---
id: steim
title: "STEIM"
year: 1969
category: "Ideas"
lang: en
canonical: https://nodemusic.cc/node/steim
source: node.music
---

# STEIM (1969)

Ideas · https://nodemusic.cc/node/steim

## Summary

While other laboratories computed sound using punch cards, the Amsterdam-based center STEIM proposed short-circuiting synthesizers with bare hands. Their wooden Cracklebox generated noise through the natural moisture of the performer's skin.

## Full text

By the early 1970s, electronics had become mathematics: composers entered sound parameters into humming mainframes through terminals. The Amsterdam-based studio STEIM shifted the focus from computation to physical touch. The center focused on designing controllers that required muscle tension from the performer.

The manifesto of this approach was the Cracklebox — a small wooden box without keys, onto the panel of which the bare contacts of a microchip were exposed. The musician pressed their fingers against them, becoming a living resistor. The pitch and density of the screeching current directly depended on the pressure applied and microscopic variations in skin moisture. Playing the exact same phrase twice on the device was physically impossible.

Attempting to tame the instability of the human body, STEIM engineers began translating gestures into digital data. Michel Waisvisz created the sensor gloves The Hands, and the laboratory wrote the software LiSa for capturing sound on the fly. Soon, the concept of a "bodily interface" left the avant-garde: the Amsterdam team's developments were purchased by the Japanese and defined the architecture of the Korg M1 — the most widely produced synthesizer of the eighties.

## People

- Michel Waisvisz (1949–2008) was a Dutch inventor and the director of STEIM.

## Connections

### Influenced

- [NIME](https://nodemusic.cc/node/nime.md) - INSPIRED
- [Arduino / Maker](https://nodemusic.cc/node/arduino.md) - INSPIRED

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEIM