Reconstructing Harald Bode
A Synthie Lovers Festival
Fri, April 25 – Sat, April 26, 2025
- Language
- German
- English
Harald Bode (1909–1987) was a German engineer and pioneer of electronic musical instruments whose many inventions had a significant impact on electronic music.
His extensive archive with numerous notes, construction plans, circuit diagrams and prototype documentation has been part of the ZKM since 2019. Based on this archive, the SYNTH-Werk Munich, the ZKM | Karlsruhe and the HfM | Karlsruhe University of Music have reconstructed Bode's last completed instrument, the so-called Barberpole Phaser, an effects device that was only built three times. It is now available to a wider audience and can be used by artists and musicians worldwide.
In order to approach Harald Bode's extensive oeuvre from different perspectives and to celebrate the successful reproduction of the Barberpole Phaser, ZKM and HfM are organizing a festival dedicated to analog synthesizers and electronic sound converters.
The festival is aimed at artists and musicians, experts and scientists of the history of electronic art, friends and enthusiasts of analog synthesizers, as well as the interested and curious.
The event begins on Friday with a symposium at the ZKM Media Theater with lectures and performances on Harald Bode's life and work from a scientific and artistic perspective, his inventions, compositions, and collaborations with musicians.
In the evening, the event will move from the ZKM to the HfM. With reference to Harald Bode's own compositions and with the help of the reconstructed Barberpole Phaser, the newly created or rediscovered sound possibilities will be explored in concerts and performances.
On Saturday, numerous workshops offer the opportunity to work with the instruments and analog synthesizers, to experiment, to tinker and to exchange ideas with like-minded people.
The big concert in the evening with Afrorack at the ZKM Kubus will close the festival.
A festival of works by and concerts with:
- Senta Hirscheider
- Luís Pena and students of the HfM
- Juan Parra Cancino
- Svetlana Marasz
- Florian Zwissler
- Afrorack
Program
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Friday, April 25, 2025
at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
10:00 – 10:15 am Welcome and opening words
Alistair Hudson (ZKM), Matthias Wiegandt (HfM)10:15 – 10:30 am Welcome and opening words
Peer Bode (Son of Harald Bode, Videoartist)10:30 – 11:00 am The Harald Bode Archive at ZKM (lecture)
Felix Mittelberger (ZKM)11:10 – 11:30 am not title (performance)
Rebekkah Palov (former Archivist of Harald Bode, Sound-/Videoartist)11:40 – 12:00 am The book Reconstructing Harald Bode (book presentation)
Ulrike Havemann (ZKM), Jens Lutz (ZKM)12:00 – 01:00 pm Lunchbreak 01:00 – 01:25 pm The project Reconstructing Harald Bode (lecture)
Felix Mittelberger (ZKM), Christoph Seibert (HfM)01:30 – 01:55 pm Harald Bode as a composer (lecture performance)
Juan Parra Cancino (Orpheus Institute)02:00 – 02:25 pm Exploring the Barberpole Phaser (lecture performance)
Luís Pena (HfM)02:30 – 02:55 pm Working on Harald Bode (panel discussion)
Gerhard Mayrhofer (Synth-Werk), Luís Pena (HfM), Juan Parra Cancino (Orpheus Institute)
Moderation: Felix Mittelberger (ZKM)03:00 – 03:20 pm Break 03:20 – 03:30 pm no title (remote)
Suzanne Ciani (Artist)03:35 – 04:00 pm no title (lecture performance)
Florian Zwissler (HfM Köln)04:05 – 04:30 pm no title (lecture)
Svetlana Marasz (FHNW04:35 – 05:00 pm Working with Harald Bode (panel discussion)
Senta Hirscheider (Artist), Svetlana Marasz (FHNW), Florian Zwissler (HfM)
Moderation: Christoph Seibert (HfM)05:00 – 07:00 pm Break at HfM | University of Music Karlsruhe
07:00 – 07:30 pm no title (radio play performance)
Senta Hirscheider (Artist)07:30 – 08:15 pm Experiments with Bode (concert)
Students of HfM08:15 – 08:30 pm Break 08:30 – 08:50 pm no title (concert)
Juan Parra Cancino (Orpheus Institute)08:50 – 09:10 pm no title (concert)
TBA09:10 – 09:30 pm no title (concert)
Florian Zwissler (HfM Köln), Luís Pena (HfM)
Records by Harald Bode
Who was Harald Bode?
Harald Bode was a physicist and engineer. After working at the Heinrich Hertz Institute for Oscillation Research at the Technical University of Berlin, he emigrated to the USA in 1954. He is considered one of the fathers of the modern synthesizer. His Modular Synthesizer and Sound Processor of 1961 and its concept formed the basis for the later Moog synthesizer. In the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Bode designed and built numerous instruments, electronic sound generators, and organs, including the Melochord, Europe's first postwar electric musical instrument, which was used by Karlheinz Stockhausen and others. In the 1960s, Bode developed ring modulators and his Frequency Shifter, followed by his famous Vocoder in the 1970s. The Barberpole Phaser in the early 1980s combined many concepts and ideas from previous instruments and aimed to revolutionize the musical landscape.
What is a Barberpole Phaser?
The Barberpole Phaser is based on the psychoacoustic principles of the Shepard scale and the Shepard-Risset glissando discovered in the 1960s. A note or sound fed into the Barberpole Phaser appears to have an eternal glissando up or down as long as the note is played. Harald Bode decided to create a device that would produce this effect and add useful filters like fuzz. He called it the Barberpole Phaser because of its acoustic resemblance to the look of a barber pole outside a barbershop, which seems to go up and down indefinitely. Only three Barberpole Phasers have been built. The first was completed in 1981, the last in 1983, at the dawn of the PC era. However, their memory and processing speed were too limited for Bode's sound ideas. Nevertheless, he later attempted to emulate the principle on a Commodore personal computer, but this was never presented to the public.
Organization
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Partners
HfM | Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe