15-20 NOV: LiquenLab, Punta Arenas (workshop, concert & residency)
22 NOV: La Casa Rodante, Santiago (concert w/ Un Festín Sagital)
24 NOV: Stgo Makerspace, Santiago Mini Maker Faire (workshop)
26 NOV – 02 DEC: Ciudad Abierta, Ritoque (residency, workshop, concert)
03-08 DEC: Tsonami Festival, Valparaiso (workshop, concert)

¡Nuevas: instrucciones de SoundBoxes/Cajas Sonidas en Español aqui!

Muchas gracias a Fernando Godoy M, Rodrigo Ríos Zunino, Nataniel Alvarez, Sandra Ulloa, Oscar Santis, Claudia González Godoy, Macarena Pola, Michel de Un Festín Sagital, Ervo Perez, Alexander del Re y Montse Torredà Martí.

Derek Holzer and Seth Zahn play “Animals (for two analog modular systems)”

“Time Lapse” event, Berlin Art Week, Altes Finanzamt
Schönstedtstraße 7 – EG Neukölln 12043 Berlin
U7 Rathaus Neukölln (Exit Schönstedtstraße)
Sat 21 September 2013 20:00

Think less Pink Floyd’s pigs on the wing, and more what you might hear if you could amplify the kind of animals seen under a microscope. A live improvisation, built up from scratch on Serge and DIY analog modular synthesizers and played at high volume by two performers with nothing to lose. Derek Holzer is an American sound artist and instrument builder who has made Berlin his home for several years, while Seth Zahn is a more recent transplant to this city’s experimental scene from Brazil.

http://macumbista.net/
http://soundcloud.com/macumbista
http://soundcloud.com/dragns

Also playing:

Oscar Palou
and
Robert Rosshoff

Dear readers, I will be doing another run of Benjolins (four in total). Production will start on 01 September, with projected shipping date by 15 September. The design will be similar to the Benjolin 2013v2, seen here:

http://macumbista.net/?p=3579

and here:

http://macumbista.net/?p=3642

but slightly different, more “modular” in style, with attenuators on all the control voltage inputs, and without the external input to the filter on this run.

Price will be EUR 495 (incl. 19% EU VAT) / EUR 416 (shipped outside the EU) plus shipping.

I also have three or four WolfTone SoundBoxes which can be made to order, with a choice of several handmade Japanese paper interiors. You can see details here:

http://macumbista.net/?p=3626

Price will be EUR 250 (incl. 19% EU VAT) / EUR 210 (shipped outside the EU) plus shipping.

Please let me know if you are interested by using the CONTACT page of this website, or emailing me at MACUMBISTA at the domain GMAIL dot COM, and thank you for your kind attention.

Live internet radio from NK Projekt Berlin, starts 20:00 CEST, Weds 31 July. The show will also be archived on the radi0n website.

“Several years ago, I abandoned the digital sound world to spend (quite a bit of) time building a modular analog synthesizer based on the forms and functions of the legendary Serge and Buchla systems from the 1960s and 70s. In performance, I summon the chaotic, generative powers of this machine to explore the physical affects of volume, frequency and complexity within a given space. For fans of Maryanne Amacher, Bernard Parmegiani, Eliane Radigue and Slayer.”
–Derek Holzer

http://radio0n.wordpress.com/

My apologies for those that couldn’t connect to the stream… no one told me it was limited to 10 people until too late! I have uploaded the two live sets and interviews as an edited MP3, total 59 minutes: http://tinyurl.com/mqlm3uc

This will be up until 08 August. Enjoy!

Duelling Benjolins from macumbista on Vimeo.

Although I have been building Benjolins for more than one year, this was the first night I actually had two Benjolins finished at the same time. So of course I had to get them communicating with each other. As usual, please forgive the less-than-high-fidelity in-camera mic sound.

