Current call

ECHO #8 - Electronic Lutherie: instruments, users, and creators

The online journal ECHO invites submissions for its upcoming eighth issue on "Electronic Lutherie: instruments, users and creators," edited by Juan Parra Cancino (Orpheus Instituut, Ghent) and Richard Scott (Catalyst Institute for Art and Technology, Berlin). ECHO is the online publication of the Music, Thought and Technology research group at Orpheus Instituut, Ghent.

The last decade has witnessed a resurgence of the adoption of modular synthesisers, and boutique hardware. Interest in obsolete technologies, test equipment, tape machines, and vintage electronic music studios is also increasing. Taken together, along with new dedicated software tools, these have transformed the palette available to contemporary musicians on stage and in the studio. We ask,

• How do instrument designers, hardware hackers, app builders, and electronic luthiers understand the specific creative potentials afforded by their work, and how far are these reflected in that work? 
• How may such instruments bear the stamp of their creators, i.e., how explicitly the intentions and aesthetics of designers may be reflected in their instruments, and in turn, suggest potential musical purposes?
• What are the consequences of unusual, unique, and obsolete synthesis technologies for individual creative practices, including composition, improvisation, installation, and other performative practices?
• Are there specific agencies and autonomies that appear to emerge from creative interaction with such tools, and how might these influence artistic practices and outcomes?

This call welcomes contributions from practitioners and interested parties to question the tools themselves, their inventors, and their impact on creative practice.

This publication aims to generate a critical discourse around creative interaction with hardware tools, such as standalone electronic instruments, modular synthesisers, interfaces, noise machines and gizmos, vintage test equipment, and other non-standard and experimental devices. It also includes dedicated software applications, for example, those hosted on embedded DSPs, iPads, phones, etc.

Artists-scholars engaging with one or more of the questions outlined above are invited to propose articles for peer review or artist statements for editorial review.

This issue is edited by the organising team of the “Electronic Lutherie” event, which took place at Orpheus Instituut, Ghent, on January 14-16, 2025. The organising team was composed of members of the Music, Thought, and Technology research cluster of Orpheus Instituut, Ghent, and of Catalyst, Institute for Art and Technology, Berlin.