Pandemic Hauntologies: Performing our Absence with Lonely Synthesizers

As we lose access to the prosperous future promised by the consumer boom of the 80s and 90s, vaporwave provides a kind of nostalgic look at an alternate universe. Similarly, as the pandemic stripped away the time we spend at shows or with other people, modular synths provided a facsimile of comfort and presence, having been programmed by a now absent human musician. Perhaps hauntology explains the popularity of both these phenomenons.

Over the past decade, the modular style of synthesizer design has become increasingly popular- with a growing online culture to match. The visible community can certainly appear homogenous at times, often defaulting to white male faces. This can unfortunately be expected of a population at the intersection of tech professionals and music producers. Despite this generality, there are a variety of people who have taken the plunge into modular synthesis, creating many different styles of music and content. Their reasons and motivations for choosing this specific style of musical instrument are just as varied.

And in the time of Covid-19, when music performers suddenly found themselves isolated without venues or audiences—trying desperately to mirror the shuttered past through livestream after zoom-fatiguing livestream—the modular synth community seemed to thrive.

Enthusiasts have explained the appeal to me in a few different ways: One is the value of a “non-screen” device with which to make electronic music. Many music-making hobbyists are coders or office workers that stare at screens all day, and wish to avoid another screen when they are enjoying a creative time off. Others see it simply as an opportunity to mix up the artistic process with different tools and methods. Because many electronic music producers have made music with nothing but a laptop and a copy of Ableton Live for the majority of their careers, choosing instead to create music with a physical instrument, which does not inherently conform to a musical grid, results in entirely new works of art. And as many electronic musicians can appear to be “checking their email” when performing with nothing but their laptop, interacting with the physicality of a modular synth brings back the “liveliness” of live electronic performance. An instrument with physicality connects with an audience in a different way, however inscrutable that instrument may be. 

While more flexible than old-school synthesizers, the expense involved in committing to a modular synth is considerable. Prices have never been lower, but you can still expect to pay thousands of dollars for a modular system. To design a eurorack modular synthesizer system, a synthesist purchases modules to use as sound generators, samplers, filters, sequencers, and then installs them in a case. A “patch” is a particular configuration of cables connecting these modules that creates a new path for sound for every performance. The end result is a very expensive kind of musical Lego system.

Some of the most popular modules listed on the popular community website modulargrid.net go for hundreds of dollars. The “Maths” module by Make Noise, considered ‘essential’ by many enthusiasts, is $290 on its own. Other well regarded modules by boutique makers can go for well beyond their list price when stock runs low. “Mangrove” by Mannequins/Whimsical Raps technically retails at $285, but be prepared to pay over $400 right now on the used music gear website reverb.com. When these are the singular pieces of a full modular system (often referred to as a “rack”), you can see how prices for “modest” starting rigs start to add up. Often more budget full sized systems will go into the $2,000 and $3,000, and it is common to see $4,000 to $6,000 price tags for completed systems.

And often, these modular systems are more expensive and technically less capable than a plethora of free software that runs on any moderately powered laptop. So why are people paying more for less? Gadget-obsessed techies and perfectionist audio engineers are just as much potential victims to conspicuous consumption as hype beasts and neighbors looking to keep up with the Joneses’. This phenomenon permeates synthesizer and modular online communities like those on Reddit, where pictures of music making gear typically outnumber posts with any audio to listen to. Much to the chagrin of some artists, the appeal of physical electronic music-making instruments may be more like a “hot rod” car culture than a musical community.

So what is driving all of this?

A large part of the massive surge in modular synthesizer popularity was the “Modular On the Spot” video series on YouTube. The front page biography at modularonthespot.com describes the genesis of a modular synthesizer performance series:

“Modular On The Spot is an outdoor modular synthesizer picnic founded in Los Angeles by Eric ‘Rodent’ Cheslak and Bana Haffar. … The informal picnic setting combined with a focus on the modular synthesizers is intended to cultivate the exchange of ideas with those who share a common interest in the format, as well showcase the breadth of the instrument. At Modular on the Spot there are no set times, no headliners, no prescribed set lengths, and players of all skill levels are welcome.”

“Modular on the Spot” has since turned into its own performance format, hashtag, and maybe its own genre. Haffar has described the project as a way to utilize these novel synthesis machines in a new format or space. “It’s about being somewhere other than your studio, and it’s about doing something new, and creating a third space that isn’t a club or a studio,” she explains in an interview with Tim Held’s podcast “Podular Modcast”. Flipping the script struck a specific chord with the electronic music making community. “Modular synths… but in nature!” was never the strict intention  but the aesthetic has stuck. The alleged ‘opposites’ of knobby, wired technology sitting in the midst of mossy forests, grassy knolls, and serene beaches have proven to be quite the popular juxtaposition. “MOTS” posts and videos are plenty, with knobs being turned in tall grass, synthesists crouching on rock formations, and mountain ranges looking down on a mess of wires resting on colorful serapes.

