MODULUXXX - Modular Synthesizer Mini-Festival

"Moduluxxx is a 2 day thermo voltaic burn out celebrating and exploring modular synthesis. Somewhere between a museum, a LAN party and a pet show, Moduluxxx will be an space for vicarious enjoyment, learning, rubber necking, starting a dangerous new hobby (fiscally speaking), kicking tires or brushing shoulders with your peeps.

Around the world modular synthesis is experiencing a renaissance of interest and experimentation, with new developments from high bandwidth video synthesis systems through to reinventions of granular synthesis in an analog context. In a creative audio world that is dominated by software, saved files and presets, modular synthesis offers no recall, each patch is unique and perhaps unrepeatable. The equipment itself is constructed in small manufacturing runs, often by hand, designed by dedicated enthusiasts operating out of their lounge rooms.

So what is modular synthesis anyway? It is a style of synthesiser design where the architecture is left open. Each element, whether it be a sound generator, filter, controller, modulator or effect can be reconfigured in an infinite variety of arrangements.

What is so great about it? Your mind can go wild with the possibilities! You might never finish a song or track again!!

All funds raised will go to artists fees, artist travel, venue costs and documentation.

Three events will be held over the two days:

27th April, 7 - 10pm
Moduluxxx Showcase

Robin Fox
Hair Hochman
Nadir
Pia van Gelder

Robin Fox
Famous for his stunning laser and oscilloscope audio visual performances Robin Fox, will be knuckling down to business with his trusty VCS-3 synth rocking the house pin matrix style.

Hair Hochman
Live techno, it's slow n' sleazy, and very serious stuff. Hochman also plays in Four Door and Holy Balm.

Nadir
Nadir is Alex White (Euro Modular Synth) and Ben Byrne (Laptop with Max/MSP). Together, they produce music pulsating with opposites. Oscillations and disturbances envelop and saturate one another as a host of possibilities surface, pattern and disintegrate.

Pia van Gelder
van Gelder is an electronic media artist who performs audio-visual media on a combination of hand-made and hacked electronic machines and a modular synthesiser.


28th April, 10am - 3pm
Sample & Hold : Synthesiser Petting Zoo

Open to anyone to register, this event is an all day 'expo' of modular synthesisers open to the public. Local instrument builders, inventors, manufacturers, distributers and collectors will be invited to present their monster modular synthesisers to the public. Something like a synthesiser convention - Sample & Hold presents an opportunity for the everyone to come and see the impressive arrays of collectors, musicians, distributors and makers in one place. It might just end in the largest modular jam in the history of the galaxy.

To register to participate in this event please contact pia@serialspace.org


28th April, 3pm - 6pm
Dorkbot Sydney : Synthesising Synthesisers

Dorkbot is a regular meeting for ‘people doing strange things with electricity. This month’s Dorkbot will be held on on the tale end of the Synthesiser Petting Zoo with focused presentations by well known local makers and distributors of modular synthesisers.

Ed Leckie - LZX Industries

LZX Industries is a Texan/Australian partnership drawn together by mutual obsession with early video art, and frustration with the lack of available hardware products for modular video synthesis and processing. The goal of LZX Industries is to provide highlyfunctional, professional tools for interacting with video signals in a hardware context at a price point within the grasp of the independent artist.

Ed Leckie is an Electronics Engineer with a professional background in image processing technologies, and a lifetime love for synthesizers and electronic music. He has been an active member of Clan Analogue, an electronic audiovisual collective, for the last 10 years and is part of the electronic duo Bleepin J. Squawkins.

Thomas O’Connor - Pittsburgh Modular

Thomas O’Connor (Port Adelaide, South Australia) An electro-entomologist & journeyman dilettante. When not planning for Year Zero or building towers of plastic skulls in his backyard he likes to unwind with a frank and open discourse on nothing with anyone who will stand still long enough & not press charges. A student of the Dérive, Trap Rap & Ghetto House he is currently searching for the philosophers stone in a unique mix of baking soda, 808 bass drums & metal film resistors, whilst admitting he is unlikely to succeed in this endevour, he maintains that this is "kinda the point".
Some of the more usefull side effects of his experiments are avaliable as practical electronics from the good folks at Pittsburgh Modular.Thomas O’Connor - Pitsburgh Modular

And more to be announced - if you have a modular synth project you are dying to share please get in touch with us!

More details here: https://sites.google.com/site/moduluxxx/"