Luigi Russolo and his Noise Contraption

Imagine you had nothing better to do, you pick any object to start creating a noise. This is what babies do. They pick up objects drop them to experience a cause and reaction. If the child was brighter they would make a variation of collision to get different quality of the same sound.

Eventually, if educated people do not stop your noise making, you would graduate to be Luigi Russolo.

This was what he did in early 1900's

His contraption was documented and reproduced many years later

This was how one of the boxes worked

More about this Intonamuri box

Someone did a handheld version which explain clearer how it works!!

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A diaphragm is attached to a string in tension. This tension can be adjusted to a variable stress. A spinning wheel creates an abrasion (like the bow on a violin) on this string which makes a hum. The box and diaphragm creates  the behavior is an amplifier of the sound.

If this wheel had teeth then it can pluck the string

Further miniaturized version becomes an infectious habit 

 

Eventually if the better sense of yours come to be, this can be classical music:

 

So  why Futurist? perhaps it was the sound of machine that made the future.