Browsing by Author "Richards, John"
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Item Metadata only 57mm Wavetable Protest Synth(2018-03-04) Richards, John; Wainwright, MaxCalling all activists, sound artists, and pseudo philosophers. Dirty Electronics and Max Wainwright will set up an in house press with live publishing straight to 57mm width paper roll. Contribute to the ‘scroll’ through the writing of individual political texts, protests and manifesto. The texts will be indelibly written to EEPROM of a chip on an artwork printed circuit board and manifest as noise. The noise blast/text can be hacked and customised. Performance and publication will co-exist. The event will conclude with a ritualistic ‘blessing of the text’ by throwing hard grains of rice at the scroll as the text prints. The grains will create an almost-silent protest, disrupting and jamming the printer and by making small percussive sounds as they strike paper. The silent protest will be disrupted by violent noise interjections and DIY shouting horns.Item Metadata only Beta-mash(2017-04-09) Richards, JohnTake part in a Dirty Electronics event exploring video and sound: a two-day workshop building an analogue hand-held video mixer and devising a performance-installation. A be-spoke Dirty Electronics artwork printed circuit board, beta-mash, will be designed for the event. Video with its garish colours, trash movies, celebration of cheap copies, and focus on personal as opposed to collective spaces, is seen as symbolising the 1980s. Old Greek videotapes become the starting point for the analogue processing of both image and sound. Witness the work unfold, and observe the participants make the circuits and devise a performance in what could be described as a living installation.Item Metadata only Beyond DIY in electronic music(Cambridge University Press, 2013) Richards, JohnItem Metadata only A case study(Routledge, 2007) Richards, JohnItem Metadata only Computer as Text as Computer(MENT Festival, Ljubljana, 2017-02) Richards, JohnComputer as Text as Computer is a critique of the material things that surround us. Text and object are explored holistically. Write a statement, poem or polemic that scrolls across a liquid crystal display that is embedded within an artwork circuit board. Does it make sound? Explore the text and display characters as noise utterances; or disable 'noise' and read the text with the sound resonating in your own head. Computer as text is on-going research concerning the semiotics of machines and relationships with objects. Why write about machines when machines can talk for themselves? Re-order and mix your own text: ideas deconstruct.Item Metadata only Dark Electronics (Sapporo International Arts Festival)(2017-09-19) Richards, John; Horio, KantaDarkness – a room without a window Make a sound circuit Blow into a whistle to generate electric current, light and sound A collective performance Take part in an all-day event making a Dirty Electronics’ sound and light circuit in oblique conditions. What happens when darkness descends on our workbench? And mains electricity becomes scarce and precious? Dirty Electronics’ and Kanta Horio’s Dark Electronics is an event where the making is set out like a score with preconditions. These preconditions are designed to test and challenge us. A performance unfolds. Success and failure are both possible. The event will include making the Dirty Electronics’ Whistle Turbine that uses the breath to generate electric current, light and sound, and a public performance. more info The preconditions will: Force the simplification of designs and constructs Question optimisation and efficiency in production Act as a call for collective action and do-it-together (DIT) Critique maker culture and tokenistic making Celebrate the hand-made and manual labour Emphasise touch and listening Create an holistic practice of making and performingItem Metadata only Dirty Electronics Colossus - BEAST: Pantry Sessions Hand-made Music(2015-12-10) Richards, JohnTake part in a large-group performance that questions our relationship with coding and sound generation. Ideas such as tangible and collective coding will be explored along with DIY electronics. A hybrid digital/analogue device will be built: a miniature ‘computer’, microprocessor control system that can be programmed and live coded by touching parts of the circuit board; and a voltage controlled feedback circuit. A dozen miniature programmable sound generating devices will be amassed and set in sync. Synchronisation will slowly unravel to leave an asynchronous interaction between the devices and a complex texture of interlocking and ‘dissonant’ patterns. The title of the work is taken from the gigantic mainframe computer of Bletchley Park that is considered to be the first digital programmable computer.Item Metadata only Dirty Electronics Mute Synth 4.0 Synth(Mute Records, 2018-12-07) Richards, JohnThe Dirty Electronics MUTE 4.0 SYNTH is a synth with inputs, a digital wavetable synthesiser, an analogue noise circuit, and programmable sequencer. These features can all be combined in an environment to