Bruce Haack spent much of his career building electronic instruments rather than waiting for manufacturers to invent the ones he wanted.
One of the strangest was the Dermatron, an instrument that used the electrical conductivity of human skin as part of its control system. Haack demonstrated versions of it on American television during the 1960s, at one point using performers’ bodies as part of the circuit.
At the same time, he was producing electronic music for children, theatre, advertising and his own increasingly unusual records. The Electric Lucifer appeared on Columbia in 1970.
What I like about the Dermatron is that it makes the word “interface” very literal.
Modern electronic instruments usually place something between the body and electricity.
A key.
A pad.
A touchscreen.
Haack wondered whether the body itself could become part of the control voltage.
That idea no longer seems entirely eccentric. Sensors, conductive materials and biofeedback now appear regularly in interactive art.
Haack reached similar territory using homemade electronics at a time when the commercial synthesizer industry had barely begun.
Sometimes technological history looks cleaner than it really was because we remember the products that survived.
The homemade machines are easier to forget.
https://www.brucehaack.com/biography
#BruceHaack #ElectronicMusic #InventedInstruments #MusicTechnology
