INSTRUO Pocket Scion

The interface between Gaia and the synthesizer world

Pocket Scion from Instruo is the (mobile) handheld version of the Scion Eurorack module. The practical device uses so-called biofeedback to generate sounds and MIDI data and acts as a bridge between plants, humans and living beings and a synthesizer or DAW.

Pocket Scion obtains its information from the wired clamps, which can be attached to the leaf of a houseplant, stuck into a lemon or a mushroom, or from the capacitive touchpad below the circular display. Tiny fluctuations in the surface conductivity of the organic material stimulate changes in the integrated sound generation respectively the MIDI output.

The purely digital sound generation offers four sound engines (Secret Garden, Fungal Waves, Treebeard's Koto, Soil Circuits), the results of which can hardly be put into words. All the sounds seem rather meditative and experimental and, above all, absolutely random; there is definitely no "just like that again". They are sounds that you would rather expect from a medium-sized modular system peppered with a few random generators. Thanks to the up to 5-voice polyphony, there is an "idea of polyphony", whereby even the choice of pitch depends on the test object.

If you connect Pocket Scion to a computer, it can supply the device with power and simultaneously send the determined information to the DAW.