Derelict Electronics

Ryan Jordan

Organized in collaboration with FIBER Festival

Derelict Electronics explores an extension of DIY electronics as a practice addressing the mineral and material underpinning of technologies we use daily. Through this approach we can gain insight into and rethink technologies interrelations with nature. By taking apart technology to its fundamental components and then discovering what these are made from and how they work, we can begin to build crude semblances of these devices ourselves with materials available to us in our environment.

In this workshop participants will make crude amplifiers out of rocks, using a mesh of point contacts connecting to chalcopyrite and iron pyrite. When an electric current is sent through the rocks sporadic noise bursts from the speakers, creating feedback loops and detecting subtle scratches and disturbances in their surrounding environment. Occasionally the circuit exhibits visual output coinciding with the audible in the form of small sparks and minute explosions occurring where the copper point contacts meet the surface of the rock. This crude amplifier is based on the Adams Crystal Amplifier 1933, a precursor to the modern transistor, one of the fundamental building blocks of today’s electronic and digital world.

After making the crystal amplifiers we will build a home made solar cell using copper and copper oxide. This will then be connected to loud speakers and when a light is flashed onto the metal plate of the solar cell we can hear a pulse or “bang” of sound. A light signal has been converted to sound and is perceived as a simultaneous and completely synchronised audiovisual signal. This crude solar cell is based on Nyle Steiner’s photocell and Wilhelm Hallwachs (1904) semiconductor-junction solar cell. Hallwachs’ experiments laid the foundation for the modern day photoelectric cell.

Both the crystal amplifier and solar cell will be constructed as sculptural, noise generating objects. The workshop will finish with a live jam session as part of the opening and exhibition of Circuits and Ceremonies.

October 11, 11 – 4.30 PM (11- 4 PM workshop followed by collective jam session)
Limited to 10 participants

Cost: € 25/€ 15 student

Get your ticket here.

about the artist

Ryan Jordan (UK) conducts experiments in derelict electronics, possession trance, retro-death-telegraphy and hylozoistic neural computation. He builds and performs with crude instruments that replicate fundamental electronic components which are the foundation of current digital technologies. His live performance, Possession Trance, combines these self built devices with the use of high powered strobe lights in attempts to create powerful auditory and visual hallucinations. Since 2006 Jordan has been organising events under the title NNNNN / noise=noise, which has functioned as an experimental noise research laboratory and live performance platform, used as an open place for people to experiment with electronic music and art.