#Michel Waisvisz

[jaaaaaaaaaaazz]

Jeanne Lee / Gunter Hampel / Michel Waisvisz / Freddy Gosseye / Sven-Åke Johansson

[cyanidetooth]

Third Ear Band! Tools You Can Trust! Glaas! Diall! David Chesworth! O Yuki Conjugate! Arthur Russell! Nurse With Wound! Jeanne Lee / Gunter Hampel / Michel Waisvisz / Freddy Gosseye / Sven-Åke Johansson! selections from Without Warning compilation! plus a live session from SEA MOSS!

[burpenterprisejournal]

YPERCONNECTED AND HAPPILY PANICKING RELEASE

2024/06/22 Hyperconnected and Happily Panicking - Day 3 PABLO ULISES JD ZAZIE ALEX RIVA FLORIAN KOLB SCHRÖDIGER OR BOOM BOOM GOD Morphine Raum Berlin - DE

„Hyperconnected and Happily Panicking“ is a mini-festival taking place at Morphine Records Raum in Berlin-Kreuzberg on June 15th, 19th and 22nd.

The festival marks the release of Pablo Ulises Lienhard’s new record with the same title. The album features nine duos with artists from the Berlin and Swiss experimental and improvised music scenes, the link between all of them being Pablo’s use of a self-built approximation of Michel Waisvisz’ crackle synth. The festival line-up includes most of the musicians that contributed to the project and will have them perform in new constellations. The third day of the album release party , it will be JD Zazie 's turn to play a duo with Pablo. She will share the evening with Florian Kolb who will play together with Pablo under the name Schrödinger or Boom Boom God and with Alex Riva.

Concerts will start at 20:30 at Morphine Raum Köpenicker Str. 147 HH, 1st floor 10997 - Berlin

[fuchsiaswingsong]

Listen to: Scheiße ’71 by Jeanne Lee / Gunter Hampel / Michel Waisvisz / Freddy Gosseye / Sven-Åke Johansson

[ozkar-krapo]

ICP Tentet

"Tetterettet"

(LP. Our Swimmer. 2021 / rec. 1977) [NL]

[thephilosopheroftheboudoir]

Michel Waivisz

A Chavel

from the lp Crackle

[taperwolf]

I've alluded to this a few times, but never apparently posted about it, so here we go again!

In the late 1960s, Michel Waisvisz (later of experimental music/art lab STEIM) developed what he called the crackle circuit. It originated in poking with his fingers at the exposed connections in a broken electric organ, and then radios, coming up with what later "circuit benders" call "laying on hands". In 1973, he joined STEIM and created the Krakadoos, or, translated into English, the Cracklebox. It was simple, perhaps deceptively so — the interface is six exposed copper plates on a printed circuit board, the whole in a wooden box, powered by battery and with an included speaker. It made interesting sounds, particularly in those early days before electronics miniaturization really kicked in, and the thing gained a kind of mystique. STEIM has begun making them again in the last several years, but they're pretty expensive.

The Cracklebox works by using the performer's flesh as part of the loop feeding the circuit, which is composed of an early operational amplifier chip which lacked internal compensation and thus was easy to send into oscillation, producing the characteristic whine/squeal/crackles. The circuit diagram shows the whole thing feeding into a second amplifier (the four transistors on the right), and then to the speaker.

Fast forward to a little over a year ago, when I found the diagram above and a source for the μA709/LM709/MC1709 chip required. (Modern opamp chips — which is to say, those introduced after 1980 or so — apparently fix the runaway oscillation "problem" that lets any of this work.) Now, I considered having a circuit board made to mimic the interface of the original, but decided to be a little more inventive with my reproduction, and not incidentally use materials I had on hand.

This is my Wax Wolf Cracklebox. The case is a plastic box intended to house a walkie-talkie back in the '80s; I picked up a dozen of 'em on the surplus market years ago, and enjoy using them when I want an enclosure with a speaker inside. (Surplus Sales of Nebraska still sells them for 35¢ each, last I checked.) The brass knobs on the front, taking the place of the PCB plates, were originally stand-offs, intended to slide into slots in a metal case and allow a circuit board to be screwed down onto them without contacting the case and shorting anything out; here each has a wire from the internal stripboard screwed in, connecting it to the circuit. The top has a slide switch and a power LED, as well as an output jack that switches the speaker off, and I made the labels on the local makerspace's vinyl cutter.

I wasn't entirely faithful to the above circuit diagram; I swapped the transistor amplifier for an LM386 audio amplifier chip, simply because I didn't want to find the appropriate transistors, so it may not sound completely authentic. Nonetheless, it makes fun noises, and that was the goal. I'll try to post some recordings later.

[tonyoxley]

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A freshly soldered ‘Disintegrated Cracklebox’ from a Rakit kit. This is the start of an exploration of touch sensitive electronic instruments harking back to early synthesizers built by Don Buchla and the famous ‘Kraakdoos’ (cracklebox) by Steim. The circuit in this one is inspired by the original design of Michel Waisvisz’s Cracklebox. The sudden, often violent, bursts and fizz of electrical energy are intended to provide ‘gestural’ input within the sonic landscape of the ‘Behaviour‘ ensemble. 

With touch sensitive instruments such as this the player becomes part of the electronic circuit, in theory it should sound different for every user. 