I’m taking reservations for four new hand-made Benjolin 2013v3 pieces to be produced in August. The design will be slightly different, more “modular” in style, with attenuators on all the control voltage inputs. Price should be EUR 495 (incl. 19% EU VAT) / EUR 416 (shipped outside the EU).

Let me know if you are interested, and thanks for your kind attention.

I have been invited to give a lecture on optical sound synthesis as well as perform the TONEWHEELS live set as part of the Eye for an Ear Festival in Berlin later this month. There are quite a few other amazing people involved in this, namely Andrei Smirnov, whose recent book “Sound in Z: Experiments In Sound And Electronic Music In Early 20th Century Russia” is one of the best things I’ve read in the last year.

Full details should be available on the NK website soon, and those of you with FaceBook can access the event page here.

LECTURE

“A Brief History of Optical Synthesis”, a lecture by Derek Holzer, Wed June 26th 21:00 at NK Projekt Berlin

The technology of direct optical synthesis arose with the first sound-on-film motion pictures. In the 1930′s, several designs for optical synthesizers were produced in the USSR, Germany and United States, with a handful even being commercially realized to great amount of techno-utopian hype. The future of sound, we were assured, was made of light.

However, the use of optical synthesis for electronic music creation was largely abandoned after the Second World War in favor of techniques derived from new military technologies which made the V2 rocket and the atomic bomb possible. Thus, contemporary research into optical sound synthesis represents a media-archaeology of “the road not taken”, that of a connection to the culture of film and music versus the science of destruction and death.

PERFORMANCE

TONEWHEELS (Derek Holzer: sounds, electronics), Friday June 28th 20:00 at NK Projekt Berlin

TONEWHEELS is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions. Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry to produce sound and light pulsations and textures. This all-analog set is performed entirely live without the use of computers, using only overhead projectors as light source, performance interface and audience display. In this way, TONEWHEELS aims to open up the “black box” of electronic music and video by exposing the working processes of the performance for the audience to see.

The Benjolin is a standalone synthesizer designed by Rob Hordijk from the Netherlands. It contains two oscillators (one LFO and one VCO), a low pass filter and a circuit called a “Rungler”, which allows chaotic cross-modulation possibilities between the different parts of the circuit. Hordijk refers to the Benjolin as a circuit which has been “bent by design.”

These hand-made Macumbista Benjolins have been further customized with a patchbay, which can be used to interface with other modular synthesizers, or to setup further feedback systems within the Benjolin itself, a switchable external line input to the Benjolin filter and LEDs displaying the internal state of the Rungler.

For Spring 2013, I will produce five of these Benjolins, housed in antique wooden slide/dia boxes. One Benjolin from this run has been sold, and four more are available for order, with shipping on or before 21 June 2013.

This run is sold out!. These Benjolins are produced under licensed agreement with Rob Hordijk.

This instrument ships with an external 110V or 220V AC/AC converter wall power supply.

Please email MACUMBISTA at the domain GMAIL dot COM with orders and inquiries. Other customizations are available on request. Thank you for your kind attention.

AUDIO DEMOS

Quick and dirty demo of Benjolin 2013v1, the first of several Benjolins to be built for sale in 2013.

A familiar old loop run through the filter section of the Macumbista Benjolin2013v2 via simple line-in modification. Filter cutoff frequency modulated by hand, by the two oscillators and Rungler sections of the Benjolin and by various control voltages available from the banana-jack patchbay.

I am pleased to finally announce that I will be the co-curator of the next LAK Festival for Nordic Sound Art in Copenhagen, over the weekend of 26-29 September 2013.

My main contribution to the festival program is a series of workshops around the theme of the “Fifth Wall”. If the well-known “fourth wall” refers to the boundary between the artist and their audience, often “broken” through techniques of meta-narrative in theater and film, the term “fifth wall” could describe the boundaries between the audience members themselves during a shared artistic experience. The Fifth Wall Workshops series for the LAK Festival 2013 concerns itself with how this boundary can be broken within the traditional festival format of performance, installation and lecture, and in a world where almost everyone has become a digital art producer. These workshops emphasize participatory situations which transform festival visitors from passive receivers to active creators of sound art. Eventually, both “artist” and “wall” dissolve away, leaving the responsibility of presenting the workshop results with the participants themselves.

