World Democracy Index Instrument
2025
The World Democracy Index Instrument is an online musical instrument in which the user sets the
desired region which they whish to play.
The democracy index of the desired region is fetched through an API from our world in data and
sets the parameters that controls the generated sound. To influence the sound and harmonics the user needs
to influence the index of the region they are playing, through some kind of political action.
The sound-motor of the instrument is built in MAX through the RNBO-tool.
Click here to copy MAX-patch to clipboard
Resolution Limits
2024
Resolution Limits is an audiovisual piece made by Adam Fored and the sound-artist and percussionist
Ryan Packard for the 360° Wisdome at the Stockholm Museum of
Technology.
The piece is based on a custom-built percussion instrument created by Packard, consisting of several
stacked drumskins with a speaker cone embedded between them. This speaker emits a range of sine tones that
excite the membranes. Packard plays the instrument by placing metal coins at the resonant nodal points of
the uppermost drumskin, subtly shifting the intricate textures produced by the setup. These textures are
highly amplified with microphones and routed to Fored's laptop, where they are live-diffused through the
dome's surround sound system.
The visuals, created by Adam Fored, are generated in TouchDesigner by manipulating particle clouds. Sound
and video are intricately linked: the particles react to the sound of Packard's instrument, while the
instrument itself is simultaneously influenced by sine tones generated through Fored's visual system. This
feedback loop between sound and image forms the core of the piece's audiovisual interplay.
Resolution Limits was performed at the Wisdome first in a standalone concert in December 2024, and
then again as part of Kulturnatt Sockholm in April 2025.
Diter - AdaGio
2022 - ongoing
Diter is a project by Giovanni
Onorato and Adam Fored. Their audiovisual work blends glitch aesthetics, microsounds, and
unconventional rhythms, and it is influenced by electronic, electroacoustic, and noise music.
Giovanni's knowledge in electroacoustic and acousmatic music combines with Adam's background in visual
arts and electronics. Together, they created a live-set interlacing sound and visuals in an idiosyncratic
way, featuring self-written software with Max/MSP and a combination of digital and analog gear that
includes Adam's self-built video synthesizer.
Diter's live-set Adagio was premiered at Valkhof Festival in Nijmegen, and at Fylkingen's
90th year Festival in Stockholm.
Autofagi
2023
Autophagy, derived from the Greek words "auto" (self) and "phagein" (to eat), refers to the natural,
regulated mechanism that allows cells to break down and recycle their components. The process plays a
pivotal role in maintaining cellular health. Just as autophagy ensures the renewal and vitality of
individual cells, mycelium fosters the health and resilience of entire ecosystems.
The installation piece takes inspiration from symbiotic relationships between degradation and growth,
clusters, microsounds and granular processes. Three sound sculptures serve as conduits for a generative
soundscape. It invites to get closer to the earth, and the enigmatic interplay within the fungal realm.
Autofagi is an art installation created for Nobel Week Lights Stockholm 2023 as a collaborative effort
among five artists. The work consists of three sculptures, each made from wood, concrete, and acrylic
mirror, featuring built-in speakers that play a three-channel generative composition produced by a BELA
microprocessor.
Credits:
Adam Fored - Artist and Composer, Sculptor
Assar Tallinger - Artist and Composer
Nora Pollak - Artist and Composer
Vilmar Jansson - Artist and Composer
Wilma Hultén - Artist and Composer, Programmer
Hara Alonso - Project Leader
Documentation filmed and edited by Agnes Klapp.
Snapshot 2302
2023
A visual representation of real time FFT-analysis of the incoming audio.
The spectrogram is applied to the position and colour of a cloud of particles that has been arranged in
the shape of a sphere.
The music was made using the visuals as a compositional tool - so the sound and the look of the sound are
both influencing the music-making.
Made in 2023 using Max & Jitter, for the concert series "Electroacoustic Spring" held at the Royal College
of Music in Stockholm.
Primordial Soup
2023
Audiovisual piece made by Adam Fored in 2023 for concert "Unreal Graphics" at Fylkingen Münchenbryggeriet,
with audiovisual art pieces on the theme of video games.
Constructed as a game to be played in front of an audience, where the "flesh blob" chases the red dot.
This is a recording of the piece being played.
Made with Max & Jitter.
Mixdown push
2022
This is a binaural recording (2023) of Mixdown Push being played live through the 16 speakers in the
lowest ring of the speaker dome at The Royal Collage of Music in Stockholm. It was captured binaurally
with a Neumann KU 100 dummy-head microphone.
Mixdown Push is an electro-acoustic piece taking advantage of controlled phase-clicks.
The work was conceived after identifying a susceptibility in the MAX object mc.mixdown~: when its
multichannel panner is driven too rapidly, it introduces phase-discontinuity clicks.
The piece employs four sound sources:
Carrier
Sine oscillator 1 - Fundamental generator
Modulator
Sine oscillator 2 - Micro-detuned from oscillator 1 by a random, minimal interval
Support
Sine oscillator 3 - Fixed sub-bass, one octave below the fundamental
Noise
Noise generator - A noise attack is generated every time the fundamental changes
Oscillators 1 and 2 generate slow-to-fast beat patterns. At fixed time steps the instantaneous phase of
their summed waveform (-1 … +1) is sampled and converted to pan-control data for mc.mixdown~, which
distributes the signal over a 16-loudspeaker ring. Whenever the phase readout crosses certain thresholds,
the algorithm forces the panner to a new position, provoking the phase-click.
Melt
2021
Melt consists of a loop played on a very old laptop. Every time the loop cycles the amount of looping tracks is doubled as silent tracks, resulting in an increasing CPU-load. What you are hearing is the laptop struggling to play the audio and eventually crashing completely.