about legoloop


legoloop deals with two important subjects of electronic music. LEGO as modular hands-on architectural concept – an analogy to sound software such as live, max MSP, Reaktor and the like – and the loop, one of the key element in in electronic club music.

The project evolved out of the preoccupation with the term "live" in electronic club culture and the related melting of the two formerly seperated roles of the dj and the producer. Turntable and computer, the two most important technical devices of club culture (beside other psychoactive substances), are linked up to each other and form a new interface which allows a visual and haptical approach towards samplebased digital sound generation. lego bricks take over the functions of knobs, sliders, mouse and keyboard. A video camera replaces the needle as pick-up. Structures of sounds can be built, changed and destroyed intuitively.

The turntable is enhanced by the modularity of digial music production and hence quotes himself as the origin of sampling in popular music. A media feedback over time. A loop.

club transmediale '08 about legoloop:
The Legoloop installation developed by Marc Widmer in 2006 is essentially a novel musical interface comprising computers, amps, loudspeakers and 2 customized turntables, each equipped with 2 cameras and a special support on which blocks of Lego can be assembled. It’s possible with Legoloop to directly process sound samples at the turntables. The cameras register the position and colour of the Lego blocks or rather, the sequence or pattern that these make when revolving with the turntable. Samples can then be selected, and tone frequencies, filters and effects be determined.

As a co-organiser of the Zurich Copy Festival and the media laboratory dock 18, Widmer has a particular interest in the current controversy around issues of copyright and the act of copying. He sees his Legoloop project as an heir to traditional HipHop sampling and appropriation strategies, and cites journalist Charles Mudede in this regard: "Real HipHop doesn't use natural noises as a sample – such as the flushing toilet used in Art of Noise's 'Close (to the Edit)' (1984), but music for which a copyright has been registered. For the HipHop DJ it's not a case of putting original sounds together to create something that’s recognisable as music but about moulding information into a sound that is to be understood as meta-music."