Haffar does show a certain irritation at these repeated aesthetics. “I have mixed feelings about how it’s turned out… I’m happy it’s still bringing people joy… but I think it’s also a good time to question why we are duplicating a very specific format,” she explained to Held. She continued, describing the modular synthesizer’s potential as a tool for “breaking the mold” and not simply trading one mold for another. Haffar and Held also commiserate about their reluctant relationship with the consumerism involved with the modular scene. Anxiety abounds, and before the interview is done Haffar urges all of us to not copy MOTS but instead move on and make something new.

When a portable generator is not at hand, or an idyllic slice of nature is out of reach, you can find modular artists on YouTube or Instagram adorning their in-home studios with fiddle leaf figs, monsteras, or a menagerie of succulents. Blinking LEDs and glossy knobs are accompanied by wisps of waxy green and a window with plenty of natural light. Perhaps an Instagram-esque color filter washes out the entire scene into a wooly, dreamy affair.

Soft Synthesis

In 2018 there was a brief spat of internet coverage linking modular synthesizer videos with a sensibility known as hygge. “These Cozy Videos Of Modular Synths Will Make Your Day A Little Warmer”, and “Modular Synthesizer Videos Are the YouTube Rabbit Hole You Won’t Want to Leave” articles both namecheck the hygge phenomenon. Phillip Sherburne at Pitchfork writes, hygge as “a Danish concept encompassing wood-cabin coziness that has recently become a global craze. Hygge has been lampooned for veering into cliché but, even at its most precious, modular YouTube’s homespun aesthetic is refreshing because it is the opposite of the dark, ominous, self-consciously edgy imagery that so often accompanies electronic music.”

This quote lays bare an insecurity I notice just underneath the consciousness of many electronic musicians. Electronic music is “dark”, “cold”, and “unnatural”. It is robot music, bleeps and bloops that are “programmed” and not truly performed. There is no warmth. There is no soul. Hell, is there even really a performer? And in that case, is there any artist involved at all?

The rise in popularity and acceptance of electronic music has mitigated these conversations as time has gone on. But even in friendlier climates, this insecurity seems to persist.  Enough so that hundreds of synthesizers have been released into the wilderness just to prove that there is nothing unnatural about this craft. We aren’t cyborgs and we have the succulents to prove it, god damnit.

And lest we forget about the actual music in question, there are aesthetic trends in matching directions as well. The past several years has seen a rise in soft, dreamy qualities of electronic music, especially amongst the modular set. “Ambient” as a genre has been ascendant, with gentle plink and plonk noises awash in reverb echoing out of modular setups around the globe. On episode 586 of “Sonic TALK”, his  podcast for music producers, Nick Batt discusses the YouTube channel “Modular Radio 24/7” with guests Gaz Williams and Rich Hilton. He notes that it has “lots of bell-like, sonorous stuff… so it’s got a certain flavor.” Twinkling chimes frame the introduction. Hilton notes the uniformity of the music, calling it a more interesting and enjoyable form of music that you might usually hear while receiving a massage at a spa, but ultimately laments the lack of “any real variety,” and that “about a half hour in, it had all felt like one giant, smoothing wash”.

Haffar and Hilton’s critiques are certainly founded. But since so much of electronic music culture seems to operate similar to the culture of fashion, I don’t think they have much to worry about in the long term. These things come and go in cycles. Hardness yields to softness which yields to hardness again. Nostalgia is composted repeatedly for the sake of novelty. Black will be the new black, again. While their analysis and prescriptions for moving forward artistically seem fair, I couldn’t help but notice a certain lack of examination of the current state of affairs. Yes, this is becoming a genre, an aesthetic, a form. Perhaps pejoratively, it is derivative, formulaic, or cliche. But neither of these opinions answer why this artistic style proliferated nor explain where it came from, matters of taste aside.

Perhaps it isn’t such a bad idea to hold onto this fashionable softness. I imagine that many might think we need soft and relaxing aesthetics now more than ever, considering the stress Covid has caused us.

With modular synthesizers, electronic musicians had found a way to perform physically and hands-on with an instrument. Harsh buzzes of techno yielded to the gentle plinks of ambient. I found myself wondering what these modular synthesists were trying to say with these very specific and diametrically oppositional choices. “Does it look like we’re checking our email? Then let’s buy machines with nothing but knobs and wires. Does electronic music sound harsh and cold? I’m synthesizing noises that sound like xylophones made of felt. Is electronic music unnatural? This mess of wires is literally sitting in a forest.” Instruments were brought out of the studio and into the world, to be shared with nature and audiences alike.

