If you think that hackathons are just 24 hours of having fun and messing around with no real long-term results, #MTFHacks will make you think again. In the past couple of years the Music Tech Fest community has produced and tested the viability of revolutionary components and products, which are now altering the landscape of interaction with data, sound, and gesture in physical space.

Transhumanism “epitomises the most daring, courageous, imaginative and idealistic aspirations of humanity”. Bionic artists create new musical fashion wearables; creative technologists splice the inherently experimental Gunk (geek punk) ethos with notions of gender and accessibility to create new forms, new powers, and new ways of being anything other than merely ‘normal’. #MTFHacks gives selected artists, hackers, makers and developers exclusive tools to build new ways of interacting and making people extraordinary.

Hands-on experimentation and making has been at the core of the Music Tech Fest from the very start. At the #MTFHacks some of the best brains join forces in this space for experimentation, and take interaction with physical objects to its limits, over challenges that get them thinking, building, collaborating and creating projects that can go on to have a life beyond the festival.

In the past we had lots of fun hacking light sabres and ping pong tables, creating air guitars from two Android phones, making goats scream to metal, playing music with water, and electrifying didgeridoos. We also got ambitious and started creating products that seriously challenge ideas of accessibility, health and the ways we communicate. Some of the guys involved have been running a hacker space programme. Really.

Previous hacks were judged by some great music minds, including Graham Massey, Rolf Gehlhaar, Matt Black, Nitin Sawhney, Josh Saunders, Jason Singh, Paul Sonkamble and LJ Rich. Hackers were given exclusive access to our #MusicBricks toolkit, to develop entirely new product concepts.