Special Issue X
INPUT-OUTPUT: Tales from another module
#define COLOPHON
/*
Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental Publishing,
Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academie:
Avital Barkai
Damlanur Bilgin
Sandra Golubjevaite
Tisa Neza Herlec
Mark van den Heuvel
Max Lehmann
Mika Motskobili
Clara Noseda
Anna Sandri
Ioana Tomici
Olli Aarni
Dennis de Bel
Andre Castro
Leslie Drost-Robins
Aymeric Mansoux
Michael Murtaugh
Steve Rushton
De Player:
Peter Fengler
Koos Siep
Frederic van de Velde
Rotterdam, NL
Autumn 2019
*/

This publication is a coproduction/seminar by
Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental Publishing,
Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academie and
DE PLAYER, Rotterdam

setup (INTRODUCTION){
This publication documents the work developed during the first trimester of Piet Zwart Institute's Experimental Publishing programme 2019.
It involves working with notions of sound, language and interfaces, towards building a common organism - a modular synthesizer.
#define A modular synthesizer consists of separate specialized modules. Each individual module accepts inputs and produces an output. When interconnected, this allows for unexpected results where the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts.
This point of departure led us to produce 10 unique contributions to the common assembly of the publication INPUT-OUTPUT: Tales from another module. Each contribution consists of one or more modules, which represent our individual interests in exploring this medium. Outputs vary between sound, image and text, resulting in an audio-visual performance.
The following pages are a compilation of our research and resulting work, complete with instructions of assembly and use. See more on the website: https://issue.xpub.nl/10/
}
loop (COMPLEXITY ARISES THROUGH CONNECTION){
Faced with the completely unknown world of modular synthesizers, we pushed on toward the edges of our comfort zones. Soldering fumes gave us headaches, learning C/C++ tested our patience, debugging became a daily process.
After establishing an initial framework, we were challenged to find our own subjective interests in this vast field, to equip ourselves technically and conceptually, to risk failure.
The flood of information at first presented itself as a swirl of confusion, but navigation gradually became easier. We got to know the module, it became accessible, something that we could shape, form and use as a medium. The internal hidden workings of a complex system became more transparent and ideas for our individual modules started to develop. We got inspired! By understanding electronic circuits and speaking the language of code, we constructed our own individual modules.
These are presented in this publication as the most physical and direct trace of our process.
}