Circuit bending, hacking and prototyping is spreading almost as fast as the moving electrons that inspired its genesis. A growing community built around the re-purposing of consumer electronics can in part be attributed to some cornerstone books: “Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking” by Chicago circuit-bending professor Nicholas Collins and Reed Ghazala‘s “Circuit-Bending: Build your own alien instruments.” Citing Collins as reference for his creations, Yoshi Akai applies his talent, imagination, and bronzed and bejeweled aesthetic sensibility to the creation of nervous nano-scale soundscapes and analog acid-sonic washes.

On a cultural level, the allied fields of bending and hacking have merged into a medium for teaching that is literally the sharing of knowledge from experimentation. Articles to come will explore this transformation of hackerspaces to making spaces, but for now little imagination is required to think of Akai’s pieces as products of an airship guild, the fruits of hours of toiling and attention to detail that comes from rigorous apprenticeship. Yoshi talks about the beginnings of and inspirations for work that has not gone unnoticed, and that arguably ushers in a new breed of Steampunk.

Alex: Tell me a little bit about your background and what led to building these instruments?
Yoshi: My background is art and design. I have been researching interaction design. What led to building these instruments is simply curiosity. I always desire to visualize my idea.

A: Your designs strike a balance between utility and turn-of-the-century charm. How do aesthetics affect the you way make instruments?
Y: I always believe that high quality or expensive instruments are not only about quality of sound. They are also about delicate craftsmanship.

A: There is a wonderful playfulness in your inventions, from using a LEGO as a conductor to your crispbread record player. Is that an important aspect of your art?
Y: The concept of the LEGO Sequencer was started as an interaction design project. The concept is to make a 3D tangible user interface. To make a device for a computer, LEGO has limited possibility, however for simple instruments, LEGO is a nice material. Because almost people have played with LEGOs, it invites the user to have fun. I usually get ideas and questions from something surrounding me. Knäckebröd (Crispbread) Turntable is a conceptual art piece, so the Swedish bread has a meaning on this work. When I saw the crispbread in Sweden I thought that could be almost same size as a record; it is only a little bit bigger than vinyl.

Knäckebröd (Crispbread) Turntable © Yoshi Akai, 2009

A: Pieces like the Wireless Catcher, White Magic and Velvet remind me of Edison and his “invisible” technological breakthroughs. What about the invisible is attractive to you?
Y:I do use the ideal of the invisible for my art and design works. For the design, if technology is the infrastructure, the designer should make the technology invisible. For the art and performance, the invisible is a kind of magic for me.

A: Hacking consumer goods obviously plays a large part in your creations. What was your first hacking/modifying experience?
Y: Actually I cannot remember. I should probably talk a bit about my family first: my great grandfather was a professor of Japanese Tea Ceremony, and my grandfather was a stonemason. They both made their own tools from consumer tools to fit a new purpose, for example making a stone carving tool from a kitchen tool. I have been doing it since when I was kid. I still do not have an exact definition of “hardware hacking,” but for me an Hawaiian Aloha shirt also a type of hacking.

Yoshi Akai in performance

A: What resources would you suggest for people interested in building their own devices?
Y: I always get inspiration from different fields, if I look only in the music field for making the musical instrument, I cannot find a new idea. Also a toy store is full of inspiration. From a technical perspective, “Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking” by Nicolas Collins is a great book.

Detail on one of Yoshi’s handmade pieces © Yoshi Akai, 2009

A: What are you currently working on, interested in or listening to?
Y:Right now I’m working on an interface with bionics sensor.

Yoshi Akai’s collection of modded instruments © Yoshi Akai, 2009

A: Can people purchase any of your creations?
Y: Unfortunately, I do not have plans to sell anything at the moment. It’s because I only have one set for my performances. Also, every piece is handmade, so production requires several months. I hope one day to make limited editions for sale.

Yoshi Akai was born in Nagoya, Japan. He obtained a BA in textile design and a MA in design from Tama art University in Tokyo, and a MA in textile art from Southampton University Winchester School of art in UK. After his work as a designer in Japan, he joined programs at Kungliga Konsthögskolan and Chalmers University in Sweden. He has had numerous exhibitions in Japan, UK, The Netherland, Korea, and Sweden. He is currently producing original musical instruments with a unique input system, and is doing performance with those creative gadgets.

You can check more of Yoshi’s pieces at his website or on youtube.

Join us as we celebrate the birthdays of NHQ’s Angeline Gragasin and Daniel Postilnik this Saturday, March 13, 2010 at the Archer Ballroom. Featuring live entertainment by ANTIBODY DANCE, VALIS, and DJs BITFUNK and BODYWALLET! All we wanna do is zooma zoom zoom zoom and a boom boom, ya hurr?

@ the ARCHER BALLROOM
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Doors 8:30PM

With special guests:

9:30pm: ANTIBODY DANCE
performing the Chicago debut of VACA SACRA

VACA SACRA a performance by ANTIBODY DANCE
Choreographed by Adam Rose in collaboration with Silvita Diaz Brown and Craig Donavin. Sound design by Adam Rose.

Characters:
La Monja (the Nun): Silvita Diaz Brown
El Vaquero (the Cowboy): Craig Donavin
El Hombre de Negocios (the Businessman): Adam Rose

“Vaca Sacra” is a work for three dancers who embody a nun, a cowboy, and a businessman. The sound design and choreography steal elements from Mexican and American culture to describe neither, instead creating a separate world from distorted fragments of each. The result is something like a southwest noir. The Antibody mirrors processes of cultural exchange and fragementation initiated by the global market, devouring cultures in order to feed itself. In this destructive and creative process, occult connections emerge, between Hollywood and Bollywood, Christianity and cannibalism, Baroque master/slave relationships and contemporary politics. The climax of the work is an invocation of Kali danced by the figure of a nun holding a skull.

10pm: VALIS
ftg. members of Clique Talk
Dark ‘n Sticky Synthpop

11:30pm: DJ sets by BITFUNK
and BODYWALLET
Dance Party!

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Beer and refreshments will be served. Please also BYOB!

Attire: Festive, danceable

RSVP

by March 11
Please let us know if you are bringing a guest. This is a private event.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Please bring the gift of goodwill toward all men and women.

According to a reputable source, Steampunk refers primarily to a genre of fantasy or science fiction that explores the ramifications of advanced technology on society or the possibilities, both technological or otherwise, of alternate worlds or “path-not-taken” narratives. But the bit that interests me comes almost as a footnote at the end: “Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical ‘steampunk’ style.”

My introduction to Steampunk came from a series of recurring posts on BoingBoing, a multifarious Directory of Wonderful Things. BoingBoing has tagged so many posts with the keyword “steampunk” that it would take hours to browse through it all. What initially caught my interest was this practice of re-purposing or re-imagining everyday objects through the lens of madhat technologists of the late 19th century. The two types of devices I’ve seen most often in Steampunk projects are musical instruments and computer peripherals.

Heckeshorn (Photo by Kirsten Groh)

Above you can see a picture of the Heckeshorn, the first device built by German musician Moritz Wolpert in 2008. It is comprised of an amplified string instrument that acts like an automated slide-banjo and a music-box that sounds like a kalimba, mounted on an engraved brass chassis.

The use of brass as a construction or decoration material signals the steampunk aesthetic in action. Though it is no longer used in the manufacture of modern technology, brass has an intrinsic aesthetic appeal that evokes an earthy solidity and sets it apart from a world of cheap plastics and flashy aluminum casing.

A Clockwork Guitar by Jake von Slatt

Wolpert’s machines, as well as the etched-brass pickguard on the guitar above, meet the primary criterion of Steampunk projects: detailed surface work that evokes the Victorian-era mechanist aesthetic. In the case of the guitar, however, the surface is the only plane of engagement between the maker and the object. The modification does not affect the function of the guitar or any parameter of that function–only its appearance. In fact, most Steampunk objects, especially those intended for mass consumption on alt-merchandise websites like Etsy, retain all aspects of their contemporary functionality.

Steampunk Flat-Panel LCD and Keyboard Mod by Jake von Slatt

The keyboard mod above provides a great illustration of what Steampunk should be about. Jake von Slatt replaced the familiar plastic square keys of modern keyboards with the heavy round brass keys found on early typewriters. The brass keys are unquestionably harder to use, so the mod represents a technological regression. How is it valuable, then, beyond looking cool?

Most computer users today have never used a brass typewriter other than as a novelty and probably don’t spend much time thinking about how the buttons on their Macbook came to look the way they do. So the inconvenience of a brass keyboard attached to a modern computer forces an encounter with the origins and history of a user interface we take for granted.

Steampunk makers like Moritz Wolpert and Jake von Slatt recognize what we gain from the shock of such an encounter. An awkward or inappropriate user interface calls attention to itself and defamiliarizes the user’s experience of a given object. With that defamiliarization comes a heightened awareness of how pervasively our technology dictates our daily routines and patterns of thought and perception.

This brings me to the device that inspired this article, seen in the photo below.

