception of timbre was shaped through social interactions and technological encounters; 3) a corpus assisted discourse analysis of “timbre” in NIME and ICMC proceedings. We examine how timbre and timbre control is constructed through, for example, the psychoacoustical model of “timbre space,” sound programming languages and synthesis tools, machine learning and AI, and other trends in DMI design, reflecting on how describing timbre actually guides how it is used and understood. More info: https://iil.is/openlab/116 When: Jan 30th from 3 - 4:30 PM. Where: Genki, Klapparstígur 25–27. 6th floor. We look forward to seeing you! Free entry.

ÁRA I. | Tónleikasería í tilefni af sýning­unni Steina: Tímaflakk, fimmtudag 20. nóvember kl. 20–21.00 í Hafnarhúsi. ÁRA er tónleikasería sem tekur útgangspunkt í nýjum tengslum í tónlist, Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir setur saman tónleikadagskrá í tilefni af sýningunni Steina: Tímaflakk. Tónleikar seríunnar veita innsýn í tilraunir sem kanna hvað gerist og breytist þegar gervigreind verður hluti af tónsköpunarferlinu. Fyrstu tónleikarnir eru afrakstur náins samstarfs kammerhópsins Nordic Affect, Höllu Steinunnar Stefánsdóttur, Intelligent Instrument Lab og Davíðs Brynjars Franzsonar. Aðgöngumiði á safnið gildir. Frítt fyrir Árskorts- og Menningarkorthafa, frítt fyrir yngri en 18 ára. // AURA I. | Concerts series on the occasion of the Steina: Play­back exhi­bition on Thursday, 20 November 20–21h00 at Hafnarhús. AURA is a concert series exploring the new relationships emerging in music through innovative system design. The series is curated by Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir on the occasion of the Steina: Playback exhibition. All three events open the doors to ongoing experiments. First out is a project which results from a tight-knit, long-term collaboration between Nordic Affect, Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir, the Intelligent Instrument Lab and Davíð Brynjar Franzson. 📷 Eva Schram

Open Lab 114: Halldorophone? Tomorrow’s open lab will be centered around the Halldorophone! Screening of the short mocumentary, Halldorophone? by Nikulás Tumi Hlynsson ( @nikulastumi ). "A journey exploring the Halldorophone, a search for its creator and the encounter of the inevitable nonsense surrounding this odd instrument." And a brief showcase of Halldór Úlfarssons latest halldorophone build before it leaves Iceland to go live with it's owner in France. Discussion with Halldór after the screening and demo. More info: https://iil.is/openlab/114 Where: University of Iceland. Edda, room: E-208 When: 3 - 5 PM We look forward to seeing you! Free entry, accessible to all.

Open Lab 113: When: October 3rd, from 3-5 PM. Where: University of Iceland. Edda, room: E-208 Three master’s intern researchers will present pieces of their work that was done at the Intelligent Instruments Lab over the summer. With backgrounds in philosophy, music and sociology their work will focus on the interdisciplinary facets of sound, artificial intelligences and theory: Íris Jacobsen recently graduated as a Master in Philosophy here at the University of Iceland, in her thesis she explored glaciers as ethical companions, showing how storytelling and process philosophy reveal their role in shaping moral orientations in the Anthropocene. Her work at the lab focused on sonifying glacier data to explore how different modes of data representation can affect human sensibilities in regards to climate change. Magnea Rut Gunnarsdóttir, a master’s student in philosophy at University of Iceland, has centered her work on materiality and the evolving relationships we as humans, particularly as posthumans, share with it. In her presentation, she will share part of her research conducted at the lab, exploring playfulness as a vital mode of engagement and meaning making in the posthuman era. Einar Hugi Böðvarsson Masters thesis in Sociology at UI focused on the social effects generative music from the perspective of Max Weber’s rationalization theory. He will present his work which focuses on the sociology of music through the heuristic of artificially intelligent models. More info: https://iil.is/openlab/113 We look forward to seeing you, Free entry, accessible to all!