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Ted Gordon

@ted_gordon

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The Composer’s Black Box is out December 2 from @uc_press! Pre-orders are live (link in bio); use the promo code UCPSAVE30 at checkout for 30% off direct from UC Press. Google Books has already crawled the book, somehow, so if you’re SUPER curious you can read the introduction…

I’m so grateful for the advance praise by scholars who were foundational to my thinking and writing. More book events to come in late 2025 & early 2026–let me know if you’re interested in planning something! by @ted_gordon

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a year ago

October 3: talk and performance with @lilyruskroda at the @museum_of_music_technology_mmt !

This is part of their extraordinary Buchla exhibition, “Instruments that Talk Back,” which will feature 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 series systems & modules, custom EEG modules, the infamous Sili con Cello, several incredibly rare prototypes, at least 4 historical Music Easels, and contemporary instruments! Well worth the trip up from Philly or down from NYC!

Other events will feature Todd Barton, Ezra Buchla, Suzanne Ciani, Joel Davel, Ryan Gaston, Mark Goldstein, Steve Horelick, Mike Hunter, Steve McQuarry, the MEMS Project, Ami Radunskaya, Sarah Belle Reid, David Rosenboom, Stephen Ruppenthal, and Barry Schraeder—everything live-streamed as well!

(And while you’re down in Harleysville, please do yourself a favor and book a tour of the MMT, which has one of the most complete, if not *the* most complete, collection of electronic music instruments on the planet!)

Link in bio for tickets & livestream :) by @ted_gordon

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2 months ago

The psychedelic effects of LSD have been well documented. But what about the psychedelic effects of electronic musical instruments?

In the early 1960s, Don Buchla made a living designing circuits that translated biological phenomena into electronic signals, building instruments for the blind and experimental sensors for NASA research into manned spaceflight. These devices didn't just report on the senses. They hinted at the possibility of changing them.

Then his friend Owsley Stanley began flooding San Francisco with hundreds of thousands of doses of LSD, and Buchla found another technology that promised to alter his senses, and his consciousness.

Join us on October 3rd at 8PM at the MMT in Harleysville, PA as musicologist @ted_gordon explores Buchla's place in the 1960s counterculture, including his relationships with Stanley and Timothy Leary, his work on the legendary 1966 Trips Festival, his involvement with the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and his interest in psychedelic technologies.

Following his lecture, Gordon will be joined by Marcia Bassett @lilyruskroda, a frequent collaborator and NYC noise legend who regularly performs with Buchla instruments and guitar, to perform an improvised duo, articulating some of the ideas developed in the talk.

Tickets are available at tickets.theMMT.org and we'll see you when you get here!
#donbuchla #further #kenkesey #museum #buchla taken in Harleysville, Pennsylvania by @ted_gordon

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3 days ago

Back at it:
Suillus spraguei (painted suillus)
Suillus with veil intact
Amanita muscaria var. guessowii
A blue staining Bolete I didn’t ID before dissecting
Baorangia bicolor (two-color bolete)
Examining Turbinellus kauffmanii (photo by @mvcarbon ) taken in Silver Lake Moosalamoo National Forrest, VT by @ted_gordon

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a month ago

Out now: Shared Air is a 65 track collaborative album made by Workshop System owners using field recordings and inspired by @ted_gordon’s brilliant and inspiring Thingking workshop three weeks ago. More than 80 Workshop Systems attended, with their owners. We learned about Pauline Oliveros (featured in Ted’s book The Composer’s Black Box) and tried patches inspired by her earliest experiments. After the session, we worked together in international pairs, sharing field recordings and processing them with the systems. This album is the output of that work: 65 tracks on Bandcamp, a 78-page book of spectrograms and a YouTube album. I’ll be announcing Thingking #2 very soon. Links in my bio: https://musicthingmodular.bandcamp.com/album/thingking-1-shared-air by @ted_gordon

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a month ago

Strobilomyces strobilaceus

Boletus sensibilis(?)

Hygrocybe punicea

Amanita muscaria var. guessowii

Cortinarius iodes

Russula paludosa

Craterellus fallax

Ramaria something-or-other

Coltricia cinnamomea by @ted_gordon

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a month ago

I talked with @othermindssf about The Composer’s Black Box! Podcast available most everywhere (link in bio), just make sure you don’t listen on Spotify :) by @ted_gordon

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2 months ago

A Global Workshop Workshop: I’ve spent the last six months doing workshop system events around the world, I wanted to do something for people not in Stockholm/ Deptford / Toronto / Lisbon. Thingking is an online event with @ted_gordon and me: join us, bring your Workshop System, we’ll talk about Pauline Oliveros and patch and collaborate. LINK IN BIO by @ted_gordon

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3 months ago

Ted Gordon is a musician and musicologist who connects historical understandings of electronic and experimental music with critical approaches to the social study of science and technology. His first book, The Composer’s Black Box: Making Music in Cybernetic America, was published by the University of California Press in 2025. He is Assistant Professor of Music at Baruch College & The Graduate Center, City University of New York. As a musician, he improvises with the Buchla Music Easel and other objects of historical study as a means towards producing a critical, embodied understanding of musical technologies.

Marcia Bassett is a musician and artist based in NYC, known for her innovative, unconventional approach to music. Her work explores sound collage, improvisation, and audiovisual environments. Working with electronics, guitar, and voice, Bassett creates otherworldly narratives that are equal parts trance and critique. She is the founder of Yew Recordings and is also known for her solo work as Zaïmph, a project she initiated in 2005. She first made an impact with the Philadelphia outfit Un in the 1990s, releasing on Siltbreeze Records, before forming the experimental drone group Double Leopards. She frequently collaborates with others, including Samara Lubelski, Chuck Bettis, Taralie Peterson, Ted Gordon, Thomas Dimuzio, and Ursula Scherrer. Recent solo recordings include Midnight Xpander LP recorded at EMS (Stockholm); Repeater cassette; Undulating Arkasboning cassette released on Artsy Records (2022), and a Digi-EP, Altering The Form, on the Belgian KraakRecords label KRUT. Collaborative recordings include Sunview (Live recordings with Chuck Bettis); Dream of Autumn Electrified Blues I & II (Live recordings with Ignatz), and Indexical/Rhizome live recordings with Samara Lubelski (Relative Pitch Records).

@lilyruskroda
@ted_gordon
WSH 26’
July 10-11-12
NYC

Tickets at link in bio 🎫

@miseenplace.newyork by @ted_gordon

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3 months ago

More Scalatron madness! Joel Mandelbaum (pictured) showed me the two(!) Scalatrons he convinced Queens College to purchase in 1974, which are still in a practice room to which only he has the key. Here I perform my rendition of “31-TET Tears,” tuned with the rather insane push button system for specifying the generalized keyboard on one of the units (Joel’s advice: set it and forget it). by @ted_gordon

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4 months ago

RESCHEDULED! I’ll be doing a talk about Alvin Lucier’s early work based on archival research done at the NYPL-FPA, drawing from my chapter on Lucier in The Composer’s Black Box. Then, Daniel Fishkin and Victoria Keddie will perform an early archival compositional sketch! Super excited for this one! Thanks to Marcia Bassett for hosting!

Sunday, May 3, 2pm
Sunview Acropolis
257 Nassau Ave by @ted_gordon

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6 months ago

Some highlights from the @museum_of_music_technology_mmt collection— looking forward to the Buchla exhibition this fall! by @ted_gordon

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6 months ago