MOBILE AND UBIQUITOUS SYSTEMS www.computer.org/pervasive

A Solder’s Tale: Putting the “Lead” Back in “Lead Users”

Nicolas Collins

Vol. 7, No. 3 July–September 2008

This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

© 2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

For more information, please see www.ieee.org/web/publications/rights/index.html. THE HACKING TRADITION

A Solder’s Tale: Putting the “Lead” Back in “Lead Users”

A composer’s view of the history of hardware hacking, contrasting the aesthetic implications of circuitry and software.

nce upon a time, computers that this switch transformed a recording device were not pervasive. Lead users into a performance instrument. The buttons used lead solder instead. Or at and knobs that would normally initiate and least they did in my fi eld: exper- adjust the direct transfer of acoustic sound to imental and . tape became the interface for manipulating elec- MainframeO computers didn’t fi t into instrument tronic sounds.) I was smitten by the siren call cases; homemade circuits did. of electronic music but unable to afford any of With the emergence of microcomputers in the instruments available at the time: Moogs, the late 1970s, the action began to shift from Arps, and Buchlas synthesizers were still the hardware to software. But today, after three playthings of pop stars and universities. decades of increasingly digital musical culture, Integrated circuits, on the other hand—the analog circuitry has experienced something of a guts of those costly machines—were getting comeback. , hardware hacking, cheaper in inverse proportion to their sophis- and visual artists’ enthusiasm for things physi- tication. These chips contained 90 percent of cal have fostered a revival of interest in tactile a functional circuit designed by someone who alternatives to software. really knew what he (almost all of the engineers This article traces the his- at the time were male) was doing; the remain- The School of the Art Institute tory of my engagement post- ing 10 percent could be fi lled in by someone of Chicago Cagean music, with an eye to- clueless, like myself. The trick was fi nding the ward technological innovation right chips and application notes. In the days and its aesthetic implications. before the World Wide Web, information was much more compartmentalized, with precious When circuits ruled few leaks. When data did trickle down from the It’s a familiar enough story: as a teenage musi- engineers to amateurs through hobbyist mag- cian, I was undistinguished at best, but the pop azines, it was passed from hand to hand like music of the late 1960s drew me to electronic samizdat literature. sound. In 1971, having reached the limits of My first chip was a Signetics SE/NE 566 what I could accomplish with a guitar, fl ute, Phase Locked Loop (www.datasheetarchive. and fuzzbox, I bought a used Tandberg reel-to- com/NE566-datasheet.html). Intended as the reel tape recorder. It contained a hidden, un- bleating heart of the (then novel) Touch-Tone documented switch that, when thrown, induced telephone, this was an “oscillator on a chip.” delicious, semicontrollable swoops of feedback. Although not quite so versatile as one from Rob- (What strikes me as signifi cant in retrospect is ert Moog’s hand, at US$5, it was considerably

