Synthposium at SAE Institute

The Synthposium ran at SAE Institute’s Melbourne campus in both 2015 and 2016, as a celebration and exploration of synthesizers.

SAE Institute presented the 2^nd annual Synthposium on Monday the 14^th of November, 2016 at its Melbourne campus. Following 2015’s successful evening event the Synthposium was expanded for 2016 into an all-day academic conference and evening session with workshops, vintage gear demos and jamming.

The daytime component of the 2016 Synthposium was an academic conference. Synthesizer experts convened from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, US and Italy to examine the question of how synthesizers convey ‘meaning through sonics’. Leading synth academics such as Warren Burt, David Haberfeld, James Gardner, Nino Auricchio, Paul Borg, Michail Exarchos and Martin Koszolko presented papers examining aspects of this topic. The Synthposium was also honoured to have Robin Fox, Melbourne sound artist and director of the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio (MESS), and Les Craythorn, tonmeister responsible for the restoration of the Victorian College of the Arts’ EMS Synthi 100, present keynote addresses.

In the evening the Synthposium hosted a series of workshops and demonstrations by leading Melbourne synth practitioners and theoreticians. This culminated in a demonstration of vintage gear and an open jam session with hand-on knob-twiddling action. Some rare 1970s and early 80s synthesizers and other electronic music equipment was especially loaned to SAE Institute by Melbourne collectors and electronic music artists for this night only.

The papers for the Synthposium conference have been published by Cambridge Scholars as Interpreting the Synthesizer: Meaning Through Sonics. Order the publication from Cambridge Scholars.