%0 Journal Article
%T From obsolete technology to performance instrument: new live presentations of the EMS Synthi 100
%A Frances Morgan
%D 2023
%V 
%N Spring 2023
%K electronic music
%K EMS London Ltd
%K live music performance
%K musical instruments
%K restoration
%K sonic art
%K sound technology
%X The presentation of electronic musical instruments in museum and other institutional contexts prompts a number of questions about the restoration of sound technologies, the reconstruction of musical practices and techniques, and past and present cultures of electronic music, among other topics. Drawing from research into the electronic musical instrument company and sound studio EMS London Ltd, which produced synthesizers and other devices during the 1970s, this paper outlines some examples of how an EMS synthesizer, the Synthi 100, has been restored and re-presented by academic, broadcasting and arts institutions in the last decade. Devised for compositional use in electronic music studios, in recent years the Synthi 100 has been used in concerts and broadcast media as an instrument for live performance. Focusing on some of these events, I ask how live performance is used to draw connections between electronic music’s past and present, as well as to attract new participants and audiences to concerts, exhibitions and broadcasts of electronic music.
%Z See Candlish (2012), Gardner (2017), Manning (2013), Morgan (2021), and Pinch and Trocco (2002) for accounts of EMS in the context of UK electronic music. 
%Z Datanomics, the company that bought out EMS after it went into receivership in 1979, made one further Synthi 100, for Gabinete de Música Electroacústica at the music conservatory in Cuenca, Spain; this has recently been restored and, like the other Synthi 100s mentioned in this article, used in public performance. 
%Z Bowker and Star take this term from the educational theory of situated learning developed by Lave and Wenger (1991). 
%Z In reality, the Synthi 100’s sequencers were often faulty; at least one is said to have not worked at all on delivery (Ivan Schepers, interview with author).
%Z A further piece, Radio Concert No.2, was composed and performed in 2021 (Maraš, n.d.).
%Z This raises questions about the current interest in and presentation of electronic music histories within contemporary art contexts, a topic which I have explored briefly in a recent conference paper, ‘Call and response: making with the archive’ (Unsung Stories: Women at Columbia’s CMC, 2021)
%I The Science Museum Group
%@ 2054-5770
%B eng
%U https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/from-obsolete-technology-to-performance-instrument-new-live-presentations-of-the-ems-synthi-100/
%J Science Museum Group Journal