Building and Becoming: DIY Music Technology in New York and Berlin Lauren Flood Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Lauren Flood All rights reserved Abstract Building and Becoming: DIY Music Technology in New York and Berlin Lauren Flood This dissertation addresses the convergence of ethics, labor, aesthetics, cultural citizenship, and the circulation of knowledge among experimental electronic instrument builders in New York City and Berlin. This loosely connected group of musician- inventors engages in what I call “DIY music technology” due to their shared do-it- yourself ethos and their use of emerging and repurposed technologies, which allow for new understandings of musical invention. My ethnography follows a constellation of self- described hackers, “makers,” sound and noise artists, circuit benders, avant- garde/experimental musicians, and underground rock bands through these two cities, exploring how they push the limits of what “music” and “instruments” can encompass, while forming local, transnational, and virtual networks based on shared interests in electronics tinkering and independent sound production. This fieldwork is supplemented with inquiries into the construction of “DIY” as a category of invention, labor, and citizenship, through which I trace the term’s creative and commercial tensions from the emergence of hobbyism as a form of productive leisure to the prevailing discourse of punk rock to its adoption by the recent Maker Movement. I argue that the cultivation of the self as a “productive” cultural citizen—which I liken to a state of “permanent prototyping”—is central to my interlocutors’ activities, through which sound, self, and instrument are continually remade. I build upon the idea of “technoaesthetics” (Masco 2006) to connect the inner workings of musical machines with the personal transformations of DIY music technologists as inventors fuse their aural imaginaries with industrial, biological, environmental, and sometimes even magical imagery. Integral to these personal transformations is a challenge to corporate approaches to musical instrument making and selling, though this stance is often strained when commercial success is achieved. Synthesizing interdisciplinary perspectives from ethno/musicology, anthropology, and science and technology studies, I demonstrate that DIY music technologists forge a distinctive sense of self and citizenship that critiques, yet remains a cornerstone of, artistic production and experience in a post-digital “Maker Age.” Table of Contents List of Figures iv Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Becoming a DIY Music Technologist: Tools, Techniques, Concepts, and Critiques The DIY Ethos 10 DIY Sociability 21 On Sites of Encounter: Pursuits 23 On Sites of Encounter: Locales 28 Berlin and the Germanophile Imagination 32 American Constructions of Experimental Music 36 Interrupting the Flow? On Circulation and Weirdness 38 Chapter Summaries 40 Chapter 1 44 The Art of Critical Making: Instrumentality and Ethical Labor in the Maker Movement Maker Faire: Building the World of Tomorrow 44 Makers: Case Studies in the Value of Skill 52 Basteln and the Betahaus 54 “Circuits in Seconds”: Gamifying Sound and Electronics with littleBits 64 Bastl and the Allure of DIY Creativity 71 Death of a Venue: The Growing Pains of DIY 82 Conclusion 88 i Chapter 2 89 The Aesthetic Virus: Experimental Instrument Building as Biophilia and Citizen Science “Biohacker Bach”: DIY Music Technology Meets DIY Biology 89 Life (as) Science im Ausland 93 White Noise, Black Death: The Micro_Blackdeath Noise Synth 101 Virus, Magic, Music 114 Defining Concepts in DIY Music Biology, From Life Forms to 129 Forms of Life Conclusion 138 Chapter 3 139 The Sounds of “Zombie Media”: Waste and the Sustainable Afterlife of Repurposed Technologies DIY Recycling and “Conspicuous Production” 139 Transmediale and the Art of E-Waste 144 Phillip Stearns in New York: Bending, Hacking, Glitching 153 Hackposium: One Person’s Trash Is Another’s Treasure? 155 “Mass Appeal” and the Cone in the Box 159 The Mesh and the Glitch 163 Variations on a Theme of Recycling: Further Vignettes from the Field 167 Mending and Making: Waste at the Maker Faire 167 “Rescuing” Electric Guitars 175 Found Sound(boxes) 178 Planting in the Garden of Data 185 Conclusion 187 ii Chapter 4 189 Blueprint for the Underground: Guitar Effects Pedals, Technoaesthetics, and Community at Death by Audio Introduction: The DIY Guitar Pedal Workshop 189 Structures and Blueprints 195 Building Pedals, Building Community: Blueprints from Micro- to 199 Macro-level Technologies of Retro-Future Timbre: Current Uses and Brief History 206 of the Guitar Pedal Construction and Technoaesthetics 214 Performing Technology on Film: Technoaesthetics and Music Videos 226 Intersections with the Maker Movement and the Art World 236 Five Years On: Death of a Venue, (After)life of a Business 244 Music Technology in the New Manufacturing 257 Conclusion 