Workshop at BlaBlaLab Eindhoven: DIY Microphones with Francesco Zedde

Join this workshop led by Francesco Zedde and discover creative strategies for building lo-fi microphones using only scraps and discarded materials.

🗓️ Saturday, Nov 15 | 15:00 – 18:00


📍 BlaBlaLab, Eindhoven

🎟️ We do our best to keep these workshops accessible to everyone, which is why the registration is based on an open donation — give what you can to support us and our upcoming workshops!

During the workshop, we will explore the fundamentals of how microphones work — from understanding how sound is transformed into an electrical signal to comparing different microphone types and specifications.

Along the way, we’ll build budget-friendly microphones from recycled materials and experiment with unusual designs such as piezo contact microphones, electromagnetic (EMF) sensors, and hydrophones for underwater sound-fishing. Francesco will introduce concepts like the Barkhausen effect, feedback, no-input mixing, and the Larsen effect, showing how these phenomena can become creative tools in sound design. You’ll also learn simple methods for testing and measuring your microphones’ performance, gaining a deeper understanding of how they respond to different acoustic environments.

Together, we’ll assemble a simple voice microphone and explore weird and wonderful variations — from instruments that capture the vibrations of everyday objects to devices that listen beneath the water’s surface or even reveal the hidden electromagnetic fields around us. No prior experience is necessary, and you don’t need to bring any tools or materials. By the end of the session, you’ll have built and tested your own microphone to take home!

About the artist and tutor

Francesco Zedde (b. 1993, Italy) is a multimedia artist based in the Netherlands. His curiosity is often driven by societal and metalinguistic questions, and much of his work centers on the idea of the musical event as a social practice, employing DIY methods of organization and creation. This commitment began with playing and organizing concerts and later expanded into diverse creative fields, including hacking, circuit bending, augmented instruments, and interactive installations. In his practice, the use of obsolete and discarded materials holds both rhetorical significance and political weight, serving as a stance of resistance against corporate production and consumerism.