Then a pandemic hit, and the rest of the world went inside and became more virtual and digitized than it ever has been before. 

The Room is Still Warm

In this era of social distance, a growing-but-specific subgenre of modular synth videos features a conspicuous absence that feels oddly at home.The modular synthesizer sits front and center, situated in nature or the clean coziness of a curated living room. On one module or another, LED lights twinkle or glow in time with the music, visually displaying the activity of the circuits beneath. The only thing missing? The artist.

A large part of this Youtube subgenre is completely devoid of people, while many others make do with an occasional hand from off screen. A slight and slow turn of the knob nudges the machine into a different direction. This is more “don’t mind me” than “I wanna rock!”, more stagehand than stage presence.

The scenes struck me as disturbingly resonant at the beginning of the Covid19 pandemic, but I was having a hard time finding the source of my emotion. Why did these scenes seem so right for me at this moment?

A synthesizer, in the woods. Turned on, blinking, speaking. Its programming is physically manifested and clearly visible, a spaghetti tangle of physical wires. Too messy to not plainly be the work of human hands. Cables are plugged into jacks, pushed into and pulled from the face of the machine.

Rarely in our modern era is the act of programming physically manifested and presented for audiences and users to see. With the modular synthesizer, the cables are the programming. We don’t need to be told a person plugged in those cables, it is a self-evident fact. Yet in the world of this video performance, that person is no longer here. Upon reflection, you realize these material sound objects cannot be in situ in the literal sense of the phrase. A programmed, patched, prepared, and powered-on modular synthesizer is conspicuously not the same as the rocks, sand, and plants that may surround it. Singing equipment does not sit in a room the same way a rug, chair, or desk might. It shares more of a feeling with a television tuned to static, a running faucet, or perhaps a toy top spinning on a table.

The room is still warm. Whoever was here cannot be that far away… can they? How long can this thing go on its own? How long has this place been empty, exactly? When does it go cold? 

Haunted House

Hauntology is a term coined by Jacques Derrida in 1993 his book “Spectres of Marx”. He believed that Marxism would “haunt Western society from beyond the grave.” It has been noted as a possible rebuttal to the post-cold war global liberal consensus, typified in Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and The Last Man” written in 1992. 

Given the potential long term effects of the pandemic, I found the idea of a lost future in a present-day context particularly resonant. It turns out that I am not alone;  many theorists have been describing how Hauntology works on today’s terms. Hauntology has become more generalized as it has been picked up and used by all manner of artists, critics and philosophers over the past decade and a half. A common base definition is that hauntology is the “idea that the present is haunted by the metaphorical ‘ghosts’ of lost futures”

One of the many flavors of 21st century hauntological cultural output has been the internet-based music genre Vaporwave. Born in the early 2010’s, Vaporwave repurposes elevator muzak, easy listening, and corporate smooth jazz of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Slowed down, chopped up, and drenched in echoing reverb, the genre often has relied on wholesale lifting of samples. Where vintage samples are not employed, songs are always performed with older synthesizers and sounds that ride the line between nostalgia and pure sonic cheesiness.

This nostalgia for a lost future is a constant presence in Vaporwave culture, with many of the songs sounding like lonely, echoing versions of songs you heard in a department store three to four decades ago. This carried on through to Vaporwave’s visual culture and internet presence during its foundational years. Photos of empty shopping malls were album art staples for inscrutable Bandcamp releases in the first several years of Vaporwave’s existence. Neon lights and a tasteful touch of Memphis design frame the empty food courts and long hallways devoid of shoppers. Ozymandias meets the height of 20th century consumer culture.

This Vaporwave obsession with “dead malls” is seen in Spotify playlist names and subreddits groups, but the phrase “Music optimised for abandoned malls” is now an almost official byline of the genre, seen from blog coverage on Boing Boing to Cambridge University Press’ “Popular Music”

The case for viewing Vaporwave through a Hauntological lens is put forth most ardently in Grafton Tanner’s “Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and The Commodification of Ghosts”. At times partly literal, Tanner talks of Hauntology in regards to the “ghostly” qualities found in living a virtual and digital life in the 21st century— even more resonant in today’s world of virtual Zoom calls and faceless WFH emails. Then, in a departure from Derrida’s depiction of being haunted by a future, Tanner moves onto an analysis of early 21st century American culture being haunted by the past:

“By the first decade of the twenty-first century, the crisis of historicity in contemporary art had reached a watershed moment. Both popular and experimental musicians mined the immediate and the far-reaching pasts to compose music reminiscent of bygone eras. Film and television classics, such as Miami Vice and John Carpenter’s Halloween franchise, were revived as remakes, and pop music began its decade-long-and-counting worship of the American 1980s. It seemed that as culture moved forward into the early 2010s, visual art, film, and music regressed further into the analog past – a move fulfilling theorist Fredric Jameson’s lament that ‘stylistic innovation is no longer possible.’”

