Making Doorbells

Making Doorbells
Name	Making Doorbells
Location	H&D Studio
Date	2026/07/17
Time	11:00-16:00
PeopleOrganisations	Leo Scarin
Type	HDSC2026
Web	No
Print	No

This event was only for participants of the Summer Camp 2026 and not open to the public. For public events you could check: HDSC2026 Clouds to Commons Public Program

Smart home technology, with its origin in surveillance capitalism and data extraction, has flattened the most poetic aspect of a doorbell: its musicality!

Doorbells, in fact, have always been instruments of musical interaction - knockers, bells, chimes, rattles. They stage a performance: the visitor plays for the host who listens. Sometimes the performance surprises, sometimes it's eagerly awaited, sometimes it's just an inconvenient disruption. But inherently, doorbells are musical instruments - not cloud devices, for god's sake!

So, what happens to our way of relating to such an everyday technology when we design it *not* as a surveillance tool but as a musical instrument?

In this workshop, using buttons, buzzers, motors and oscillators, we explored the potential for musicality and interaction in a doorbell's design. With cheap electronic components, repurposed materials and e-waste, we made one together for the H&D studio!

No previous knowledge of electronics was required. The whole point was to build basic circuit literacy, cause a culture of repurposing tech starts with understanding it!

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Timeline of the workshop (11h00-16h30)

• 11h00: welcome, introduction to workshop, icebreakers
• 11h15: build a button-buzzer circuit (30m)
• 11h45: add 555 oscillator (45m-1h)
• 12h45: musical demos with motors and scrap material (free make-and-break until lunch to build inspo)
• 13h30: lunch break
• 14h30: make your own piece of the circuit (a motor, a buzzer, a button, etc)
• 15h30: we put it together and run the first test of the doorbell!

Access note

• No electronic skills were required. But if you had them, you were warmly invited to stick with (and support) someone who didn't :)

Bio

Leo Scarin (he/him) is an artist and designer working with code.

Based in RGBdog studio, at KG95, in The Hague, Scarin's practice stretches across interactive media, moving image, and creative coding; intersecting disciplinary methods to research and problematise digital technology.

Scarin's work has been featured at V2_Lab, The Hmm, STRP, FIBER, AIxDesign, iii, IMPAKT, and more.

Scarin is currently a lecturer at KABK, ArtEZ, WdKA, and Design Academy Eindhoven.