STEIM (STudio for Electro Instrumental Music) was a center for research and development of new musical instruments in the electronic performing arts, located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Beginning in the 1970's, STEIM became known as a pioneering center for electronic music, where the specific context of electronic music was always strongly related to the physical and direct actions of a musician. In this tradition, STEIM supported artists in residence such as composers and performers, but also multimedia and video artists, helping them to develop setups which allowed for bespoke improvisation and performance with individually designed technology.
STEIM existed since 1969. It was founded by Misha Mengelberg, Louis Andriessen, Peter Schat, Dick Raaymakers, Jan van Vlijmen, Reinbert de Leeuw, and Konrad Boehmer. This group of Dutch composers had fought for the reformation of Amsterdam's feudal music structures; they insisted on Bruno Maderna's appointment as musical director of the Concertgebouw Orchestra and enforced the first public fundings for experimental and improvised electronic music in the Netherlands. [1] They were offered a budget for their collective multimedia opera "Reconstruction" which was premiered in the Holland Festival in 1969. [2] The technology used in this opera was then taken to Amsterdam's Prinseneiland which was STEIM's first location. Soon, in 1971, the studio moved to the Groenburgwal in the city center, where there was more space for workshops and concerts. From 1986-2015, STEIM was located at the Achtergracht in the city center's southern area in a building containing including three studios, a concert hall, hard and software workshops, offices, and a guesthouse. Under the direction of Michel Waisvisz (1949-2008, artistic director since 1981), the STEIM residency program attracted international artists to develop individual instruments and interfaces for the performance of electronic music. [3]
After moving to a smaller location near the Lelylaan station in 2015, STEIM officially ceased to exist as an organization at the end of 2020 due primarily to cuts within the Dutch national cultural funding system. [4]
As a headline for most of STEIM's instrumental developments it can apply that "Touch is crucial in communicating with the new electronic performance art technologies". [8] As in traditional musical instruments, it is believed here that also in contemporary developments the physical touch of a musician contains essential aesthetic factors. These qualities tend to get lost in the non-realtime use of studio technology, in which the process of music production gets rather rational but bodily involved. The Touch philosophy — which can be considered as STEIM's interpretation of the widely used term interactivity — theoretically subsumes several stages of STEIM's developments, [9] from the analogue touchable "Crackle" surfaces in the 1970s [10] to today's experimental Gestural MIDI Interfaces.
STEIM was a foundation whose primary financial support came from the Dutch ministry of Culture. It invited international artists in residence of all different musical and artistic styles and scenes. Aside from offering support in theoretic and practical development of contemporary musical instruments, STEIM also hosted in-house concerts, exhibitions and workshops. The work in progress of supported artists was presented during open studio events.
A music sequencer is a device or application software that can record, edit, or play back music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically CV/Gate, MIDI, or Open Sound Control, and possibly audio and automation data for digital audio workstations (DAWs) and plug-ins.
NATO.0+55+3d was a software application for realtime video and graphics, released by 0f0003 Maschinenkunst and the Netochka Nezvanova collective in 1999 for the classic Mac OS operating system.
Netochka Nezvanova is the pseudonym used by the author(s) of nato.0+55+3d, a real-time, modular, video and multi-media processing environment. Alternate aliases include "=cw4t7abs", "punktprotokol", "0f0003", "maschinenkunst", "integer", and "antiorp". The name itself is adopted from the main character of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's first novel Netochka Nezvanova (1849) and translates as "nameless nobody."
Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the founding members of California Institute of the Arts, where he taught for many years.
Frances-Marie Uitti is an American cellist and composer known for her use of extended techniques and performance of contemporary classical music. Tom Service, music critic for the Guardian newspaper, has called her "arguably the world's most influentially experimental cellist."
Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instruments. It originated around the middle of the 20th century, following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition to fixed media during the 20th century are associated with the activities of the Groupe de recherches musicales at the ORTF in Paris, the home of musique concrète, the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, where the focus was on the composition of elektronische Musik, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City, where tape music, electronic music, and computer music were all explored. Practical electronic music instruments began to appear in the early 20th century.