32 PERVASIVE computing Published by the IEEE CS ■ 1536-1268/08/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE cheaper. (Years later, I discovered that performance, such as ensemble inter- bined the affordable electronics with this same IC was the heart of the elec- action and acoustical sensitivity.2 It re- which I was familiar, the architectural tronic sruti box, Paul DeMarinis’ fi rst conceived the musical score as a task to acoustics that Lucier brought to my at- circuit, and ’s extraor- be solved and, despite Lucier’s aversion tention, and a classic minimalist, task- dinary homemade synthesizer. This to the term, depended heavily on what oriented score. Through this work and one chip might have been to the devel- could only be termed “improvisation.” other feedback pieces, I learned that opment of American electronic music For me, this latter trait was the fi nal new instruments and sound materials what the Stratocaster was to the rise of piece of the puzzle: the link between often suggest new musical forms—the rock and roll.) the “high art” of the European clas- architecture determines the tuning and My chip sat regally in the center of an sical tradition (in which even a mav- scale, for example—at the same time oversized prototyping circuit board, en- erick like Lucier was deeply rooted) that they rule out conventional ones.4 cased in a phenomenally ugly (yet to me very professional looking) metal box with a crinkly matte-black fi nish, fes- My approach to design lay somewhere tooned with orange Dymo labels that offi ciously designated the mismatched between a Jasper Johns-ian version knobs, switches, and jacks as “pitch,” “on,” “output,” and so forth. Ugly or of “reverse engineering” and a simian typing not, this box not only made electronic music the moment I turned it on, it pool’s attempt at Shakespeare. also twisted truisms that might other- wise scare off a young experimentalist: and all those other musical genres in I continued to build my own cir- anything worth doing is worth doing which I felt more comfortable, such cuits. Possessing neither the instinct wrong, and two wrongs can make a as pop, blues, and jazz. I posited that nor the intellectual tools for a proper right—these became my house rules the breakthrough character of a piece study of electrical engineering, I picked for hardware hacking. like Vespers was inextricably bound up knowledge piecemeal: I scrutinized The last few months of high school to the abandonment of traditional designs in engineering journals; I stole were spent in my bedroom—with a instruments, with all their “cultural bench space in a physics lab; I sat at microphone, the warped Tandberg baggage” (to disinter a cliché of the Behrman’s feet during his artist’s res- recorder, and this oscillator—mak- time) and the embrace of new elec- idency; and eventually I joined David ing electronic music. My instruments tronic resources. Tudor’s “Composers Inside Electron- were crude but eminently playable. Yet Inspired by Lucier’s example, I dis- ics” group.5 I played for an audience of none in my carded all the instruments and many My approach to design lay some- parent’s apartment, while the pop mu- of the musical preconceptions I had where between a Jasper Johns-ian sic I knew and loved was fi lling concert brought with me to college and began version of “reverse engineering” (take halls and clubs. I wanted to take elec- developing new electronic tools of my something apart, copy it, make a vari- tronic music out of the bedroom, but I own, suitable for live performance. ation, see if it still works, try another didn’t know where to start. Some were simply adaptations or re- variation, and so on) and a simian confi gurations of familiar devices, such typing pool’s attempt at Shakespeare Interaction and improvisation as a speaker and microphone set up to (random component substitution.) In the fall, I started college at Wesleyan feed back. In my composition Pea Soup I blew up a lot of chips but became University and met , a com- (1974–76), for example, a self-stabiliz- quite profi cient at a few specifi c types poser who didn’t own a piano, didn’t ing network of phase shifters nudges of circuits that were useful in my mu- write for conventional instruments the pitch of audio feedback to a dif- sic (if nobody else’s). (much less play one), and yet had an ac- ferent resonant frequency every time The instruments I made shared a few tive career as a “composer/performer.” feedback starts to build, replacing the defi ning characteristics. They could all be His 1969 work, Vespers, in which familiar shriek with unstable patterns played: their sounds could be articulated blindfolded players use hand-held, of hollow tones.3 It’s a site-specifi c raga continuously in “real time” (in other click-emitting sonar devices to navigate refl ecting the room’s acoustical person- words, I didn’t have to record them and through the performance space,1 bore ality. These architectural melodies can then edit them on tape to achieve my mu- no obvious resemblance to any existing be infl uenced by moving in the space, sical goals.) form of music. Yet somehow it embod- making other sounds, or even letting in At the same time, they were diffi cult ied the essential characteristics of live a draft of cold air. In Pea Soup, I com- to control precisely—the sounds the au-

JULY–SEPTEMBER 2008 PERVASIVE computing 33 THE HACKING TRADITION

Figure 1. David Behrman’s Kim 1 microcomputer. (image courtesy of David Behrman)

