Sizzling Semiconductors

Politics of Parts

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2022 / 2023

Electronic workshop / collective sound performance

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Sizzling Semiconductors commences with a screaming tone at the precise touch of a radio-sensitive mineral. Oscillating instruments constructed from scratch investigate the multifaceted history of electronic parts, semiconductive stones, their presence in electronic devices, and environmental decay.

Following the path of Galena crystals from antiquity to the Industrial Revolution, the project observes how these crystals enabled the first communication network through their demodulating capacities and how our present computational devices became so dependent on rare earths. It peeks at crystal radio cults, amateur activities, and informational wars carried on waves, transmitted and received through stones. 

Inspired by early 20th-century radio discoveries, Sizzling Semiconductors creates sounding electronic instruments out of scrap metal pieces and stones. Galvanised steel, a very common leftover, seems to bear inconspicuous properties once made incandescent: negative resistance peaks. Following Nyle Steiner’s experiments,  negative resistance oscillators are enacted, shaped as cat whiskers with components built from scratch. An old screw can become a surrogate for a transistor to scream modulated tones when treated properly. 

During the workshop, participants acquire knowledge in both technical and historical aspects of electronics to understand the methods of reinforcing communication networks out of leftovers. They will be guided to construct, bend, drill, solder, and reinvent circuitry. Heavy manual work is implied. The instruments are activated in a collective performance where the instruments erupt in noise.