Smomid

S.M.O.M.I.D (string Modeling midi device) is a project by Nick Demopoulos, who is a musician and instrument builder. As Smomid, he utilizes instruments he has designed to create audiovisual performances. These instruments create sound, emit light through high powered LED displays embedded in the instruments and control video animations. He has toured throughout the United States and Internationally, with appearances at Lincoln Center in New York, the Vrystaat Kunstfees in South Africa and the 2023 Jogja Noise Bombing Festival in Indonesia. As a guitarist Nick Demopoulos worked with NEA jazz master Chico Hamilton and recorded on the albums The Inquiring Mind, Revelation and Euphoric. He also released recordings with Exegesis, a group that mixes jazz and electronic music. In 2008, on behalf of the U.S. State Department, Exegesis worked as cultural diplomats, performing in Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, U.A.E and Kuwait. Other artists he has performed and/or recorded with include Vernon Reid, Camille Brown, George Bohannon and Jimmy Owens. There are four full length albums of music created with Smomid and Pyramidi instruments, Cyber Solstice (2022), Pyramidi Scheme (2019), A Smoment in Time (2017), and Rhythms of Light (2015). Nick has performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center Film Society, Montreux Jazz Festival, LACMA, the National Geographic Museum, the Museum of Technology, the Whitney Museum, Hamberg Jazz Festival, the Phoenix Festival, and been featured with his self designed instruments on the Discovery Science Network, Guitar World, Create Digital Music, BOMB magazine, and Metal Injection among other media outlets.

The inspiration to build the first Smomid sprung from a void in devices that allow a guitar player to interface with computer software. At that time Nick was playing with Exegesis and using a guitar as his instrument, but used a computer to trigger samples and record loops. One day he had a revelation that the two pursuits could be combined into a single instrument, and after much experimentation, research and persistence the Smomid was born in 2010.