"Maia Appleby Melamed and Eliot Lambert take us on a deep dive into the electromagnetic world of the theremin - from its origins as a Soviet science experiment to its use as an instrument where the body is the interface. We explore the instrument’s political history, which includes Cold War espionage and Soviet labour camps. The theremin's power as a 'deep listening instrument', used even to broadcast humanity's first interstellar musical message into space, makes it both a relic of the past and a portal to the future. As this year marks the 20th anniversary of the New York Theremin Society, the show demonstrates why the instrument remains so fascinating today, with an interview from one of the society's co-founders and renowned thereminist Dorit Chrysler."
I co-produced and featured on this episode exploring the weird and wonderful history of the theremin, inspired by my thesis project 'When Satellites Murmur' which led to my acquiring of a theremin and both playing it and using it as a midi controller.
The Theremin: Past, Present and Future, Resonance Radio
"There's a profound sadness to the theremin, in that wavering effect that sounds like a human voice perpetually on the edge of breaking, just before tears. That sadness is haunting and beautiful and primordial. The sound is both intensely human and more-than-human - sometimes it sounds like an ancient ghost trapped in the machine. And other times, it sounds like the voice of the future, a reflection of the cyborgization of the human voice as technology increasingly dominates our lives …. Perhaps the ancient and future voice are the two electromagnetic fields, and your present body is the interference that creates the sound. So it’s an instrument, a time capsule, and a portal into the ethereal."