MESS: inside a living, playable museum of rare electronic instruments

Hi Robin, can you tell us: what is MESS?

MESS is a living museum of electronic music that spans the entire history of that form. And we house everything from a theremin made by [Soviet inventor Leon] Theremin all the way to the most cutting-edge synthesisers of today.

The idea of MESS – or our mission, if you like – is to empower all people to live a creative life through music-making.

What’s quite radical about the organisation is that we house a museum-grade collection, but we are interested in preservation through use. Everything that is in MESS is playable. Anybody can become a member, so anyone can come and play the instruments.

And the idea behind making these instruments accessible to the public is that these are musical instruments that need to be heard well into the future, despite some of them being almost a hundred years old already.

It’s quite a different idea from other museum collections, then, which showcase their treasures in a glass box?

Exactly. When I call MESS a living museum, the ‘living’ part is more important than the ‘museum’ part.

We are more about activation than preservation – although with electronic musical instruments, particularly old analog ones, you have to use them to preserve them properly.

How do people engage with MESS if they’re interested? 

The best way to get involved is to become a member, or you can come and do a tour. We’ll be hosting tours where you can come and check out what the organisation is all about. You can also register for one of our beginners’ workshops.

If you’re not sure about whether this is for you, come and do an Introduction to MESS workshop. We are open to anyone from the absolute beginner all the way through to the seasoned professional, so you don’t need any experience to engage with us. We’re all about helping you start your journey with electronic music.

Or else, if you’re passing by the Atrium, drop in for more info on how you can get involved.

How does membership work?

Membership is on a subscription basis, so you pay per month or per year, just like you would at a gym.

I’m a utopian myself, so I would like this all to be free, but of course it’s not a revenue neutral proposition. But we try and make our offerings as affordable as we can, so everything that we do is not-for-profit. All the money that’s generated goes back into preserving and making the collection available.

We’re not a business, we’re a charitable organisation, but there is a cost as a member.

What else does MESS do, apart from offer studio space to use the instruments and run workshops?

Lots of artist residencies. And we commission composers to make new electronic works.

We have a series called Sonorous, which we do twice a year, where we commission major electronic works for multichannel sound environment. It’s quite a rare thing for composers to have an opportunity to work with a collection like this and then create something in a multichannel format. We present those with the Melbourne Recital Centre.

As an arts organisation, we service artists, so the artist residencies that we offer are local, national and international. Often international visiting artists will want to come and spend time here because we have quite rare and often inaccessible instruments.

When [US electronic musician] Laurel Halo was here recently, for example, she came and made some of her new record on the EKO drum computer, because that’s an amazing instrument. Not many of them in the wild.

What opportunities are coming up, in terms of MESS now being here at Fed Square?

There are lots of programming opportunities here at Fed Square; it’s amazing. I can’t say too much about things that aren’t confirmed, but the ones that are confirmed, for example, on 3 November at The Edge, we’re doing a huge MESS in-conversation around our theremin made by Theremin. We’re going to activate the theremin in there and we’re going to be talking with Miles Brown, who’s an extraordinary theremin player here in the city.

Also, the central location means that for visiting international artists we’re much more accessible than we were before.

Any other dreams for MESS here at Fed Square?

Well, we’ve always wanted to host a more substantial international residency program where we could encourage really high-profile international artists to spend some time here and create new material that would then get out into the world.

But basically, we’re planning to activate as much as we can in Fed Square. That’s the plan.

It might be a bit like picking a favourite child, but can you tell us about your top three instruments here in the MESS collection?

Okay. So my top three would probably be, number one: The Serge Paperface, which is an amazing instrument.

It was built in California in 1975 and was shipped out to Melbourne to be part of the first composition lab at La Trobe University, arriving in Australia in 1976.

Serge instruments are really interesting. They’re designed by a Russian émigré, Serge Tcherepnin. They were the beginning of a DIY movement in modular synthesis: you could actually buy these module by module. You could buy an oscillator, then a filter, and then an envelope, and you could build your own system.

The example that we have here, the La Trobe Serge, as it’s known, is a very comprehensive and amazing system from that period.

It’s called The Paperface because you would buy the modules in kit form, and they would have pre-drilled metal plates. And then, you would stick the ‘paperface’ on it, according to whichever module you were building.

From a preservation point of view, it’s quite fragile and it’s been restored really beautifully. It is available for use, but we ask people to be quite careful with it. But that’s certainly a favourite of mine.

It’s almost impossible to play Happy Birthday on that thing, so it’s a sound exploratory machine which is what I really love.

I think my second favourite would be the Transaudio ProCase 6, partly because of the family connection to that instrument.

There’re lots of these grandiose claims in these manuals. But that synth manual for the VCS3 was my teacher.

The VCS3 also has a pin matrix. If you think of the game Battleship, it’s exactly like that. You put these pins into a matrix pin bay to connect oscillators to filters and things like that. So that format now is, like, that’s my brain. That’s how I think.

Whatever you learn on, I guess, becomes the foundation of the way you might think in terms of patching electronic musical instruments.

The ProCase 6 was built partly by my stepfather in the ’70s and it’s a big instrument with a huge matrix pin bay on it. And it’s made in Melbourne, so it’s a favourite of mine.

And then, the third one would be the VCS3 which is the one that I learned on.

So there’s The Serge Paperface, the ProCase 6, and then the VCS3 would be my top three, I reckon.

Connecting with people and creating community is a huge part of what we’re trying to do here. And we run some really interesting courses that have created ensembles and led to collaborations and created communities. One of my favourites is the professional development course which we offer free, by application.

Each year, the cohorts that go through that course become friends. One of the really essential parts of that course is the sharing of your music with a community of people. This is something that’s really hard to do and the online forum environment for it is really bad. It’s also something that’s very exposing. You’re always very vulnerable when you play somebody something that you’ve made; you’re really giving them part of yourself and it’s really interesting how often people will apologise before they play a track. Whenever I’m running those sessions, I have a rule that you have to say something about your music without apologising and it’s actually a bit of a challenge for people to do that.

But that connection that people make when they’re sharing their music and sharing their ideas is what this place is all about.

What are you looking forward to about MESS being here at Fed Square?

I’m just looking forward to engaging with a broader range of people. I mean, being here in the heart of the cultural conversation, as I like to say, is amazing. And already, the moment the decal on the window came down at 7.30am yesterday, we had somebody browsing immediately. And I said to him, “You’re the first person to browse this window,” and now he is becoming a member.

So, there you go, straight away.

Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio (MESS) is now open in the Atrium at Fed Square. Visit their website to find out about upcoming events, to book a tour or workshop, to explore their collection and to learn more.