From soldering to programming By the mid-1970s, the fi rst affordable microcomputers came onto the mar- ket. Cajoled by the visionary Bay Area artist Jim Horton (http://leonardo. info/lmj/horton.html), a handful of electronic musicians (including my- self) invested in the Kim-1—a single, A4-sized circuit board with a calcula- tor-style keypad and a display glued on top (see Figure 1). Programming this thing in machine language and storing the program as fax-like tones on a fi n- icky cassette tape recorder was an ar- duous, counterintuitive, headache-in- ducing process, but coding offered one great advantage over building circuits: it was easier to correct a mistake by re- programming than by resoldering. Moreover, even computers as crude as the Kim-1 had memory and could execute sequential logical operations. These features enabled the creation of instruments that could make ad hoc decisions based on past incidents, a feature of particular interest to those drawn to the quixotic unpredictabil- ity of live performance. Rather than simply giving more control to the com- poser, computers extended the interac- dience heard were the byproduct of the key on different keyboards at the same tive and improvisational possibilities performer getting to know an instru- time; as a result, the piece unfolded in of electronics. In my work (as well as ment, rather than an articulation of a ways that were as surprising for the that of my experimental colleagues), predefi ned result. players as for the audience. (Little Spi- the computer began to embody ele- Finally, the instruments’ behavior ders, an early work for a multiplayer ments of the score and player in addi- often refl ected site-specifi c factors such computer instrument, is the closest tion to those of the instrument. (For as the acoustics of a room (the pitches composition to ANDS that is available an example of early interactive micro- and tempo of Pea Soup, for example) on record.6) computer music, see Behrman’s On the or the technology’s essential properties These instruments lent themselves Other Ocean/Figure in a Clearing.7) In or limitations: my “ensemble circuits,” best to musical strategies that favored the 1980s Apple, Commodore, Atari, inspired by the coordination scores some degree of improvisation and laid and others introduced machines whose of Christian Wolff, only made sound the groundwork of my early computer increasing sophistication and expand- when played by more than one musi- music. Just as acoustics determined the ing software base gradually reduced cian. The four players in my 1978 com- pitch world of my feedback pieces, the the angst of programming, leading in- position ANDS played small keyboards digital chips I used in my sound circuits exorably to the extraordinarily fl exible that only registered players’ actions if suggested applying binary logic to the and powerful machines and languages more than one player touched the same performer interface as well. available today.

34 PERVASIVE computing www.computer.org/pervasive Figure 2. Sled Dog—a hand-scratchable CD player. I hacked this CD player so I could move the laser back and forth with my fi nger. (image courtesy of Simon Lonergan)

Homemade circuits faded into anach- ronism for most musicians, but I led a double life, still soldering even as I pro- grammed. I found that a circuit or two hanging off the computer usually spiced things up a bit (see Figure 2). I continued to produce what I thought of as “electronic music,” even as the term itself became increasingly unfastened from either avant-garde posturing or the gritty notion of home- built circuitry. The cost of the synthe- sizer plummeted, its versatility grew, and by the early 1980s it had become ubiquitous in pop music. By the mid- 1990s, computers had become as com- monplace in music recording and pro- V, they could cut and paste anything. of sound-producing electronic con- duction as they were in the offi ce. As But what the computer offered in the struction projects, from making simple electronic instruments matured in an way of power and universality was ob- contact microphones, to transforming expanding marketplace, the idiosyn- tained at the expense of touch. cheap electronic toys into playable in- crasies and embedded scores of home- These were artists, after all, and struments, to designing circuits from made circuits and artist software gave even the fi lmmakers and webmasters scratch. Along the way, I put the tech- way to more fl exible, widely applicable, started out scribbling on paper. Many nologies into historical and aesthetic generally useful devices. of them complained about the lack of context through information about, By the end of the 20th century, elec- immediacy and tactility in digital me- and audio samples by, artists who have tronic sound had become more than dia, and in 2002 I designed a course used similar devices to make signifi cant just commonplace—it was conven- to show my students some electronic musical breakthroughs. tional, as natural to a techno producer alternatives to the computer—ways I set out to regain the radical rethink whose musical roots lay in to bridge the gap between the sound of Vespers: to disassociate music and as to me, an ex-student of the eminently world of a generation raised in an elec- sound from the limited types of objects un-danceable Lucier. Today, we choose tronic culture and the gestural tradi- sold in music stores and, through this to use electronic sound not to proclaim tion of the hand. disassociation, to prompt new musical our musical ideology, but simply be- My class handouts grew into a crude discoveries. At the same time, I wanted cause we like it. PDF textbook, which somehow escaped to explore how this drama of interac- the walls of the school. Emails began to tion between object and idea has played Regaining the power of touch arrive asking me to conduct workshops, out in the experimental music of the In 1999, I joined the faculty of the De- fi rst in the UK, then all over the world past 50 years. partment of Sound at The School of the (25 at the time of writing). Richard Art Institute of Chicago. I discovered Carlin, an editor at Routledge, invited A roadmap to euphoria that my students had adopted the com- me to elevate my drawings and prose to The process begins with listening: mak- puter as an almost universal tool. They a publishable state, and the result was ing contact mikes and piezo drivers, were adept at using their laptops to edit Handmade Electronic Music—The Art experimenting with coils and tape a video, compose a dance track, retouch of Hardware Hacking.8 heads, and using headphones and a photo, lay out a poster, write a term Assuming no technical background speakers as microphones. We lick our paper, and design a Web site. Using the whatsoever, my workshops (and the fi ngers and lay them gently on a radio keyboard’s command X and command book) carry the reader through a series circuit board: small currents fl owing

JULY–SEPTEMBER 2008 PERVASIVE computing 35 THE HACKING TRADITION

Figure 3. Laying of hands: A student plays the radio by direct skin contact with circuitry.

compare my projects to clandestine prison crafts, such as shivs made from bedsprings. The projects set out to re- veal types of manipulations and experi- ences that are fundamentally different from digital simulations and thereby in- spire a different relationship to sound and to the material world of electron- ics. Having once opened up the sealed Pandora’s box of a handheld game, people are, I fi nd, oddly empowered: they realize the contingency of things that had seemed fi xed or beyond their control or intervention. through the skin create feedback paths lers for interfacing various circuits to In every workshop there’s inevitably that tip the circuit into oscillation and computers to build alternative digital this beautiful moment (usually around transform the radio into a touch-sensi- instruments. The workshops wrap up the time the students discover the tick- tive synthesizer (see Figure 3). Along- with “glue” circuits: simple mixers, lish spot that causes the radio to swoop side this radio project, I discuss the amplifi ers, and power supplies that can and warble) where euphoric self-confi - infamous Steim (studio for electro- pull everything else together. By the dence sets in. They leave happy, fear- instrumental music) “Cracklebox” end, the participant has acquired not less, and an obvious threat to the elec- from the early 1970s, which used this only a wide range of electronic skills tronic possessions of their roommates, same idea of skin resistance to create but also an appreciation of experimen- spouses, and children. I designed the syl- an inexpensive electronic instrument tal methods in both the technical and labus to be a roadmap to this euphoria, whose expressiveness distinguished it aesthetic realms. and to suggest that euphoria can have from the keyboard synthesizers of the In selecting topics and projects, I a higher calling: it can be used to make time. reach back to my earliest days in elec- music and art. It has happened in work- We go on to open and rewire toys, tronic music. I try to remember what it shops around the world: a happy techno and I describe the work of “circuit was like to be completely incompetent, producer starts off merely wanting to benders”—those who favor this ap- and—with the benefi t of hindsight— add something new to his or her sound proach to building new instruments what kind of advice and information pallet, only to fi nish up making “sound with unpredictable musical results.9 would have helped me out of my jams. art” and tracking down obscure record- We misuse digital logic chips to build I select designs that are easy to under- ings by the artists we’ve discussed. simple oscillators, distortion circuits, stand and build, impossible to blow and gates and panners similar to those up, and suitable for mixing and match- Understanding that the “Composers Inside Electron- ing to create complex networks from post-digital physicality ics” group made in the 1970s. As the simple building blocks (like Legos)—a Developing the projects was not simply project grows in sophistication, I dis- process facilitated by rejecting standard a matter of foisting the designs of my cuss some of the “silicon luthiers,” such op-amp designs in favor of quirky cir- youth into today’s broader aesthetic cli- as Bob Bielecki, who designed one-of- cuits based on digital CMOS chips. mate. The technology itself has changed a-kind instruments for Laurie Ander- I stress “performability” throughout: as well. Thanks to the recent introduc- son and other avant-garde musicians the projects make extensive use of inex- tion of rubber paint (“Plasti-Dip”), we and artists. As we listen to video sig- pensive photoresistors that change re- can waterproof a basic 1970s-era con- nals from cameras and games and hack sistance with light, direct skin contact tact mike (a piezo disk wired to a gui- LCD-based toys to create miniature with the circuit board, pressure pads, tar plug) for use as a hydrophone. Even pixel animations, I draw attention to and other intuitive, gestural interfaces. the simplest of electronic toys today “visual hackers,” from The pervasive aesthetic of cheapness contains a sample-playback computer, to Billy Roisz. We adapt game control- and reuse prompted one student to whose clock speed can be adjusted by

