Daniel Maalman is an artist who generally works with sound in a wide spectrum, through different media. As a sound artist he designs and builds site-specific compositions for spaces and objects, which turn these locations into temporary sound installations. During these projects he searches for sounds underneath the surfaces of objects and inside the materials that make up a structure, a space or a building and then uses these sounds for electro-mechanical compositions. These particular projects are made under the name of Lost & Found Orchestra since the end of 2015 which continues until present day.

Lost & Found Orchestra is a continuous site-specific sound-art project, which started in 2015. The idea behind these projects is that every found sound can form the basis for a composition. In this project Daniel searches for site-specific sounds that are sleeping underneath the surfaces, within the materials and structures of buildings, spaces and objects. After harvesting them, these materials and their sounds become a part of an electro-acoustic composition which is designed especially for this particular location, object or situation.

This composition is written on and controlled by a computer, which can be seen as the conductor of the piece. This computer sends the notes as electrical signals to a collection of electromagnets, solenoids, small dc motors and sometimes other tools with rhythmic capabilities. The composition running from the computer dictates the length of the notes and the variables and parameters of the effects that are put on top of the sounds. The  sounds are picked up by contact microphones and sent through separate audio channels into the system, where they are amplified, mixed, run through effect chains and played back through a multi-speaker system.

Because the composition is carried out in real-time (nothing is pre-recorded) moving one of the actuators changes the composition dramatically. It is a purely temporary composition, and can only exist in the space it’s designed in, for a limited time, until external circumstances are changed.

Editions of this project have been exhibited at Grasnapolsky Festival 2016&2017 in Radio Kootwijk (NL), in Etopia, Centre for Art & Technology in Zaragoza (ES), TENT Rotterdam (NL), WORM/Slash Gallery Rotterdam (NL) and Buitenland Openingsfestival in Nieuw-Amsterdam (NL).