Futurist composer Luigi Russolo wrote the score for his noise composition "Risveglio Di Uns Citta" ("The Awakening Of A City") in 1914, performing it with an orchestra of musicians trained to use his intoning devices, or noise machines. Decades ahead of his time, Russolo's 1913 manifesto "The Art of Noise" remains a valuable and insightful document on the place of sound and noise in modern music.

This concert of electronic artists was inspired by the score for "Risveglio Di Uns Citta", and was realized by Phil Zampino and the Wilmington Sound Orchestra, performed to open a show on Dada poetry from Dutch sound poet Jaap Blonk. What follows are notes in my call to musicians to take part in this event, explaining the intention and execution of the performance.

"On March 17th [2016] Jaap Blonk is going to perform a spoken word DaDa poetry show at Squdico. I'm pulling together the rest of the show, which I'd like to feature multi-media and sound work related to Dada and Futurists. As such, I'd like to get the Wilmington Sound Orchestra to recreate a portion of a Luigi Rusollo score for his intoning devices, or noise machines. I'm sending a copy of the Futurist Manifesto via this thread, plus an image of the "machines" we'll need to recreate, and an image of the score.

Essentially, 4 or more of us would take 2 noise machines each to perform on. The method of creating the sounds needed are entirely your own - they can be acoustic, electronic, sample based, etc. The only requirements are that you can change the pitch on each, and the volume, and that each should be capable of sustaining sound. You should be able to perform on both instruments simultaneously (unless we can find more people to be involved) The score will be performed at a slow tempo, using a visual metronome on the projector. We will perform the score forward and backward, for a 15 minute performance.

The instruments to choose from are: howlers, roarers, cracklers, rubbers, bursters, burglers, low hummers, and low whistlers. Think about what those sounds mean to you and how to create each given the parameters above, and let me know which instruments you'd like to take on. If you can think of someone else who might want to be involved let me know, the more people involved the more interesting the performance, imho. And, the more unique your instrument the more interest I would expect from the audience. Last, this is not a "faitful" recreation, but an interpretation of the Rusollo's ideas. So feel free to think outside the box and let your imagination run wild.

If you would like to take part in this, we would need to have at least one rehearsal the week before the concert. That can be on a weekday evening of on a weekend afternoon, depending on everyone's schedule. Once we know who's involved we'll set that date."