[d-martin]

 ICP Tentet -  Tetterettet  (1977)                                      

  Gilius Van Bergeijk Alto Saxophone - Oboe, Composed By 
   Bert Koppelaar - Trombone 
   Misha Mengelberg - Piano 
   Han Bennink - Drums, Bass Clarinet 
   Peter Bennink - Alto Saxophone, Sopranino Saxophone 
   John Tchicai - Alto Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone 
   Peter Brötzmann - Alto Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone 
   Alan Silva - Bass 
   Tristan Honsinger - Cello 
   Michel Waisvisz - Electronics

[andrewclevine]

I had not realized Michel Waisvisz from @steim_amsterdam and Leon #theremin had met! Just found this picture and backstory on the Thereminworld-website: http://bit.ly/2wLwq8d https://www.instagram.com/p/ByiTYPlAd-4/?igshid=1lnrs190dxydy

[jerrydewing-blog]

Final posts of the Term: Performance, reflections and references (part 3)

Here now are my references, in Harvard, for my inspirations for this project. I’d include the early reading from creative interactions, but I don’t think they influenced my practice as it only really kicked into gear in ~January. First, the tilt potentiometer. The first nudge in the way of a sonic performance through movement. Kobakant.at. (2018). Tilt Potentiometer. [online] Available at: http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=6231 [Accessed 14 May 2018]. Next, the page that supported my research of the MMA7455 Tilt Sensor. playground.arduino.cc. (2018). MMA7455 Accelerometer. [online] Available at: https://playground.arduino.cc/Main/MMA7455 [Accessed 14 May 2018]. And the absolute hero who provided an enormous wedge of code to speed up the prototyping process. Winters, T. (2014). How To Connect MMA7455 Accelerometer 3-Axis Tilt Sensor [Arduino Tutorial]. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o58EIVsjQH0 [Accessed 14 May 2018].

From Crackle, Wiasvisz’s archive site explaining a portion of his work on The Hands. Wiasvisz, M. (2006). The Hands. [online] Crackle.org. Available at: http://www.crackle.org/TheHands.htm [Accessed 14 May 2018]. 

A brief video of Michel Wiasvisz performing with The Hands at the NIME conference in 2003.

Merill, D. (2006). Michael Waisvisz - the Hands. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIfumZa2TKY [Accessed 14 May 2018].

And finally an acknowledgement to Nils Frahm for inspiration in the musical aspect of the performance. KEXP/Nils Frahm. (2013). Nils Frahm - Says (Live on KEXP). [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLNeZogTsK8 [Accessed 14 May 2018]. These, as well as encouragement from peers, friends and colleagues allowed me to collaborate between two projects and create a dual-aspect performance as well as building on ambisonic expression tactics and electronic component manipulation through both software and hardware.

I will perhaps update once more when I reshoot the video for the performance (over the next 2 weeks). 

[ozkar-krapo]

Those days.

[thephilosopheroftheboudoir]

Michel Waisvisz

4 Narrow Escapes

from the lp Crackle

[taperwolf]

I built a new noisemaker, a device called a Cracklebox.

Well, strictly speaking, it's a variation on a homebrew version of a 1970s musical instrument designed by Michel Waisvisz of STEIM, that he called the Kraakdoos. Cracklebox is the usual English translation. STEIM recently released a recreation, which cost about 80€ , but I found a discussion of the circuit and decided to try my hand at creating my own.

In appearance, it's not very faithful to the original. STEIM's version is made on a single exposed circuit board, with exposed copper pads as the touch points; my version uses the brass knobs on the front of the casing instead. I picked up a bunch of these walkie-talkie cases from a surplus dealer years ago for cheap; they make a good enclosure for anything that wants an internal speaker. Labels were created on the vinyl cutter that our Makerspace has, and I think that part worked quite well – though they're purely cosmetic.

The principle behind the soundmaking is that the user is part of the circuit; if you've ever tried circuit bending, or played with a theremin, or even made weird noises by messing with the innards or antenna of a radio, you've seen the general effect. By touching the brass knobs, the resistance and capacitance of your body affect the sound volume and frequency. The sound is generated by abusing an early amplifier chip, which has no internal frequency compensation; by introducing strange connections to the inputs, outputs, and compensation pins, you get a wide range of analog noises. The knobs are unlabeled because I'm not sure what they do, to be honest — I vaguely know where they connect but not what to call them.

There are two changes from the schematic linked above; first, the type 709 opamp chip that the whole thing depends on is the 14-pin version, not the 8-pin version; this only required me to renumber the connections. (uA709 chips, or the equivalent LM709 or MC1709 or NTE909, can be hard to find these days, as it's arguably a flawed design and they stopped making them decades ago, but I found a bunch at Electronic Surplus.) The other change is what happens after that chip; the original circuit uses, as a buffer and speaker-driving amplifier, an odd cluster of transistors I eventually realized was a push-pull output made from two Sziklai pairs; instead of figuring out what transistors to use or trying to find the specified ones, I substituted the reliable workhorse amplifier chip, the LM386, which effectively needs only power, ground, and a signal to run.

With all these changes I'm not certain that it really sounds like an original Cracklebox, but it makes neat noises, so I'm happy. This joins my increasing array of strange noisemakers, and with any luck, the new year will see progress on my homebrew modular synthesizer.

(I was originally going to send this as a Christmas gift to my nieces — last year, I built and sent them an AtariPunk Synth in a similar form factor, which they loved but which their mother (my sister) did not. I was talked out of inflicting this one, as it's even more difficult to get musical sound out of, but perhaps later.)