• 00:10 Neo-Luddism and making your own things
  • 04:48 Tactile practices
  • 07:24 Intro
  • 09:18 Designing disfunctionality
  • 12:19 Strategies for looking beyond yourself
  • 14:50 An overlapping triangle
  • 18:13 Control is for governments not for artists
  • 21:30 The purple patch
  • 26:49 Accidents waiting to happen
  • 36:11 Finding performance through objects
  • 42:05 Between performance and installation
  • 44:50 A holistic approach to performance
  • 47:12 Performance-workshops and revealing process
  • 55:50 Power based music
  • 61:51 Importance of action
  • 66:21 Work with czech radio
  • 73:04 Physical editions and multimodal devices
  • 79:03 © in circuits: from Tudor to Behringer
  • 89:19 Simpler than your computer
26/10/2020 90' 39''
English
Dirty Electronics / John Richards "Punctum"

Under the moniker of Dirty Electronics, British musician and maker John Richards explores the crossroads between electronic circuit design and live performance, picking up the baton of David Tudor’s tradition of ‘composing inside electronics’. With emphasis on collaborative making and a holistic approach to performance, Dirty Electronics’ speculative circuits are documents of the larger collective experience that they are part of: expanded and quite unconventional workshops / installations unfurling as 21st-century happenings within communities of practice with a strong DIT (do it together) ethos, where usual divisions among designer, maker, composer and performer become blurred. A live practice that is durational and situated, stretching from the workbench to the stage, in a particular time determined by the objects being built. John Richards’ instruments, are not meant to be played – they are meant to be attended and explored in order to find the sound in them. As he often says, “virtuosity is in the listening” and not in the mastering of the instrument. The idea is to explore sound through materials and to embrace danger and failure.

In this podcast, John Richards tells us about the Luddites and Leicester, touches on his views on functionality, control, and safety nets, and talks about his approach to speculative circuitry, authorship and composition. Richards also describes the challenge of recording a performance-based practice and opens up his Dirty Electronics praxis through props and projects.

Playlist
01 “Ugly Sketch 1' (2015)
02 '12-days of Christmas - Day 1' (2018)
03 'Point of Failure - Motors and Jars, Radical Chip' (2020)
04 'Violation III' (2017)
05 'Points of Failure - Indoor firework with spark gaps, speak and spell, coils, resonant vessel, granular synthesis' (2020)
06 'Charge/Discharge' (2012)
07 'Dirty Electronics piece for Makoto Nomura' (2018)
08 'Dirty Electronics – Part 1 (Reykjavik)” (2016)
09 'Spatter Can' (2011)

Music by Dirty Electronics/John Richards. This podcast is part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. In collaboration with Next Festival/A4.
Erratum notice: the text John Richards refers to (53 min 30 sec) is Steve Reich, 'Music as a Gradual Process'.
Son[i]aDirty ElectronicsJohn Richardsspeculative circuitscircuit bendingcontrolNext FestivalRe-Imagine Europe

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