experiment with sound. Being hand-held, battery-powered and with headphone and line out, the synth is ideal for music making on the move as well as in the studio. At a turn of a knob and press of a button, sequences, control voltages, and cut-up loops can be programmed; or listen to the Voltage Collection by Dirty Electronics. The MUTE 4.0 SYNTH is on-going research by Dirty Electronics into making music with wires and code, objects and materials; and an artwork printed circuit board collaboration with Adrian Shaughnessy and Regular Practice. Printed circuit board meets album cover. Expand the Synth with a limited edition chip by Dirty Electronics and Max Wainwright with mangled waveforms and accompanying fold-out booklet on microcomputer music.Item Metadata only Dirty Electronics Mute Synth II(Mute Records, 2014-11) Richards, JohnThe Dirty Electronics Mute Synth II (MSII) is a hand-held synth and sequencer. At the core of the instrument is a versatile mini patchbay that provides expansion and modification permutations and a grid-like visual representation of patched parameters using coloured jumpers. The patchbay encourages a particular interaction with the instrument and playfulness. The printed circuit board artwork, black and silver finish, has multiple touch electrodes in the form of small squares that provide a labyrinth of possible connections and resulting behaviours. Different rhythmic sequences are created through hybrid 4-bit binary coding, feedback loops and bit bashing. The graphical artwork for the printed circuit board was done in collaboration with Adrian Shaughnessy. The Mute Synth II is Dirty Electronics’ second hand-held synth with Mute Records, the first being created in 2011. One of the main ideas behind the Mute Synth II was to consider the dissemination of a musical idea other than through recorded fixed media, and to explore the intersection between sound object and artwork etching. The synth also presents the notion of writing music through electronics and code. The Mute Synth II is a statement against MPEG culture and places an onus on active participant rather than passive consumer. The synth has been born out of Dirty Electronics’ ongoing commitment to DIY approaches and noise aesthetics, and serves as a catalyst for experimenting with electronic sound. Additional modules and hacks allow for the instrument to be customised.Item Metadata only Dirty Electronics Soho Radio Residency(2018-03) Richards, JohnDirty Electronics Soho Radio Residency 19 – 23 March celebrating Music for DIY Electronics. With special guests, workshops, micro forum & performances, broadcast, and exhibition featuring artwork PCBs and graphic scores: Adrian Shaughnessy (Mute Synth), DIYer Victor Mazon and James Joslin (Edition Peters). Prints by Natalie Kay-Thatcher; Isambard Khroustaliov (Sam Britton) code as score and instrument; Duncan Chapman’s collection of rare scores from Universal Edition; scores from Tudor, Cage, Oliveros, and Skempton; and more.Item Metadata only Dirty Electronics: Capacity(2015-09-15) Richards, JohnA two-day exploration into the world of electronic circuits, sound-making and choreography. Capacity looks at the very essence of electronic circuits: the humble capacitor and the flow of electric current. The capacitor (condenser) is seen as a metaphor for momentarily holding on to an energy that is transient and fleeting. A choreography is also suggested that studies the dichotomy of charging and discharging and how energy can be created, held and dissipated. Attendees are invited to build an electronic sound circuit that becomes the starting point for choreography. A fluid interchangeable workspace will be created: dance studio will become laboratory and vice versa. There is no distinction made between builder, sound-maker or choreographer, but a philosophy is adopted where building and investigating the electronic circuit and sound object becomes part of the performance practice. The building process brings the performer closer to the object and serves as an analysis of circuit ‘behaviour’. From this analysis and investigation, a choreography is formed that encourages the performer to look beyond the ‘self’ toward an object-orientated ontology.Item Metadata only Dirty Electronics: Dommune Live Broadcast (Tokyo, Japan)(2017-09-12) Richards, JohnLive broadcast and video stream of Dirty Electronics performance of new work with Kanta Horio, Dark Electronics, for Sapporo International Art Festival (SIAF) 2017.Item Metadata only Dirty Electronics: Scream(Insomnia Festival, Tromso, Norway, 2016-10) Richards, JohnHow can something as primordial as the voice find its way into code to become data?’