Created by Mo H. Zareei, Rasper, Mutor and Rippler are three mechatronic sound-sculptures inspired by Brutalist architecture. The instruments are grouped into three different categories, based on the material and sound production mechanism they employ.

In aestheticizing the normally mundane sonic byproducts of urban industrial life, they employ non-musical objects such as DC motors and actuators, remove them from their everyday context – where they are tools to help run our machines and their noise is sheer sonic byproduct – and turn them into a medium for sonic expression. This contextual transmutation is accomplished through an apparatus combining mechatronic techniques and microcontroller programming that is used to control their noise on rigidly grid-based patterns, where loops, pulses, and metric rhythms form a strict platform through which noise is structured. As in the Brutalist buildings, these sculptures fully expose the materiality and bodily existence of their components in austerely geometric structures and repetitive modules. In order to boost the visceral and sensory experience, every single noise pulse is highlighted in synchronous bursts of fluorescent light, preserving the work’s confrontational, cold, and Brutalist aesthetics.