This course explores how artists use instruments to inform performances or as tools for purposes beyond music-making, including interpersonal communication, scientific and archaeological inquiry, and therapeutic care. Looking closely at works by Nikita Gale, Clarissa Tossin, Constantina Zavitsanos, and Julia Phillips, among others, we consider instruments and objects modified by the artists that blur the line between art and functionality. Through these instruments, artists communicate ideas, systems, stories, and emotions, transforming them from tools for producing sound into dynamic mediums for acquiring, sensing, and generating knowledge about the world around us. This session is led by Fred Cruz Nowell, Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow.