(Photo courtesy of Lee Hyeoma)

Cristobal Martinez is a founder of the indigenous performance group Radio Healer.

Cristobal Martinez is playing The Beast – a silver-spiked metal box with knobs that’s hooked up to an amplifier.

“This is a very simple, traditional kind of noise box," he said as otherworldly squawks and screams come from the speakers behind him. "It’s just a box with a bunch of knobs and buttons."   

It’s one of many musical instruments Martinez made from old electronics and recycled parts. He picks up a synthesizer he made from mailing tubes and old computer speakers.

"I can remove the tube cap, and I can use the tube cap as a way to modulate the sound. And then I’ve got some photo cells here, so it kinda plays like a theremin.”

Another instrument is fashioned from an old golfing video game controller with joysticks connected to pulleys and strings. It might seem obsolete to most, but after Martinez hacked it, it's become something like a sonic marionette. 

“You can control the filter of a tone by pulling on these strings," Martinez said stretching out his arms. "You pull on these strings in a different direction and you can change the pitch.” 

On their own these instruments may not seem musical, but together they become something more complex.

Martinez works with the three other members of his group to build layers of sound. They play their hacked electronics as well as more traditional indigenous instruments, like a tone block and an ayoyote rattle.   

Radio Healer is an improvised performance that’s been adapted from traditional Native American healing ceremonies. Martinez said the concepts of adaptive reuse and sustainability are extensions of the groups’ indigenous heritage.

“We’re using those knowledge systems as a framework for hacking these new media technologies,” Martinez said. 

The performance is both musical and visual. As the music drones, black and white images of barren strip malls and desolate urban landscapes are projected on a screen.

Radio Healer member Edgar Cardenas hopes the images and sounds challenge their audience to think about their relationship with society. He said performing allows him to tune out the white noise of advertising and commercialism.

“You stop becoming merely a consumer of the technology that’s mediated for you, and you start actually being the producer,” Cardenas said.

Raven Kemp is the youngest member of the group. He has experienced life on the Navajo Reservation and now lives in Phoenix.  

“I feel like staying here in the city and having those kinds of instruments kinda feels like having the reservation here,” Kemp said.

Cracking open computers and soldering circuit boards has led to even more questions about the inner workings of the world around him.

"That’s what this group has taught me," Kemp said. "To take apart all I’ve known and rework it as something else.” 

Martinez likens the group’s experimental approach to the bold ingenuity of Chicano lowrider culture.

“Hack the car, re-imagine the car and create a whole new type of ride - a whole new type of experience," Martinez said. "In doing that, you create a tool for hacking the rules of the road, which is essentially to get the traffic to slow down.” 

That’s what Radio Healer would like their audience to do. Slow down – tune in - and listen.