love hultén unveils Y-17 synth with designboom at sónar+D festival

designboom and love hultén team up for sónar+d

As Sónar, Barcelona’s vibrant electronic music and digital culture festival, kicks off, Love Hultén’s whimsical synthesizers celebrate the playful intersection of modern technology and traditional craftsmanship. In an exhibition curated by designboom, the Swedish artist showcases his unique blend of sound and visual art at the festival’s digital leg, Sónar+D. While this year’s spotlight falls on the use of AI in the creative spheres, for Hultén, tactility holds reign in the digital age. ‘The instant feedback we get when interacting with something physical connects all the right dots in ways a digital interface never could,’ he tells us during our interview (read our conversation here).

Alongside Sebastian, the pinching MIDI crab, and Tegel, a nature-inspired work that translates biodata from organic material into audio, Hultén unveils his latest sound machine — Y-17. Crafted especially for the occasion, here, a synthesizer meets a ferrofluid visualizer. A gooey liquid within a wooden encasing is brought to life, dancing hypnotically in sync with tunes composed via the keypad.

all images courtesy of Love Hultén

y-17’s ferrofluids dance in sync with the music

Y-17, like a yellow otherworldly creature sprouting antennas, takes its cues from miscellaneous vintage toys, lending it a nostalgic yet futuristic character. During our conversation, Love Hultén described his aesthetic as ‘taking steps in different directions simultaneously by using fragments from both past and today,’ which is vividly embodied in the synth’s playful, retro-futuristic design.

For Sónar+D, the artist fits a simple mono synthesizer with a built-in looper and a 17-note keybed using tactile computer switches. A ferrofluid audio visualizer, where a colloidal liquid composed of nanoscale ferrimagnetic particles, reacts to a system of magnetic fields activated by the user’s touch. Connected to the synthesizer, an electromagnet connected to the audio input pulses with the music’s energy, animating the ferrofluid in response in a mesmerizing visual symphony.

Sónar+D kicks off in Barcelona