36 PERVASIVE computing www.computer.org/pervasive adding a potentiometer or photoresis- schematics to empirical suggestions back contributed an inherent instabil- tor, allowing the most inane of barn- from circuit benders proliferate (www. ity, such that one small nudge of a knob yard sounds to be slowed down into a deviantsynth.com, www.getlofi .com). or fl ick of a switch could propel the ar- spookier, more musically interesting The recent rise of laptop ensembles— ray from dead silence to complex, self- range. Out of cheap handheld com- such as the Princeton Laptop Orches- perpetuating rhythms. puter games come LCD screens that tra (http://plork.cs.princeton.edu) and My fi rst microcomputer seemed so can be transformed into crude video Powerbooks Unplugged (http://pbup. sophisticated (and expensive!) that I projectors. And the pressure to increase goto10.org/pbup.html)—has been was tempted to hook it—and it alone— battery life in cell phones and other paralleled by the emergence of circuit up to a speaker and let it sing its aria. portable devices has made low-power bands (see http://okno.be/old/xmedk/ And so I did. For exactly one piece. A components so ubiquitous that most INSTALL/toysband.html). My work- disappointingly fl at piece, performed hacking can be done with batteries— shops and book can be seen as a bell- once and only once, in 1978. Then I cheaper, quieter, and much safer than wether or catalyst—take your pick. was back to adding wires and intro- the power supplies needed 30 years ago. ducing my computer to other circuits, Some of these changes are merely prac- Making the connection instruments, and sundry objects. tical; others imbue an instrument with As long as I’ve been making music, Today, with many musicians in the a character distinctly different from its I’ve been making music with electric- thrall of “laptop music,” my laptop sits 1970s ancestor. ity, and, from the start, this music has on the stage wreathed by several years’ I acknowledge the proliferation of required connections. Instruments, accumulation of musical fl otsam. De- electronic sound today, and I’ve tried tape recorders, circuits, and amplifi - spite the power of a single modern to appeal to the electric guitarist, VJ, ers all needed to be hooked up to one computer, and the myriad “virtual in- location sound recordist, and card- another before I could hear a sound. I terconnections” possible with software burning experimentalist alike. At the found that the more interconnections plug-ins, there’s no substitute for real same time, I can’t deny that I bear an there were, the better things sounded. jacks and plugs. It’s as though, with avant-garde bias. I adapted most of the A guitar was duller without a fuzzbox, quasi-homeopathic spookiness, the projects from the work of musical col- and it was even shinier with tape echo, very passage of electrons across the in- leagues, not Intel Application Notes, feedback, and a squealing oscillator fi nitesimal gap between plug and jack and I make the point that these tools are thrown in. Electronics, like the nature affects the sound. best understood in the context of the that spawned them, abhor a vacuum, music those artists made with them. and circuits seem more interesting in Moreover, I am keenly aware of the groups than alone. ll of this should come as no ephemeral nature of the fi eld of live The 1970s were a good time for so- surprise. In general, ensem- electronic music—usually un-scored, cially active circuits. It was the heyday bles produce richer results frequently unrecorded, and in general of analog synthesizers, festooned with than soloists; the interac- poorly documented. I try not only to patchcords. Tudor’s sprawling matrices tionA of a group of players is hard to ap- perpetuate the craft of handmade elec- of small boxes resembled ant colonies proximate on a solo instrument. Cir- tronic instruments but also to build up a documentary record of signifi cant mu- sic made with them. Despite the aware- Electronics, like the nature that spawned them, ness within musicology of the profound effects of instrument design on the de- abhor a vacuum, and circuits seem velopment of musical forms and com- position, Handmade Electronic Music more interesting in groups than alone. is the fi rst book to have linked the mak- ing of musical circuitry with critical lis- more than musical instruments: with cuits, like improvisers, tend to follow tening to extant electronic music, or to numerous interconnected pathways, the logic of “the wisdom of crowds,” the history of the fi eld. they evinced a mysterious collective described by James Surowiecki: I sense that we are in the midst of a behavior that went beyond the under- major surge of interest in post-digital standing or control of their solo human If you ask a hundred people to run physicality. I see and hear circuits from performer. Any individual circuit might a 100-meter race…the average the book on YouTube (www.youtube. have been relatively simple, capable of time will not be better than the com/watch?v=fKtT4BoZSO0). Web only a narrow range of sounds, but the time of the fastest runner… . But sites ranging from collections of vintage multiple lines of signal fl ow and feed- ask a hundred people to answer a

