Jacob Hardy performs music under the name “holzkopf.” His interests are vast but are focussed on making dance music rooted in the traditions of detroit techno, dub mixing, free jazz and musique concrete. He mixes between a sampler he’s had since high school, a rejected drum machine and tapes in pitch control or modified tape decks. He often wires his equipment into feedback loops with each other so it gets confused. He will be playing a somewhat fluid, collage of beats, tapes, smooth bass lines and skronky noises.Jacob will be bringing his suitcase of electronic instruments, bent, broken and unchanged stuff.

Come one! Come all to our first Maker Music Event!

Maker Music is a one evening event intended to showcase the DIY community in the performance art and music scene. Circuit benders, instrument makers, and performance artists will to this one night event on the evening of November 16 with a Maker dance party that will go late into the night. Musicianship is always considerably DIY, but in the Maker Movement ethos, we now have a chance to expose the rich creativity found in Vancouver’s music community and to celebrate it in one event. Come down and see what Maker Music is made of!

You must RSVP to gain admission to the event

You can purchase your tickets here

Stay tuned for event scheduling and artist showcases. This is an event you do not want to miss!

Do you make your own music instruments?

Do you use diy practices in your music production?

Do you use play your existing instruments in a creative way?

Are you an artist and affiliate closely to the Maker movement?

Then we want you!

The Hackery was most gracious to come on board as a community sponosor again for this year’s Maker Faire. The Hackery, located on the a block north of  East Hastings on Victoria Drive, is a fantastic tech shop that repairs, recycles, re-purposes and re-sells computers and electronics. These services have expanded beyond just catering to Vancouver. Their highly active online eBay store has since become an integral part in the international electronics collector community.

When you walk into The Hackery, the first thing you will notice is the diversity of equipment they have on their shelves. From Commodore PET computers, to vintage radios, to even one of the first fax machines, they have all kinds of wonders you could just oggle at for hours. Aside from their thriving online business, they have all kinds of walk-in customers: people looking for laptop replacement parts salvaged from their scrapyard, people interested in recycling electronics (which they spend the time to fully dismantle for usable parts, before sending true end of life material to audited material handlers and refineries), and in my case, electronics for one of my Maker projects!

David Repa, The Hackery’s founder and owner, was kind enough to walk me through their back area where they do their repairs. At one table, a monitor repair was being diagnosed by a DIY tool that could determine whether a capacitor was blown without removing the capacitor from the board. At another table was a diagnostics computer whose own innards hung down from a wooden beam above the workbench. I also got a demo on how one turned it on, you woud have to hot wire the thing. Awesome!

David also co-founded Free Geek Vancouver, and rented the upstairs of The Hackery to the founding members of the Vancouver Hackspace, one of our sister organizations, making him deeply ingrained in the DIY community here in Vancouver. He really does know how to hack in Vancouver, and his scrap yard is no exception. The ‘Scrap Yard’, a garage filled with computers and other electronics waiting to be sold, repaired, recycled, or cannibalized, was massive! Stacked with laptops, flats of Apple IIs (and all of it’s periphreals), bins of components and boards, and a self-repaired forklift. They even have their own in-house metal waste compactor (DIY’d no less!).

In a time where throwaway culture is becoming more and more prevalent, the value of The Hackery’s venture cannot be understated. They fight through the flood of disposability and find the gems, find the salvageable, and help people continue to use electronics free of guilt knowing that they have a proper ethical recycling facility at The Hackery when it is needed.

The Vancouver Maker/Hacker community is extremely lucky to have a space like The Hackery. Their warm, friendly, and open nature is very approachable and even my brief time interviewing them has left me with all sorts of ideas and inspiration for my next DIY project. I recommend stopping by, chatting with their staff, as there is all kinds of great things you could learn. Thanks again David, you guys are great!

You should follow The Hackery on Twitter here and on Facebook here.