. ‘Can such data carry meaning?’, or, ‘Can the voice ‘become’ sound object? insomnia scream is a machine that takes vocal utterances and twists them into sequences of analogous noise. The machine utters. The machine converses. The sound object is a printed circuit board (PCB) artwork exploring the intersection between etching techniques and electronics. Sequences of electronic noise and oscillations are created through screaming (or singing) into a miniature on-circuit board microphone that acts as an analogue input/sensor for a microprocessor. The sound object draws on a reductionist design aesthetic, a minimal control interface, and is ‘played’ through the voice. The printed circuit board is investigated for its visual qualities/characteristics afforded by its electronic components. PCB manufacturing techniques of solder finishes (copper/silver/gold), coloured protective lacquers, and on-board screen-printing are also exploited. The object lends itself towards developing ‘devious slants’ for the performance of electronic music and live coding and, in doing so, presents a number of polar concepts: control/lack of control as a performer; human/machine interaction; voice as code/data; voice as instrument/sound; gestural vs. automated; loop vs. line; product as package, package as product; and active engager vs. passive consumer. Attendees of insomnia Festival will have the opportunity to make the object in a workshop with Dirty Electronics.Item Metadata only DIY and Maker Communities in Electronic Music(Cambridge University Press, 2017-10) Richards, JohnSince the late 1990s, there has been huge growth in new do-it-yourself (DIY) and maker communities, reflecting the democratisation of technology. Such practitioners have tended to reject pervasive and ubiquitous technologies and ‘virtualness’, and have moved towards working directly with materials through arts and crafts approaches. Running alongside the growth of digital technologies and culture, a counter-culture took hold, built on grassroots initiatives that had ‘much in common with punk rock, knitting clubs or ham radio societies’ (Richards 2013, p. 274). This maker spirit was also deeply rooted in an ideology of self- sufficiency and self-expression and the empowerment of the individual. Perhaps self- contradictory, DIY often became more about doing-it-together (DIT) or doing-it-with-others (DIWO). Workshops and maker participatory events flourished. Hackspaces/Hackerspaces and Fab Labs (fabrication laboratories) began to emerge as physical locations where active participants could meet, share tools and ideas and learn through making and taking things apart. This maker ideology and cultural activity has had a major influence on music and music technology, from how music is disseminated and consumed to, most significantly, how music is experienced culturally. What could be considered as a maker music scene is replete with enthusiasts who build their own modular synthesisers, create their own Theremins and musical robots, deploy microprocessors for control mechanisms and sound generation, share open-source hardware and software and explore the resources of electronic music at a fundamental level of components, wires, and solder.Item Metadata only Item Metadata only Getting the hands dirty.(MIT Press, 2008) Richards, JohnItem Metadata only Green/Raj packet II music with the group Sand for dance piece choreographed by Saburu Teshigawara(2002-12-14) Richards, JohnItem Metadata only Hidden Sine(2015-05-12) Richards, JohnHidden Sine explores self-made instruments and large group performance, and ‘sound curious’ that are concerned with the way of the hand, touch and affordance (action possibilities). Hidden Sine draws loosely on object orientated philosophy and theory of affordances. The premise is that an object may have artistic/sound potential, often hidden, that can be revealed through investigation and praxis. This investigation operates on a number of levels covering sound, plastic arts and actions/theatre. The building of circuits and sound devices is also seen as a method for creating a tabula rasa, and how the idea of delegated performance, where instruments are played by ‘non-experts’, serves to establish a naive approach and authenticity in performance.Item Metadata only Horn & Bells(2015-07-13) Richards, JohnTaking inspiration from Capsule’s artwork for the Supersonic 2015 edition. Build a three-dimensional sound-object with printed circuit board artwork, and DIY piezo flared horn that omits bursts of noise and generative electronic bell-like sounds. Composition through exploring bell change ringing patterns and sound circuit creation through ugly construction techniques.Item Open Access Loop & Line(2017-02-17) Richards, John; Schuylenburch, Ellen VanIn a response to the theme of CoLab 2017, Different and the Same, Dirty Electronics present Loop & Line. The piece explores the idea of the singular phrase, line - born out of human gesture - versus automated repetitive loops. All performers will work together to make small, strap-on devices that through movement generate patterns and sequences of noise and glitches. The performer is able to switch between read and write modes of operation thus emphasizing the dichotomy of loop and line. The behavior of the circuits and the generation of data through movement act as starting points for instrumental composition and performance. The ‘players’ similarly explore the idea of repetitive motifs and flowing gestures to produce overlapping patterns and intertwined melodic phrases.
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