JULY–SEPTEMBER 2008 PERVASIVE computing 37 THE HACKING TRADITION

Figure 4. A Turn in the Shrubbery: live performance/installation by members of my hardware hacking workshop in Bogotá, Colombia (Oct. 2007).

REFERENCES

1. A. Lucier, Vespers and Other Early Works, New World Records, 2002.

2. A. Lucier, Refl ections. Interviews, Scores, Writings, MusikTexte, 1995, pp. 72–83, 312–315.

3. N. Collins, Pea Soup, Apestaartje, CD, 2004.

4. N. Collins, “All This and Brains Too— Thirty Years of Howling Round,” Reso- nance Magazine, vol. 9, no. 2, 2002, pp. 6–7.

5. “Composers Inside Electronics—Music After David Tudor,” Leonardo Music J., Dec. 2004, pp. 1–3.

6. N. Collins and R. Kuivila, Going Out With Slow Smoke, , LP, the AUTHOR 1982.

Nicolas Collins is a composer and performer and a professor in the Depart- 7. D. Behrman, On the Other Ocean/Figure ment of Sound at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His research in a Clearing, Lovely Music, LP, 1977. interests include the cultural implications of technology, especially in the area of music. Collins received his PhD in music from the University of East Anglia. 8. N. Collins, Handmade Electronic Music— He’s also editor in chief of the Leonardo Music Journal. Contact him at ncollins@ The Art of Hardware Hacking, Routledge, saic.edu. (photo credit: Marty Perez) 2006.

9. R. Ghazala, Circuit Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments, Wiley Publica- tions, 2005.

10. J. Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, Anchor Books, 2005, p. 11. question or solve a problem, and Shrubbery. We fi ll a gallery, lobby, or the average answer will often be bar with tables, each with its own small at least as good as the answer of amplifier and speaker; then partici- the smartest member. With most pants (as many as 25) set up in groups things, the average is mediocrity. of two or three around the tables. Some With decision making, it’s often “perform” on the instruments they’ve excellence. It’s as if we’ve been made in the course of the week, while programmed to be collectively others solder on until closing time, oc- smart.10 casionally testing their evolving circuit through their speakers (see Figure 4). Music is not a 100-meter race but a Part installation, part performance, series of decisions. And circuits, like part social ritual—the resulting din people, seem to be inherently “collec- is unlike anything else I’ve heard. Af- tively smart,” even those that might ter fi ve days of hacking circuits, none individually be rather plodding. My of the participants can claim to be an For more information on this or any other com- workshops in hardware hacking end engineer, but collectively they are very puting topic, please visit our Digital Library at with an event I call A Turn in the smart indeed. www.computer.org/csdl.

38 PERVASIVE computing www.computer.org/pervasive