I look forward to sharing the list of invited workshop artists next month when everything is confirmed. Further information on the festival itself should soon be available at the following locations:

http://www.lakfestival.dk/

http://www.facebook.com/Lakfestival

SOUNDBOXES WORKSHOP with DEREK HOLZER

DATE: 25 May 2013
TIME: 12pm – 7pm
LOCATION: Stpln, Stapelbäddsgatan 3, Malmö (map at : http://stpln.se/ )
PUBLIC PRESENTATION: 8pm (please invite your friends!)
COST: 100 SEK (plus one box to bring, see below)

Strictly limited to 12 places! Please register by sending an email to ljudlek (at) gmail (dot) com with ‘Soundboxes Workshop’ as the subject.

WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT

Discover the hidden sonic qualities of objects from our everyday world in this hands-on workshop, combining the arts of electronics, noise, sculpture and collage. The basic elements we will employ are a wooden box, a speaker, a small audio amplifier and a contact microphone. To this, brave box-builders will add their own found objects, graphics, images, memories and ideas to create a unique electroacoustic cabinet of curiosities.

WHAT TO BRING

I will provide most of the tools and materials necessary for constructing the box, however there are a few things you should bring yourself:

1) A BOX (REQUIRED): This should be made of thin wood or very strong cardboard. No metal! This box should be a minimum of 10x10x4cm. Cigar boxes, small suitcases, instrument cases or jewelry/silverware boxes are all good things to look for.

IMPORTANT: The lid of the box should be no more than 5mm thick, to allow the hardware to be mounted.

2) A SPEAKER (OPTIONAL): If you want a speaker larger than the 92mm ones I will provide, you can salvage one from old hi-fi systems, clock radios or portable stereos. Please make sure it fits in the box you have chosen!

3) FOUND/SOUND OBJECTS (OPTIONAL): Please bring as many found objects as you can to decorate your soundbox or use as a sound source via the contact microphone. See VIDEOS and PHOTOS links below for inspiration.

VIDEOS

http://vimeo.com/16567547
https://vimeo.com/34477093

MORE INFO + PHOTOS

http://macumbista.net/?page_id=1897

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Derek Holzer (1972) is an American instrument builder and sound artist based in Berlin DE, whose current interests include DIY analog electronics, field recording, media archaeology and the meeting points of electroacoustic, noise, improv and extreme music. He has played live experimental sound, as well as taught noise art technology workshops across Europe, North America, Brazil and New Zealand.

This workshop has been organized by James Brewster with support from Kulturbryggan.

The Spring SoundBoxes are small, portable and battery-powered electro-acoustic instruments. They can create a variety of drone and reverb-type sounds through feedback between a small speaker and a resonant piezo-electric microphone, as seen in this video. Or they can bring out the hidden sounds within found objects as seen in this video.

These SoundBoxes are unique, handmade works of sonic art, made from German cigar boxes dating from the 1930′s to the 1960′s, and feature transparent and backlit 77mm black speakers, a resonant-spring contact mic, a line-out for recording and “circuit-bending” body contacts. They can also simply be used as cigar-box amplifiers for whatever other electronic instruments you might have.

Each of these SoundBoxes can be purchased for EUR 95 (incl. 19% EU VAT) / EUR 80 (non-EU) plus postage costs. Please include the number in the edition which interests you.

This is the second ten of an edition of thirty this season. The first ten, featuring a larger, black speaker, may be seen here.

Contact “macumbista” AT_THE_DOMAIN “gmail.com”. And thanks for your kind attention.

REMAINING BOXES FROM THIS LINE: 14/30, 16/30, 17/30, 18/30. All others reserved or sold.