Michael Johnsen

Michael Johnsen is a circuit designer, performer, and researcher from Pittsburgh, USA. His recent research concerns the circuit-level understanding of David Tudor’s „folkloric“ homemade instruments and the music they made possible. This work has resulted in restoring, cloning, and performance with vintage circuits, as well as publications/lectures. His own performance work is characterized by a relative lack of ideas per se, and an intense focus on observation, the way a shepherd watches sheep. As a performer/builder of live-electronics he cultivates the social relationships of an integrated menagerie of custom devices whose idiosyncratic behaviors are revealed through their complex interactions, producing teeming chirps, sudden transients and charming failure modes; embracing the dirt in pure electronics. He has shown work at arter (Istanbul), LUMA (Arles), singuhr (Berlin), INA GRM (Paris), Getty [LA], MdM Salzburg, Kagurane (Tokyo), MoMA (NY), SF Cinematheque, Radio France, Idiopreneurial Entrephonics (Ct), Kitchen (NYC), High Zero (Baltimore), and Musique Action. He co-edits ubu.com/emr, designs synthesizers for Pittsburgh Modular, and may be reached at johnsen.rahbek@gmail.com.