WMMNA: Revealing Histories Of Electronic Music

A few weeks ago, the Science Museum in London opened a small but fascinating exhibition about a revolutionary music synthesiser and the extraordinary woman who created it in the 1960s. It’s on the second floor, right behind the Energy Wing.

Daphne Oram was the first woman to direct an electronic music studio, the first woman to set up a personal studio and the first woman to design and construct an electronic musical instrument.

The British composer and electronic musician started her career in the BBC’s music department, founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, got tired of the broadcaster’s lack of vision for electronic sound and musique concrète (the ancestor of today’s electronic music) and set up her Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition in Kent. She provided background music and sounds for radio, television, theatre, short commercial films but also for installations and exhibitions.

In February 1962, she was awarded a grant to work on her “Oramics” drawn sound technique. This method of music composition and performance allowed the composer to draw an “alphabet of symbols” on paper and feed it through a machine that would, in turn, produce the relevant sounds on magnetic tape. The first drawn sound composition using the machine, entitled “Contrasts Essonic”, was recorded in 1968.

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Régine Debatty is the creator of the ‘We Make Money Not Art’ blog and an art show curator. She has also spoken at several conferences and festivals about the way artists, hackers and interaction designers (mis)use technology. Learn more about Régine Debatty.