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 |
| 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!
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.