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Compositions

Immortal Coil (excerpt) (2020)
Feedback between coil pickups on fingertips and various inductors. Stereo demonstration of core technique from longer concert work for multi-channel sound system (four fingers go to four surround speakers, thumb to subwoofer).

The Royal Touch (2014)
The Royal Touch (2014) reanimates deceased and discarded electronic circuitry (cell phones, computer motherboards, etc.) Fishing weights make nudgeable contacts between a simple circuit of my design and the electronic corpse. Feedback between the live and the dead produces complex oscillations that change in response to the slightest movement of the contact points. Recorded by Nicolas Collins at EMS Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm, April 2015.

Roomtone Variations (2013) -- Padova 2016
In Roomtone Variations the resonant frequencies of a room are mapped, in real time, through controlled acoustic feedback, and projected as staff notation. The strongest, most resonant pitches appear first, at the left, the weakest at the far right. Once the staves are filled the musicians improvise variations on the notes as they are highlighted, gradually stepping through this site-specific "architectural tone row". This video was recorded in concert at Auditorium Pollini in Padova, Italy, June 18, 2016.

Roomtone Variations (2013) -- Oakland 2013
This recording is from the first North American performance, by Fred Frith's Improvisation ensemble at Mills College, Oct. 5, 2013. Seven of the musicians are on stage, the other seven distributed throughout the concert hall.

Salvage (Guiyu Blues) (2008)
Salvage re-animates deceased and discarded electronic circuitry: cell phones, computer motherboards, mixers, etc. Six players use probes to make connections between a simple circuit of my design and the electronic corpse; feedback between my circuit and the components on the dead board produces complex patterns of oscillation that change in response to the slightest movement of the probes. A seventh player “conducts” the performance by periodically signaling the others to suspend the current sound texture by holding the probes as still as possible. Recorded at EMS Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm, April 2015.

Salvage -- Tokyo 2008
Early performance of this piece by students from Tama Art School at ICC Tokyo.

In Memoriam Michel Waisvisz (2009)
A candle's flicker controls the tuning of four oscillators. The candle, in turn, is played by a draft from a small fan. Recorded at EMS Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm, April 2015.

Waggle Dance (2007)
Waggle Dance, for laptop marching band, was written for the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk). The sound material consists of feedback between the internal mikes and speakers in the laptops, triggered by crackle noise extracted from antique cylinder recordings. The screens light the performers' faces as they wander in the dark.

Truth In Clouds (1999)
An installation/chamber opera based on seance culture. The audience moves an inverted glass across a table; its movement controls the distribution of sounds through speakers hidden in the set, and directs the instrumentalists to perform specific variations on four centuries of musical scores. Documentation of installation concert at Podewil (Berlin), 1999, with performances by members of Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin.

Die Schatten (1996)
Work for two hacked CD players skipping through Schubert, accompanied by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble for their New Year's Day Concert in the Concertgebauw, Amsterdam, 1997.

Tobabo Fonio (1986)
The first piece for my "trombone-propelled electronics" -- a homemade DSP system controlled by, and playing back through, an old trombone. Source material is Cusqueña brass band music by Primavera de Tauca. Recorded by Stella Varveris at Experimental Intermedia Foundation, NYC, 1989.

Devil's Music (1985)
In Devils Music fragments of radio broadcasts are digitally sampled, looped, re-triggered and occasionally reversed or de-tuned. All material is taken from FM and AM transmissions occurring at the time of the performance. The performer plays off of certain musical ground-rules intrinsic to the sampling system (which consists of three modified inexpensive effect devices) to develop the quirky rhythmic interplay that characterizes the piece. Video excerpt of a performance at Southern Danceworks, Birmingham, Alabama, December 1987, camerawork by Dorah Funmilayo Rosen.

Pea Soup (1974)
A self-stabilizing network transforms acoustic feedback into an "architectural raga", influenced by sound and movement. In concert at the eMusic Indaba Festival, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, September 23, 2010. Performer: Petra Ronner. Created with analog devices in 1974, which were emulated in software in 2004.

Installations

Tall Poppies (2009)
Tall Poppies was created as a three-channel video installation for the Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn. Contact mikes on the stems of sparklers pick up the whoosh of the burning magnesium and the subsequent ping and pop of the wire cores as they cool (these sounds are not processed in any way). Video projectors beam synchronized recorded loops of individual sparklers onto the walls of the gallery, each image accompanied by its own sound channel. This video reformats the three channels into a single widescreen image with stereo sound.

Daguerreotypes (2006)
A dozen small LCD screens, removed from cheap handheld games, are hung along the walls of a darkened room. Reanimated with homemade circuits, illuminated with tiny green lights, they cast diminutive, pixilated shadow plays. The remainders from the eviscerated toys are dumped in the corner and set to play. The signals that normally control the graphics are connected to speakers, producing patterns of drones that shake the scrap filling the speaker cones. From a installation in the Sonambiente Festival in Berlin, summer 2006.

>br> When John Henry Was A Little Baby (1996/2008)
A model train track runs across the floor, with a steel wire stretched above it. The engine has a thin bolt attached across its pantograph. The wire runs at a slight diagonal to the track. As the train travels the wire slips from one groove in the bolt to the next, plucking the wire like a long guitar string. The sound is picked up and heard through a small amplifier. The train reverses automatically at each end of the track. A motion detector turns on the installation when people approach. From an installation in Arts LeHavre 08 Biennale d'Arte Contemporain, Musée Malraux, Le Havre, France, summer 2008. (Originally created for the Sonambiente Festival (Berlin) 1996.)

Interviews, etc.

Interview at Tsonami 2012 festival

Interview by Josef Cseres at Expozice Nove Hudby festival, Brno, Czech Republic, March 2010

Hardware Hacking -- Musik: Lärmen mit dem Lötkolben
Video produced by Spiegel Online about my hacking workshop for MaerzMusik, Berlin, March 2012.

Nicolas Collins: Bending All The Rules
Interview by Molly Sheridan for New Music Box (on-line journal of The American Music Center), July 2006.

Hackers Holding Hands
Compilation of video clips from my hacking workshops in the USA, Europe and Japan, 2008-2009