Schaltzentrale by Moritz Wolpert

The Schaltzentrale (“Central Switchboard”) is an analog modular synthesizer, complete with ring modulation, a step sequencer, and voltage control. It works alone or can be used to control the Heckeshorn and its various components. All of its brass surface controls were hand-built at a lathe, and the voltmeter on it dates back to 1901.

Large modular synths functionally similar to the Schaltzentrale were hot in the 1970s and earned an iconic status when they appeared on stage with groups like Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake, & Palmer.

Keith Emerson playing a Moog modular synth (Photo by Mark Glinsky)

Since then they have been replaced by much more compact devices like the microKORG that emulate, with varying degrees of accuracy, the sounds produced by a modular synthesizer.

microKORG by KORG Corporation

In light of the fact that the microKORG makes the modular synth look like a cumbersome monstrosity, I think Wolpert’s decision to mod the synthesizer is extremely fitting: he altered an already anachronistic technology according to the aesthetics of a bygone technological era.

But the Schaltzentrale accomplishes more than just a retro make-over for the synthesizer. Through its incongruously decorative brass control surface, the Schaltzentrale calls the user’s attention both to the development of electronic music and to the history of technology manufacture in general. In this device we find a potential for intellectual engagement almost totally absent in the brass-packaged techno-trinkets I mentioned above.

Like the typewriter-keyboard mod and the Heckshorn, the Schaltzentrale is an example of Steampunk culture at its best: a celebration of technology as artwork and a salute to all that we might learn from technological backwardness. Above all, it’s a culture insisting that elegance and beauty in technology is more than a measure of how much will fit on an integrated circuit.

Over the summer, all of us at the NHQ became obsessed with Charo, née María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Moquiere de les Esperades Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Najosa Rasten. “DANTHE… Jooth ay leetle beet klohther!” was on everybody’s lips, and all of our eyes on her glorious tits. Reading her Wikipedia article was a revelation in and of itself, but YouTubing her rarer appearances made her all the more alluring.

Not only was Charo NOT just the blonde bimbo of whom I had only the vaguest childhood recollections (Hollywood Squares), she was a musical prodigy whose career began when she was “discovered” by Xavier Cugat, that irresistible Spanish bandleader whose work was most recently re-popularized by Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai in films such as 2046, In The Mood for Love, and Days of Being Wild. After watching the next video, you too will realize why we find the winner of the award for Cugat’s most vivacious fourth wife (she was just 15 when he married her at age 66) equally irresistible (she’s the first guest, so don’t skip ahead):

WOW now that’s some RAW TALENT! Ain’t no way around it. No true space cadet could ever have the mellifluous motor control and pure power of expression to which we sensual creatures are all beholden. Likewise take note of one of Colombian pop princess Shakira’s earlier appearances in American-made media.

Besides the obvious similarities of Spanish and the Sex Appeal, in these videos, both Shakira and Charo are also presented (are they presenting themselves?) in ways that highlight their talents as musicians: both women are wielding guitars (Charo throughout, Shakira mostly towards the end). The fact that both are singing in their native tongue is not to be overlooked; these songs were originally written in Spanish, and are therefore inevitably more poetic than what would later pass as popular music. For both women, this would mean singing English-language songs whose only merits are the unexpected level of amusement one derives from appreciating their absurd vapidity. See below:

Not only is the music less musical (I’d like to see someone try and argue Shakira’s coquettish wolf howl as superior to her robust natural singing voice), but their visual presentation is much more contrived and hyper-sexualized, and much less unique to the performers themselves. Charo was a classically trained Spanish guitarist and flamenco dancer, as evidenced by only her earliest televised appearances. You would never know, though, after seeing her jiggle and giggle her way through The Loveboat theme. Likewise, Shakira is a former musical prodigy and accomplished multi-instrumentalist, capable of expressing so much more than one might imagine after watching her writhe and thrust her way around a cage (a life-sized geode, a crowded club, etc.) with…

…on her lips. Also capable of processing complex intellectual activities, such as studying history at UCLA, or speaking at Oxford University about her work as an educator and philanthropist. But you might not notice, what with all that other stuff coming out of her mouth on the radio and in her videos. The same could be said of Charo.

However, it wouldn’t be fair to find fault with either of these women for merely riding the great [single] white [male] wave of convention (cowabunga, dude!) to stardom… Rather, we make and appreciate the distinction between the before and after, taking special care to celebrate what once was and is no longer. What once was María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Moquiere de les Esperades Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Najosa Rasten is now just “Cuchi-Cuchi.” In the beginning, there was Shakira. In the end, there was Charo. What does it matter? It’s all the same to us if it’s all the same to them.