In 2022 I held a series of workshops building and transforming kites into instruments, equipping them with wireless sensors or making them into sensors.

In 2026, this is coming together in the workshop Sounding Dragons.

The decription below is for the workshop in April 2026 at Latvia Sound Days:

Flying dragons, deers, owls, hawks, octopus, or parrots - in different languages across the world, kites are named in all sorts of imaginary ways. In this wind instrument building workshop, we will explore how kites fly, measure this with sensors, and use the data to create sound to make the dragons roar through the sky.

In this five day workshop, participants will build a diamond shaped kite and fly it, build sensors from conductive materials to measure the turbulation of the wind and pressure on the kite cloth, and attach sensors to the kite to measure its movement. Then we will record measurements of the data and focus on making use of this data to generate and control sounds in realtime.

In this workshop you will use the sewing machine, solder, and program. You will go home with a self-built kite and a sensing kit with an ESP32, an accelerometer & gyroscope and handmade sensors.

Participants should bring a laptop with the Arduino IDE installed and an environment that is capable of receiving OSC-data and generating sound (for example SuperCollider, PureData, etc) that they are familiar with.