Instrumental change

Pedro Reyes transformed discarded weapons into musical instruments for the digital age.

Shotguns, revolvers and machine guns are beautifully transformed into musical instruments for the digital age.

Pedro Reyes’s Disarm project is the second generation of instruments made using the remnants of weapons that the Mexican army collected and destroyed. The Mexican artist collaborated with a team of musicians and Cocolab, a media studio in Mexico City to create eight instruments that form an orchestra.

Reyes’s aim is to create awareness around visible and invisible violence around the world. The music made by the destroyed weapons aim to free the lives of those they took and express peace to all who are and were affected by violence.

Reyes successfully transformed the “agents of death” into “instruments of life” that are representative of the digital age of today. The instruments are programmed and operated via computers, making them capable of performing music concerts with compositions prepared beforehand.

Disarm was showcased at the Lisson Gallery in London earlier this year.

Also see Reyes’s first generation of musical instruments, Imagine

Watch the Talk with Pedro Reyes