This weeks article was really interesting for me. Ill first give you a quick summary, after I’ll tell you my take on it.

The article (Montgomery, Will. 2013. “Machines for Living”) is discussing the company “STEIM” (STudio for Electro-Instrumental Music), a Dutch electronic arts institution, during their annual summer party. Their work focused on creating new interfaces that allowed musicians to directly control and manipulate sound of software and electronic instruments in real-time.

Back in the 1980s, most digital technology is seen as poorly adapted to the expressive potential of the musician’s body. They believe that machines designed for office environments or studios are just too clunky for the urgent timesensitivity of the performative moment. STEIM sets themselves the task of reconnecting the human body to sound making in the digital era.

Here are some nice qotes from the text:

• “You had this fantastically expressive music, but the most unexpressive person behind it. We try to connect the two.”
• “What STEIM does is on the borderline between body and data. The task that the organisation sets itself is that of the interface: how to reconnect the human body to sound making in the digital era.”
• “The musicians we like the best are the ones who develop a really strong connection with their instrument”

So why is this so interesting for me? I’ am a musician myself (piano for 17 years, music procduction for 10 years) and growing up with technology I quickly found my way into digital music-making. First on a primitive level, but today, 15 years later, I consider myself quite advanced in it. I used to own a lot of digital synthesizers. But I never really felt connected to them. So one after another, I exchanged them from with analog synths. Why analog? Becaus I can phisically turn knobs and, just like playing a piano, connect with the instrument on another level.

But I also quickly searched for new ways to play analog synthesizers and found that i would have to build my own, to be able to modify it the way I want. So I started to learn how to build my own electronic circuits. Its tough, but its possible and a lot of fun.

At ZHdK I then met Basil Egger, ym class mate and a brilliant mind, and together we are currently building our own synth. Here’s the plan of the electronics so far:

As the electronics for this VCO (Volt Controlled Oscillator, 1V/oct) are quite straight forward, the way you can interact with them is infinite. Basically it’s current you feed into a circuit and variable resistors you change. And how you change those values is free to choose. Most of the time its done via a simple interface with knobs and plugs. But you can also go crazy with it! I plan to have a wide variaty of input ports, so we are free to experiment after I finished building the circuit.

Basil and I are currently trying to figure out on how we want to controll our own synthesizer. Is it over gesture controll? Maybe motion capture? Simple knobs? Or maybe even over brain waves? The possibilities are infinite and indeed possible! So this text comes in super handy (at least) for me right now. As an inspiration on what is possible, and what could be done and as a source to find new ideas.

We ultimately want to build something that you can use without thinking. Something that will be an extension of our artistic expression. And something that is not restrictive to use.

We have a though but fun way a head of us and I’m super excited for it!