Could you introduce yourself in ten words each ?

My name is Tore Honoré Boe, a Norwegian artist living in the Canary Islands.

When and how did you get the idea for the acoustic laptop ?

A little over ten years ago me and my collegues had the typicle table-full of objects and cables and effect boxes that we tried to make interesting sound with. My collegues all started using the clean-looking and (too often) similar sounding (digital) laptop. I had a desire to further investigate the potential of microsound, but I needed a way of recreating the live set-up at home, to be able to rehearse and improve. I started fixing the tiny objects into a box and before I knew it I'd created the "acoustic laptop".

Can you explain the technical process that you used ?

I amplified it by gluing in a piezo microphone. When I did that, the whole box, including the lid even, becomes a microphone. Almost any possible object will resonnate through the wood of the box, and one can start experimenting, for instance with the distance to the mike or even using two mikes and create a stereo-space. Some of the amplified sounds you will recognise, but I've found a lot of sounds never consciously heard before, most often subsounds in plastic and objects you wouldn't believe creates sound when played (with).

Do you use also numerical laptop ?

Yes, for a various number of artistic activities, but mostly for post-production, montage and editing of sounds, photos and scans. I still like to get my fingers dirty with glue, paint and sawdust.

In what events do you show the acoustic laptop ?

From the start I used the acustic laptops in concerts, with no additional effects, and I still do. After a few years they sort of came into their own "being" and I was invited to exhibit them in smaller cafés and galleries, plugged for the visitors to play. It seemed I hit a nerve in the current electronic discourse, as an off-the wall comment on direct creation. Then I started doing workshops where other people come to make their own, in line with the free shareware/open source ethos. Now the acoustic laptops are both instruments, art objects, a comment on current digal realities AND a very "personal" pc.

What are your actual projects ?

I'm a cross-gender artist where all the methods and media I choose work within a larger collage often based in contrast. So in one moment I'll work with words, the next physical assemblage and painting, maybe I thor in a surrealist performance for good measure, then I might do some extreme noise or microsound. 

Feel free to get a slight overlook on my webpages, a sort of 16 page worklog, but keep in mind my collage is as hard to nail down as mercury: http://origami.teks.no/boe