You have taught yourself in this fieldbeen self-taught in this field. What have you achieved, or what sort of individual perspective or way to think as an artist have you been able to establish because you are self-taught?I always tell my students that the way my brain is wired means that I failed every math class I was ever forced to take. Looking at a whiteboard full of equations either puts me to sleep, or makes me hallucinate that they are swimming around. So any introduction to electronics or computer programming that started with these equations was doomed to fail with me. However, I am otherwise very good at recognizing patterns, and this allows me to learn by doing (and often by making mistakes) very quickly. The result is that I have evolved a very practice-based body of knowledge about building digital and analog electronic instruments to a fairly specialized degree. Years of experience help me understand some of the math behind it, but the math is still rarely my starting point. I would venture to say that most students of art and music have brains similar to mine— somewhere on the ADHD spectrum. So the way I learned it can also be a way for them to learn it, if they are interested and apply themselves to it. Honestly, I think that if I can figure this out, any of them could as well!
SoundBoxes Workshop + Performance Berlin JUL 2015
SoundBoxes are small, primitive electro-acoustic instruments built from a wooden box, a speaker, a small audio amplifier and a contact microphone. During the first of two workshop days, participants learned about electricity, how it becomes sound and then how to build their own personalized SoundBoxes.
On the second day, they explored the possibilities of the SoundBoxes through a series of listening and improv exercises, with the goal of collaboratively creating the score for an immersive, surround-sound performance inspired by the works of Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, John Grzinich, David Tudor, Gordon Monahan and others, performed in a darkened room for an eyes-closed audience.
In the piece, a swarm of individual, simple sound sources such as tones and textures are modulated and moved through the space physically by the performers to create a complex sonic environment. Delicate and intimate sounds pass closely near the bodies and ears of the audience, while stronger, more extreme sounds occur at the edges of the space to give a sense of the architecture of the room and the objects in it.
More info: macumbista.net/?page_id=1897
SOUNDBOX ORCHESTRA PERFORMERS
Mert Aslantürk
Itai Bauman
Nicola Gomiero
Claire Guerin
Bethan Lloyd
Zeno Mainardi
Manami N
Rory O’Brien
Javier Salthú
Max Virnich
Ben White
Chris Zahn
Lea Zamiecka
Video by Montse Torredà Martí
18-19 July 2015, Atelier Macumba Berlin
SoundBoxes are small, primitive electro-acoustic instruments built from a wooden box, a speaker, a small audio amplifier and a contact microphone. During the first of two workshop days, participants learned about electricity, how it becomes sound and then how to build their own personalized SoundBoxes.
On the second day, they explored the possibilities of the SoundBoxes through a series of listening and improv exercises, with the goal of collaboratively creating the score for an immersive, surround-sound performance inspired by the works of Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, John Grzinich, David Tudor, Gordon Monahan and others, performed in a darkened room for an eyes-closed audience.
In the piece, a swarm of individual, simple sound sources such as tones and textures are modulated and moved through the space physically by the performers to create a complex sonic environment. Delicate and intimate sounds pass closely near the bodies and ears of the audience, while stronger, more extreme sounds occur at the edges of the space to give a sense of the architecture of the room and the objects in it.
More info: macumbista.net/?page_id=1897
SOUNDBOX ORCHESTRA PERFORMERS
Mert Aslantürk
Itai Bauman
Nicola Gomiero
Claire Guerin
Bethan Lloyd
Zeno Mainardi
Manami N
Rory O’Brien
Javier Salthú
Max Virnich
Ben White
Chris Zahn
Lea Zamiecka
Video by Montse Torredà Martí
18-19 July 2015, Atelier Macumba Berlin
You also specialize in media archaeology, could you outline for our readers the transition of this field, or the genealogy of oscilloscopes, Rutt/Etra, analog synthesizers, etc.?I’m afraid that the tangled history of physics, electronics, analog computing, and the military and entertainment industries that leads from the first cathode ray tube to the Rutt/Etra and Scanimate video synthesizer systems is far too deep a topic for a short interview. I would refer the curious reader to my book Vector Synthesis: A Media Archaeology of Sound-Modulated Light
