At the Spring 2026 event, audiences lent their voices to the premiere of Impression, a work for spatialized microcomputers. These tiny devices recorded six seconds of an audience member’s voice and then replayed it in an instantaneous “impression”. Different stations used different audio processing techniques, which were heard individually with headphones at each station and also by all audience members and passersby through spatialized speakers. Each person both heard an impression of themselves and left their impression on the work itself.

At the Spring 2025 event, audiences contributed to the premiere of Composition using Red, Blue, and Yellow, a work for painted canvas-generated soundscape. As audience members paint a canvas, they hear their contributions in real time. Brian Ellis, technical artist @brianellissound

At the Fall 2024 event, From Scratch directors wrote their own work of minimalism, GRIDLOCK, which required audience members to fill out a large grid of creative instructions to help shape the minimal texture. This work is available for public performance and can be accessed here!

At the Spring 2024 event, audiences interpreted and performed a bespoke version of Liza Lim’s Love Letter on mini-harmonicas and egg shakers. Their text-based scores responded to prompts about the ways we listen to new music.

At the 2022 edition of Chicago, From Scratch, audiences were split into small groups to experience their own collaborative composition workshop, on the spot, and write their own multi-movement work. The performers and audience worked together to discuss the interpretation, then voted on the order of performance, and heard their own work performed right before their eyes. Click here to see what they wrote!