Turn on/off the embedded sound - you are listening to Music in a Time of Dysfunction3, violin generator 2019 featuring the 32 string web: a home made semi automatic musical instrument with central motor and hand held powered bows and 6 piece string ensemble

Violin generator 2019

The Rosenberg Museum in Melbourne

By curious circumstance and evading the logic of a random Universe...

Violin Generator at The Substation, Melbourne

For this time only and ever 4th-13th April 2019 (ah... you missed it then)

Installations of The Rosenberg Museum have been featured all over Europe in its 30 year life, now it's finally back in Australia and looking for a permanent home - so if you know someone with deep pockets and a suitable venue who is into contemporary art, new music, Fluxus, violins... please contact the museum.

The creation of violinist, composer, artist, inventor, writer, Jon Rose - The Rosenberg Museum houses a cornucopia of violin iconography - a cabinet of curiosities highlighting violin stories that are musically other, historically twisted, or culturally critical. Specially built for this manifestation of the museum, and housed in the thoroughly secured East German Room, is The Quantum Violin of Rainer Linz.

Video extracts taken when The Violin Generator was live are available here.

Despite being dead for over 20 years, Dr Rosenberg's facebook can be viewed and heard here.

Rainer Linz and his Quantum Violin (performed in Violin Generator 2019 by Erkki Veltheim)
The Leichhardt Violin of Ernie Althof 2019

The rosenberg Museum maybe seriously under-resourced, but in spite of that, it does have this great ability of collecting by chance the most unlikely stories.

Ripping us off blind was the Art Transport Company's main concern but they screwed up big time when they transported an extra box with our museum stuff which seemed to contain an earth sculpture looking something like a wombat with a bump on its head. Neither the Art transport people nor The Substation in Melbourne knew anything about it. We tried to find out who owned it and nobody was interested. By chance phone call with someone in the art world I discovered it was worth over $150,000 and was in fact a rare sacred object from Mali - a Boli - kind of animistic or spiritual artefact that contains blood, sacrificial bones, shit, piss, and God knows what else, covered in earth. No doubt, there is plenty to this narrative that is straight out of the colonial versus poor people playbook. We don't know the whole story but there seems to be only a few Bolis gathered up into the collecting arms of major museums eg. The Metropolitan New York. The owner of our visiting Boli recently died and his son seems to spend his time avoiding the responsibility of a huge art collection or in fact anything.

My partner Hollis was convinced that the Boli came to us to save my life, I'm not so sure, but I'll take any help on offer including blood and shit from west Africa.

The Violin Mobiles Installation of Robbie Avernaim

Installations of The Rosenberg Museum have been featured all over Europe in its 30 year life, now it's finally back in Australia and looking for a permanent home - so if you know someone with deep pockets who is into contemporary art, new music, Fluxus, violins... please contact the museum. The museum is the creation of violinist, composer, artist, inventor, writer, Jon Rose and houses a cornucopia of violin iconography - a cabinet of curiosities highlighting violin stories that are musically other, historically twisted, or culturally critical.

Big thank you to the following Musicians who took part in Violin Generator:

Robbie Avernaim, Rainer Linz, Ernie Althof, Erkki Veltheim, Lizzy Welsh, Rachael Kim, Judith Hamann, Biddy Connor, and Chloe Smith, Dr. Jozef Cseres, Maria Moles, Michael McNab, Brigit Burke, visual curation by Kali Michailidis.

The 32 String Web Automaton of Jon Rose, the music of which you are hearing embedded in this page

Australian violinist Jon Rose has done more than any musician to revolutionise the approach to his instrument, with technical developments and radical performance strategies.

Andy Gill, The Independent, 5 January 2013

What's New

April 2023
'Rock/Paper/Scissors' - first performance of a radical new interface between violin improvisation, composition, orchestra, and conductor. Highlights here.
KNM, Berlin
March 2023
'Beak' - Kronos Quartet plays the world premiere, a composition based on the song of a Pied Butcherbird by Jon Rose and Hollis Taylor.
Adelaide Festival
March 2024
'Night Songs' celebrates an interspecies multi-media engagement between the ancient music of a uniquely Australian songbird - Cracticus nigrogularis (the Pied Butcherbird) and Australia's premiere new music group Ensemble Offspring. Documentation here.
The Adelaide Festival
Latest Stuff
as anybody who is familiar with this website knows: Mao Zedong started the revolutionary violin factories in China and the Museum now has a restored violin from The Long March. The text reads:'the violin leads the masses onwards'
Blue and White Chinese Ming design: 'long life and willow pattern'is a commissioned work by Bromwen Wade-Leeuwen
continuing the China theme: Painting the eyes on the Chinese Dragon
known in the collection as the 'Leonardo' Violin
The Snake Violin: origins unknown
The historic silent practice Violin with slot to ensure a very straight bow
Australian Central Desert Landscape Violin by Jon Rose
website by jos berkers