Sizzling Semiconductors
Sizzling Semiconductors
Crafting electronic instruments from Minerals
Sizzling Semiconductors commences as a screaming tone at the precise touch of a radio-sensitive mineral. The workshop constructs ‘transistors’ from scratch to investigate the multifaceted history of electronic parts, semiconductive stones, their presence in electronic devices, and environmental decay.
What will you learn? Who is it for?
- – The participants will acquire knowledge of technical and historical aspects of electronics to understand the methods of reinforcing communication networks out of leftovers.
- – They will be guided to construct, burn, bend, solder, and reinvent circuitry. Heavy manual work is implied.
- – Prior experience in electronics is warmly welcomed but not necessary.
- – The workshop is beginner-level oriented.
Following the path of Galena crystals from antiquity to the Industrial Revolution, we will observe how radio-sensitive crystals enabled the first communication network through their demodulating capacities and how our present computational devices became so dependent on rare earths. We will peak at crystal radio cults, amateur activities, transmitted and received through stones, and computer clocks that become faster and faster.
Inspired by early 20th-century radio discoveries, we will create oscillating electronic instruments from scrap metal pieces and stones. Galvanized steel, a very usual leftover seems to bear inconspicuous proprieties once made incandescent: negative resistance peaks. Following Nyle Steiner’s experiments, we will enact negative resistance oscillators shaped like cat whiskers with components built from scratch. An old screw can become a surrogate for a transistor to scream modulated tones when treated properly.
Short Schedule
Part 1: theoretical: Radiosensitive minerals become computers. The Politics of Electronic Parts
Part 2: Tactile: Soldering & understanding an LC circuit
Part 3: Tactile: Building a ‘homemade transistor’
Part 4: Sound improvisation: Screaming Minerals
Workshop Timeline
10:00-11:00 Introductory presentation (projection + sound)
10 min. break
11:10-12:00 First solder points. Tactile work
12:00-14:00 Full-on Soldering instruments
14:00-15:00 lunch break
15:00-17:00 Making Semiconductors
17:00-18:00 Final touches and studio improvisation with Screaming Minerals
About the host
Ioana Vreme Moser (b. 1994) is a Romanian sound artist engaged with hardware electronics, speculative research, and tactile experimentation.
In her practice, she uses rough electronic processes to obtain different materialities of sound. She places electronic components and control voltages in different situations of interaction with her body, organic materials, lost and found items, and environmental stimuli. From these collisions, synthesized sounds emerge to carry personal narrations and observations on the history of electronics, their production chains, wastelands, and entanglements in the natural world.
Sizzling Semiconductors is presented by iii with financial support from Creative Industries Fund NL and The Municipality of The Hague.
