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This Is What an Underwater Pipe Organ Sounds Like

A special rebroadcast of episode five of season one of Sound Builders, our show about noise.

We've been running a special rebroadcast of the first season of Sound Builders, our show about noise (and the people rethinking how to make it), all week on Motherboard. We hope it tides you over until the forthcoming season of Sound Builders, which you can catch here later this month.

First, here's Steve Mann, a professor and instrument designer in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto and founder of the Wearable Computers Group at MIT's Media Lab. Some call him the world's first cyborg; he uses an unlikely pairing of brainwaves and compressed hydraulic fluids to rethink how to create sound.

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Taking a break from fighting for your cyborg rights back in 2010, Mann invited us to his Toronto studio to hear about some of his past inventions, and also check out his underwater pipe organ. It's a highly-tactile, mellifluous instrument that Mann hopes will offer a new way for the deaf and blind to create music. He calls it the Hydraulophone.

Stay tuned for the premiere of our next season of Sound Builders right here on Motherboard.

More from Sound Builders:

Eric Singer's Robotic Guitar Looks Nothing Like a Robot or a Guitar (But It Still Shreds)

Meet Reed Ghazala, the Father of Circuit Bending

Watch Sound Designer Diego Stocco Build a 'Mad Max'-Style Bass With Pipes