But Tanner also  makes the full turn back to the traditional definition of a “lost future” that haunts us: “We can consider hauntology as the past’s idealized portrait of a brave, new future haunting the present.“ (Tanner, “Babbling Corpse”)

Tanner lays out formally what many in the Vaporwave community appeared to intuitively feel. It is specifically our past visions of the future that haunt the present. The malls are just as you remember, but they are empty. The song is familiar, but it is warped and distant. The memories can be comforting, but they are memories of places that either now lie dormant, lay dying, or are already gone. These malls, glistening temples to Fukuyama’s “End of History”, are at best bittersweet thoughts for many.

A New Hauntology for Quarantines

The Covid-19 epidemic of 2020 has changed the sense of time for many of us who are staying in place, working from home, and socially distancing. We made jokes about living the same day over and over again. “2020 can’t be over soon enough” and “This year was the worst decade ever” memes pepper our social media feeds. So what is nostalgia when a day feels like a month, a month feels like a year, and a year feels like an era?

These days I find myself nostalgic for 2019, not 1989. And I’m more haunted by the memory of February 2020 than the years of my childhood.

When New York City started its Covid lockdown, I received texts and calls from friends and family checking in on me. Besides general concern, there was a half giddy shock. “Have you seen Times Square?” “Is no one outside?”, and a curious request: “It sounds crazy! Can you send me photos of empty places that are usually busy?” Perhaps a morbid request, but I didn’t take offense, since I was already taking such photographs for myself.

It was at this cultural moment when I saw Dani Deahl’s article on The Verge encouraging me to “Get lost in the sounds of YouTube’s growing ambient modular synth community”. The third and final video, a small modular synth rack sitting before a fire as if it were some kind of cybernetic yulelog, reminded me of these cozy, performerless modular synthesizer videos. I revisited this “lonely modular” Youtube genre, and did indeed get lost. They felt very appropriate and ‘of the moment’ in a way I did not expect. Perhaps Deahl felt similarly, if maybe also subconsciously.

In a time where artists and technologists have rushed to figure out how to virtualize their presence, extend it, and beam it to their audiences, it was a smack in the face to see a performance of someone’s absence.

A video of no one performing, pictures of empty places. This is the hauntology of the 2020 pandemic. Our January expectations for April haunt our October. We don’t ponder our childhood visions of the future and wonder where it all went wrong. We think of our cancelled vacation plans, conferences, and trips, wondering when it is all going to be normal again. 

What I see in these physically programmed machines in empty spaces is a performance of absence. That is not to say “no performance”. Because we know that someone has been there, they programmed and prepared something for us to experience. The cables have been plugged in by an artist who wanted us to see their tangle and hear the songs that are made with the current that runs through them. It is simply the performer that is not there, leaving the proof of their work to be absorbed by us, alone.

In a moment when electronic music performance had started to settle into a new presence of physicality and emotional accessibility, the Covid19 pandemic seemed to threaten many of those newly found gains. However, it strikes me that the performance of absence these machines bring along with them is one steeped in humanity.

Perhaps our artistic strategies should consider admitting that we are, in fact, gone. We aren’t in the places we should be. We aren’t with the audience. They miss us and we miss them. There is nothing wrong with digitizing our presence, finding new ways to deliver our physicality to each other, or even just making do in a terrible situation. But if we were to try and speak to the current moment, would we not have to come to grips with our physical removal from it?

This is perhaps a seemingly dour sentiment. Though, displays of our humanity have no duty to be cheerful. Performance of our anger or sadness should be able to horrify us, or stoke melancholy. But I do not see this as the only avenue for our performative absences. We are allowed to reclaim our absence through our artistic intentions, rewire its meaning. Something we choose and craft instead of something imposed upon us.

Watching these modular synthesizers on their own, I felt less abandoned than a sense of being given a moment of solitude by the performer. Given time to look at some strange, alien technological jewel that was blinking and singing just for me. Time alone to ponder it. And because of the machine’s preciousness, I always knew that the performer would be coming back. Even if just to turn the machine off, returning to the presence of the audience just in time to end the performance.

Dominic Barrett is a creative technologist who develops software, hardware, and conceptual tools for creators, artists, and performers. Approaches range from practical new forms for hardware control over digital systems, to concepts of motivational and emotional support integrating into the core design of a tool itself. He is also a sound artist, teacher, and writer who enjoys exploring the poetics of our creative technology. His article “Awful VR and the Beauty of Premature Tech” was featured in issue three of the ITP online journal Adjacent.