Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts

The history of electronic sound has been a cavalcade of strange connections and renegade science. The prehistory of electronic music-making is packed with some of the greatest mavericks of the 20th century: from the quirky early devices that followed the Theremin like the Trautonium and Ondes Martenot. This year, the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) is going to put this century of revolution into perspective with the exhibition “100 years of electronic music instruments”. Reminding us of the wild minds that have created or popularized electronic instruments, untangling the amazing historical, electrical and psychic lines of influence throughout the century.

Putting the limelight on current day inventors, the ADE has invited Marieke Verbiesen to exhibit her interactive instrument Sonic Tornado that brings forward audiovisual forces users can control by moving their hands and fingers, based on the classic theremin.

About Sonic Tornado

Sonic Tornado´s algorithm is based on the innerworkings of real-life Tornado´s translated to parameters that can be controlled with custom-made functionality. Users can interactively control Sonic Tornado with hand movement: Each hand and each finger can be used to control different sequences
of light, animations and sounds.



Sonic Tornado is based on the classic theremin; an electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 byLeon Theremin, that can be played without physical contact.The instrument’s controlling section consists of two metal antennas that sense the relative position of thethereminist’s hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude with the other. Sonic Tornado lets its users play with supernatural powers by evoking a chaotic twirling mass that generates light, sound and animations, in an audiovisual universe under the users control. Intense swirling of movement and quadraphonic sound increases over time and gains intensity when set in motion.The tornado can be played like an instrument, using only your hands, creating an explosive “big bang” of audio visual forces. The unique audiovisual instrument celebrates both history and future by reinventing the past and infusing novel inventions and scientific phenomena.

100 years of electronic music instrument
More about Sonic Tornado
Sonic Tornado on Vimeo

About Marieke Verbiesen

“Marieke Verbiesen (MFA MadTech) is a dutch new media artist based in Bergen, Norway. She creates interactive installations and performances using experimental animation, exhibited and screened at various festivals, museums, cinema´s, artspaces, galleries and public spaces since 2003.

Her crossdiciplinairy works can be best described as a fused output of various media, often resulting in lifesize installations that combine cinema, sculpture and interactivity, revolving around visual interpretations of digital entities that came to life in a binary environment. Such as computergames, datagenerated landscapes and science fiction fenomena, visually translated to physical installations while referencing their digital origins.

These works often embody the use of obsolete technology such as classic computergame hardware and celluloid film with new, emerging technologies such as motiontracking and other forms of responsive, human input. Audience participation is often a fundamental element these works, where the role of the audience changes from spectators to active participants and activators of the work.”

Written by A. C. Cohen

Marieke Verbiesen
Photo by Marieke Verbiese