been lurking through the monome site since 2008-2009 when i first saw tehn’s wurlitzer/256 grid performance
was a student back then, so I couldn’t afford a monome, so I went for a second-hand ohm64, which didn’t work out well in the end so I sold it.
then life happened, fast forward a few years, working a lot etc, moved to london, built a music studio from scratch and what not, I’ve acquired more synths than what I need and now the never-ending eurorack hole, but no monome grid yet…not sure if I should even be starting a topic without owning anything monome (even though I do have a nice 7" from parallelogram/galapagoose, whose performances still evade my understanding!)
Anyway, I am trying to get people’s experience with buying more gear than what they need to make decent music, whether it is a phase you grow out of (if so, how did you?), what their personal reasoning (or lack thereof) behind acquisition was etc. I am too aware of the whole “they’re just tools - it’s up to the user” type of arguments…
Personally, I am wondering if there is more at stake here…So, here I have in mind what Gilbert Simondon says about technical objects and the motoric-sensory pleasure we get when we use tools/machines:
“That said, contemplation is not techno-aesthetics’ primary category. It’s in usage, in action, that it becomes something orgasmic, a tactile means and motor of stimulation. When a nut that is stuck becomes unstuck, one experiences a motoric pleasure, a certain instrumentalized joy, a communication–mediated by the tool–with the thing on which the tool is working. […] It’s a type of intuition that’s perceptive-motoric and sensorial. The body of the operator gives and receives. Even a machine like the lathe or the milling machine produces this particular sensation. There exists an entire sensorial array of tools of all kinds.”
Looking forward to your responses!