May 14, 2025
AIL Open Seminars #009
Join us for the next AIL Open Seminars series! This talk will be hybrid, in-person at the Library at the Dyson School of Design Engineering (Imperial College London) and live-streamed on our YouTube Channel..
Title: Critical Sound Synthesis - MORE ROAR!
Time: 11am UK time (GMT+1), Friday, May 16th, 2025
URL: YouTube Livestream
If you are in London and would like to join in-person please email t.pelinskiramos@qmul.ac.uk for directions
In this seminar, John Richards (Dirty Electronics) and Agnes Cameron discuss the recent collaboration MORE ROAR!, a digital synthesiser built using a tiny microprocessor. It explores what we call ‘critical sound synthesis’ that follows in the critical design and critical making line of thought. A synthesis that extends beyond sound itself to open-up reflection on technology and society. It builds on our interests in Dirty Electronics, collaborative making and sound activism. Themes that emerge include consumer culture, feature creep, information overload, and excess and waste, waste at a material and resource level. And noise and disorder, and technological- and self-determinism.
These themes have been further explored through the idea of entropy, broadly, inner transformations, decay and surprise. The synth is entropic. The more you play it, the more its sounds degrade, become re-ordered. Every restart, a different rate of degradation. ‘Raw’ sound weathered into noise and silence. We also consider this a form of ‘idio-synthesis’, digital sound synthesis at a material-like level that focuses on the idiosyncrasies and limits of a specific chip.
More … John Richards is known for his work as Dirty Electronics that focuses on shared experiences and critical making. His work is rooted in sound, and combines music, performance art, electronics and graphic design.
Agnes Cameron designs, builds and maintains software and hardware, sometimes alone but often with friends, with a particular interest in simulation, collective knowledge and infrastructural systems.
They met at a Dirty Electronics event in 2015 and went on to perform together. Collaboration on MORE ROAR! began back in 2023 sharing code and giving MORE ROAR! workshops at festivals. Their lives at various stages have orbited around Leicester, UK.
The MORE ROAR! Synth launch will be at @avaloncafebermondsey, London, SE14 5RW, 15 May. All welcome!