266 Conclusion 268 Opening Dark Circuits References 274 iii List of Figures Figure 1. Derek Holzer with his Tonewheels Hurdy-Gurdy 1 Figure 2. Maker Faire 2013 poster summarizing key points from the “Art of Critical 44 Making” presentation Figure 3. The exterior of Betahaus blends into an unassuming office park, May 2013 58 Figure 4. littleBits/Korg Synth Kit 65 Figure 5. Arduino Uno board, type used most during my fieldwork 72 Figures 6 and 7. Building the MicroGranny: Standuino boards and tools, 74 Workshop at Neue Heimat, March 2013 Figure 8. Crowd at the Last Supper, 3rd Ward, September 2010 84 Figure 9. Exterior of 3rd Ward, 195 Morgan Avenue, July 2012 86 Figure 10. Martin Howse and Don Hill at Ausland for CC N° 1: Corruptive Climate 95 Figure 11. Entrance to Ausland, July 2013 97 Figure 12. Diana Combo making a mold of a participant’s ear 99 Figure 13. Volunteers socializing at Ausland on a slow summer evening 100 Figure 14. Diana Combo mixing materials for her (ears) residency at Ausland 101 Figure 15. NK Projekt: A typical Berlin Hinterhof (courtyard) and Hinterhaus 103 Figure 16. Screenshot of NK Projekt’s event posting for the micro_blackdeath 104 workshop Figure 17. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Triumph of Death (c. 1562) 107 Figure 18. A micro_blackdeath noise synth, built by the author 110 Figure 19. Screenshot of BioArtz website 116 Figure 20. Singing Tesla coil by oneTesla, Maker Faire 2013 119 Figure 21. Screenshot of “Virus” iPad app 119 iv Figure 22. Mario de la Vega’s goat’s foot instrument, Dark Circuits Festival, 123 June 2014 Figure 23. Vendor sign at Maker Faire 2014:“Desconstruction à Production à 139 Revolution, DIY || DIE” Figure 24. ReFunct Media #5: Audiovisual Installation at Transmediale 149 Opening 2013 Figure 25. Video Still of ReFunct Media #5 Installation 150 Figure 26. Video Still from E-Waste Workshop 150 Figure 27. The author’s setup at the Make Music New York: Circuit Bending 162 Mass Appeal performance. Figure 28. RadioShack soldering kit re-packaged for Makers 168 Figure 29. Booths at Maker Faire 2014: Fixers’ Collective 169 Figure 30. MakerBot Thing-O-Matic: 3D Printer model debuted at the 2010 172 New York Maker Faire Figure 31. Ben Simon at home in Brooklyn with one of his custom guitar projects, 176 Sept. 2012 Figure 32. The author’s Soundbox in progress, NK Projekt, May 2013 179 Figure 33. GLANK’s Found-Object Percussion, Maker Faire 2014 182 Figure 34. Circuit bending as “found object” instruments at Maker Faire 2014, 183 Burnkit2600’s Circuit-Bent Open Jam Figure 35. Data Garden record release: Greg Fox, Mitral Transmission 185 Figure 36. Circuit boards on the workbench awaiting guitar pedal enclosures, 189 Death by Audio, March 2010 Figure 37. Screenshot of Ghost Delay pedal from Death by Audio’s website 207 Figure 38. Prototyping on a solderless breadboard at Death by Audio, March 2009 215 Figure 39. Inside of a Death by Audio guitar effects pedal, March 2009 216 Figure 40. Death by Audio pedal circuits in various stages of prototyping, 216 March 2015 v Figure 41. Screenprinting design for the Robot pedal, March 2010 224 Figure 42. Robot pedal enclosures after screenprinting, February 2010 225 Figure 43. Packaging ready to be shipped, February 2010 225 Figure 44. Horizontal lines overlay an extreme close-up of Ackermann. Screenshot 228 from “I Know I’ll See You” video. Figure 45. The overlay (on top of integrated circuit chips) becomes more intensely 228 distorted. Screenshot from “I Know I’ll See You” video. Figure 46. Monitoring and manipulating guitar pedal controls. Screenshot from 231 “Keep Slipping Away” video. Figure 47. Ackermann enters the virtual realm. Screenshot from “Keep Slipping 231 Away.” Figure 48. Screenshot from Grooms’ “Infinity Caller.” 235 Figure 49. Screenshot from Grooms’ “Infinity Caller,” surrounded by shelves of 235 guitar pedal components. Figure 50. Mark Kleback’s Marimba Automaton, lwlvl Festival, August 2014 240 Figure 51. Solenoids poised to strike the marimba’s pipes 241 Figure 52. Exterior of Death by Audio, view down S. 2nd St. towards the East 245 River, July 2014 Figure 53. Oliver Ackermann and Travis Johnson in the workshop, July 2014 245 Figure 54. “RIP DIY” photography in the corridor of Death by Audio 253 Figure 55. Sketch of Death by Audio, created for the 2014 Death by Art exhibit 254 Figure 56. The line stretched around the block for Death by Audio’s last night 255 Figure 57. Excerpt from the Williamsburg zoning map 263 Figure 58. littleBits employees perform music as a quartet, Dark Circuits 269 Festival, Spectrum, June 2014 Figure 59. Beneath, yet blocked from entering, one of Teufelsberg’s towers, 271 in Berlin’s Grunewald, May 2013 vi Acknowledgments A great many people have inspired or contributed to the process of completing this dissertation. The project grew out of my master’s thesis, “Total Sonic Annihilation,” which was developed in Aaron Fox’s fieldwork methods class and advised by Chris Washburne.