Solar-powered guitars, salty vocals, and what bonsai has to do with liquid music for the deaf.

1- Steve Mann, founder of MIT’s Wearable Computers Group, may be better-known as “the world’s first cyborg”, but he is also a passionate sound experimenter. His latest invention, the hydraulophone, is a mellifluous, highly tactile instrument that, Mann hopes, could offer a new self-expression platform for music creation for the deaf and blind — the skills required for reading Braille, it turns out, are quite similar to those required for playing the hydraulophone….

2- California-based artist Diego Stocco is a master of sound abstraction. A sound designer and composer, he creates unusual sound experiences using anything from everyday objects to contraptions he builds from scratch. From outfitting a tree with a stethoscope, a plastic pipe and a microphone, to blending an old piano with the sounds of sunset, his work has a beautiful nature-grounded quality to it whilst really pushing the technologies and conception of modern sound design…

3- French artist and composer Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates sound by drawing on the rhythms of daily life in unexpected ways. In her installation for the Barbican Centre in London, she placed a flock of zebra finches in an aviary equipped with electric guitars and other instruments, creating a technological playground for nature’s lo-fi songsters. As the birds go about their ordinary business, perching on the various pieces of equipment, they inadvertently create curious soundscapes…