One highlight from 2007’s Instrument Construction class remains the “Bubble Organ” designed and built by Aaron Wendel.

Below is a short, unedited video clip of Aaron’s instrument.

I mentioned it here last year, but I’ll mention it again, because a far more thorough look at Aaron’s instrument than my own low-res clip is available on Gearwire: http://www.gearwire.com/bubble-organ-lab.html
The Gearwire video piqued the interest of the Oddmusic Gallery, a website devoted to experimental instruments. You can see several nice photos of the bubble organ in finished form on its feature page: http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/om06825.htmlA final note on features: for reasons unknown to me (and just after I made an offhand remark to my students about massive Internet exposure and the downside of fame), my little clip of Aaron’s instrument appeared on the main page of YouTube this Tuesday. I noticed the number of views jumped from perhaps around a hundred a day before to over 33,000 by mid-afternoon. Today the count has surpassed 180,000. Reflecting the effect of this decontextualized clip had on the general Internet populace, the 70+ comments received on Tuesday came mostly from adolescents and the developmentally arrested. On the plus side, my clip was featured along with a lot of other interesting musical instrument videos.