Modular Synthesis Patching Machines and People

Introduction - Andreas Kitzmann and Einar Engström

Preface (All Patched Up: A Material and Discursive History of Modularity and Control Voltages) - Ezra J. Teboul

1. The Buchla Music Easel: From Cyberculture to Market Culture

Theodore Gordon

2. Modular Synthesizers as Conceptual Models

Jonathan De Souza

3. A Time-Warped Assemblage as a Musical Instrument: Flexibility and Constauration of Modular Synthesis in Willem Twee Studio 1 

Hannah Bosma

4. Interview

Dani Dobkin

5. Gordon Mumma’s Sound-Modifier Console

Michael Johnsen

6. Artist Statement: Switchboard Modulars – Vacant Levels and Intercept Tones

Lori Napoleon

7. Eurorack to VCV Rack: Modular Synthesis as Compositional Performance

Justin Randell and Hillegonda C. Rietveld

8. Strange Play: Parametric Design and Modular Learning

Kurt Thumlert, Jason Nolan, Melanie McBride, and Heidi Chan

9. Grid Culture

Arseni Troitski and Eliot Bates

10. Modular Ecologies

Bana Haffar

11. Ourorack: Altered States of Consciousness and Auto-Experimentation with Electronic Sound

William J. Turkel 

12. Patching Possibilities: Resisting Normative Logics in Modular Interfaces

Asha Tamirisa

13. Draft/Patch/Weave: Interfacing the Modular Synthesizer with the Floor Loom

Jacob Weinberg and Anna Bockrath

14. Composing Autonomy in Thresholds and Fragile States

David Dunn and David Kant

15. Virtual Materiality: Simulated Mediation in the Eurorack Synthesizer Format

Ryan Page

16. Interview: Designing Instruments as Designing Problems

Meng Qi

17. Interviews with Four Toronto-based Modular Designers

Heidi Chan

18. Interview

Dave Rossum

19. Interview

Paulo Santos

20. Interview

Corry Banks

21. Modular Synthesis in the Era of Control Societies

Sparkles Stanford

22. Randomness, Chaos, and Communication

Naomi Mitchell

23. Interview

Andrew Fitch

24. From "What If?" to "What Diff?" And Back Again

Michael Palumbo and Graham Wakefield

25. Interview: The Mycelia of Does-Nothing Objects

Brian Crabtree

Biography

Ezra J. Teboul is a researcher and artist, and currently a student librarian at Concordia University. They obtained a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2020. In 2022, they were a scholar-in-residence at the Columbia University Computer Music Center. Their work focuses on the material histories of electricity, work, and music.

Andreas Kitzmann is an associate professor of Humanities at York University in Toronto, Canada. His research interests include modular synthesis, technology and culture, digital media and community, and memory studies. His self-authored books include The Hypertext Handbook: The Straight Story and Saved from Oblivion: Documenting the Daily from Diaries to Web Cams. He has co-edited two books, and his work has also been included in various edited collections and journals such as A History of English Autobiography (2016), From Text to Txting: New Media in the Classroom (2012), the International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (2017), First Monday (2015), and Organized Sound (2023).

Einar Engström is a software engineer, modular synthesist, and computer musician. Creatively, he has been known to code in Lua, SuperCollider, Tidal Cycles, and the Teletype esolang, whilst professionally he primarily inhabits the BEAM ecosystem. Both practices are natural extensions to Einar’s previous PhD research into the history and philosophy of computing music programming, which focused on the Acoustical and Behavioral Research Center at Bell Laboratories—the first behemoth of innovation in both telecommunications and computing. He also holds an MA in Visual Culture from Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan), is a former editor-in-chief of the bilingual international contemporary art magazine LEAP (Beijing, China) and technician and researcher at RE/Lab (Toronto Metropolitan University), and has hands in various electronic music record labels.

"Just when everyone thought digital had evolved into music’s alpha species, modular analog synthesizers resurged after decades of dormancy. Modular Synthesis provides a valuable overview of how and why the technology that redefined the musical instrument in the 1960s became relevant and transformative again."

Nicolas Collins, composer and author of Handmade Electronic Music — The Art of Hardware Hacking

"It’s no accident that the first academic collection on modular synthesizers touches on so many disciplines. Across its pages you will hear from musicians, artists, makers, and scholars from across the arts and human sciences. How many books on music discuss looms, switchboards, and electric fish? How many books on philosophy examine the material metaphors on which philosophers’ ideas are based? How many books on electronics include studies of education or the gendered politics of naming? Modular Synthesis is as varied, multidisciplinary, and enchanting as its object of study."

Jonathan Sterne, author of Diminished Faculties, MP3, and The Audible Past