32kg: Performance Systems for a Post-Digital Age

Why is a seemingly mundane issue such as airline baggage allowance of great significance in regards to the performance practice of electronic music? This paper discusses how a performance practice has evolved that seeks to question the binary and corporate digital world. New 'instruments' and approaches have emerged that explore 'dirty electronics' and 'punktronics': DIY electronic instruments made from junk. These instruments are not instruments in the traditional sense, defined by physical dimensions or by a set number of parameters, but modular systems, constantly evolving, never complete, infinitely variable and designed to be portable. A combination of loand hi-fi, analogue and digital, synchronous and asynchronous devices offer new modes of expression. The development of these new interfaces for musical expression run side-by-side with an emerging postdigital aesthetic.