Wednesday 18 November 2015

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Mini Oramics

Part of the original design for Mini Oramics, courtesy of the Daphne Oram Archive

My name is Tom Richards and I am researching Daphne Oram using the Daphne Oram Archive at Goldsmiths, and the Oramics Machine at the Science Museum. 

As part of my practice based PhD I am attempting a recreation / reimagining of Mini Oramics, which is essentially a graphical score reading machine - like a player piano for electronic music. This was Oram's second attempt at such a device: after building her original Oramics Machine, Oram turned her thoughts to the production of a smaller, simpler version of her machine, to be marketed to private and educational studios. Oram’s Mini Oramics is still an under-researched area of her practice, and unlike her original machine we do not have a physical artefact to study. However, the archival designs for Mini-Oramics are far more complete than those of her original machine, and so in many respects her intentions and ideas are easier to interpret than with the original.

This blog is to enable me to share some of the work I have been doing with my hardware version of Mini Oramics.