The Gun Music Box

The Gun Music Box is an artwork challenging the notion of musical composition by creating an instrument from a typically amusical object. The project aims to re-contextualize the use of firearms by placing them into a performative setting, and in doing so, removing the violent connotations associated with them.

The Making of

The Gun Music box was built in collaboration with German YouTuber Jorg Sprave and Dutch craftsman Akko Goldenbeld, performed and recorded by MC Mesijus.

We began our research online and sought out exciting people designing and building interesting musical machines. We first met Akko Goldenbeld, a Dutch craftsman who made a music box that plays a melody using a 3D map of Eindhoven and Amsterdam.

We visited the Museum Speelklok, which has an extensive collection of music boxes and automata – it was here that we learned about the mechanics of music boxes. With all this new information, we set out to try and make something different, something that hasn't been done before.

Our first main challenge was to try to figure out the mechanism, which would trigger the guns. Jorg Sprave, the man behind the Slingshot Channel, kindly offered to help us and produced a prototype using a cap gun.

Jorg’s prototype provided the basis for the mechanism, and we were able to scale up the initial design, fabricating the finished music box entirely from steel.

Once the music box had been made, it was time to play some music with it. We wanted to write a song emphasizing the concept of using firearms for music instead of war. We worked with up-and-coming artist, MC Mesijus, to record vocals for the track, and produced a music video featuring the music box being played.