A MIDI controller is any hardware or software that generates and transmits Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data to MIDI-enabled devices, typically to trigger sounds and control parameters of an electronic music performance. They most often use a musical keyboard to send data about the pitch of notes to play, although a MIDI controller may trigger lighting and other effects. A wind controller has a sensor that converts breath pressure to volume information and lip pressure to control pitch. Controllers for percussion and stringed instruments exist, as well as specialized and experimental devices. Some MIDI controllers are used in association with specific digital audio workstation software. The original MIDI specification has been extended to include a greater range of control features.
New Interfaces for Musical Expression, also known as NIME, is an international conference dedicated to scientific research on the development of new technologies and their role in musical expression and artistic performance.
A laser harp is an electronic musical user interface and laser lighting display. It projects several laser beams played by the musician by blocking them to produce sounds, visually reminiscent of a harp. It was popularised by Jean-Michel Jarre, and has been a high-profile feature of almost all his concerts since 1981.
The Lyricon is an electronic wind instrument, the first wind controller to be constructed.
A wind controller, sometimes referred to as a wind synthesizer, is an electronic wind instrument. It is usually a MIDI controller associated with one or more music synthesizers. Wind controllers are most commonly played and fingered like a woodwind instrument, usually the saxophone, with the next most common being brass fingering, particularly the trumpet. Models have been produced that play and finger like other acoustic instruments such as the recorder or the tin whistle. The most common form of wind controller uses electronic sensors to convert fingering, breath pressure, bite pressure, finger pressure, and other gesture or action information into control signals that affect musical sounds. The control signals or MIDI messages generated by the wind controller are used to control internal or external devices such as analog synthesizers or MIDI-compatible synthesizers, synth modules, softsynths, sequencers, or even non-instruments such as lighting systems.
The Buchla Lightning is the second in a series of MIDI controllers developed by Don Buchla. It consists of two independent hand-held electronic wands and a box unit that enable a player to initiate sounds and to manipulate those sounds spatially.
Michel Waisvisz was a Dutch composer, performer and inventor of experimental electronic musical instruments. He was the artistic director of STEIM in Amsterdam from 1981, where he collaborated with musicians and artists from all over the world.
I-CubeX comprises a system of sensors, actuators and interfaces that are configured by a personal computer. Using MIDI, Bluetooth or the Universal Serial Bus (USB) as the basis for all communication, the complexity is managed behind a variety of software tools, including an end-user configuration editor, Max (software) plugins, and a C++ Application Programming Interface (API), which allows applications to be developed in Mac OS X, Linux and Windows operating systems.
Live electronic music is a form of music that can include traditional electronic sound-generating devices, modified electric musical instruments, hacked sound generating technologies, and computers. Initially the practice developed in reaction to sound-based composition for fixed media such as musique concrète, electronic music and early computer music. Musical improvisation often plays a large role in the performance of this music. The timbres of various sounds may be transformed extensively using devices such as amplifiers, filters, ring modulators and other forms of circuitry. Real-time generation and manipulation of audio using live coding is now commonplace.
Lindsay Vickery is an Australian composer and performer.
The Miburi is a wearable musical instrument which was released commercially by the Yamaha Corporation’s Tokyo-based experimental division in 1995.
Laetitia Sonami, is a sound artist, performer, and composer of interactive electronic music who has been based in the San Francisco Bay area since 1978. She is known for her electronic compositions and performances with the ‘’Lady’s Glove’’, an instrument she developed for triggering and manipulating sound in live performance. Many of her compositions include live or sampled text. Sonami also creates sound installation work incorporating household objects embedded with mechanical and electronic components. Although some recordings of her works exist, Sonami generally eschews releasing recorded work.
AudioCubes are a collection of wireless intelligent light-emitting objects, capable of detecting each other's location, orientation, and user gestures. They were created by Bert Schiettecatte as electronic musical instruments for use by musicians in live performance, sound design, musical composition, and for creating interactive applications in max/msp, pd and C++.
Eric Singer is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician and software, electrical, computer, robotics, and medical device engineer. He is known for his interactive art and technology works, robotic and electronic musical instruments, fire art, and guerilla art.
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