Editing Nicolas Collins

{{short description|American classical composer}}
{{About|the US experimental music composer|the UK computer music composer|Nick Collins (composer)|other people with similar names|Nicholas Collins (disambiguation)}}

'''Nicolas Collins''' (born March 26, 1954, in [[New York City]]) is a [[composer]] of mostly [[electronic music]], a sound artist and writer. He received his BA and MA from [[Wesleyan University]],<ref name="hyperreal.org">{{cite web|url=http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/intervs/collins.html|title=Nicolas Collins Interview|website=media.hyperreal.org|access-date=17 February 2019}}</ref> and his PhD from the [[University of East Anglia]]. Upon graduating from Wesleyan, he was a [[Watson Fellow]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nicolascollins.com/prosescores.htm|title=Nicolas Collins: Prose Scores|website=www.nicolascollins.com|access-date=17 February 2019}}</ref>

==Biography==
In the 1980s Collins was "a pioneer in the use of microcomputers in live performance, and has made extensive use of 'home-made' electronic circuitry, radio, [[found art|found sound]] material, and transformed musical instruments."<ref name="kalvos.org">{{cite web|url=http://www.kalvos.org/collins.html|title=Nicolas Collins, Nonpop New Music Composer|website=www.kalvos.org|access-date=17 February 2019}}</ref> Trained in the experimental compositional tradition of [[Alvin Lucier]], [[David Behrman]], and [[David Tudor]], all of whom he worked with closely, Collins also immersed himself in the New York Improvised Music scene of the 1980s. Using home-built instruments that combined circuitry, simple computers and traditional instruments such as trombones and slide guitars, he collaborated and performed with [[Tom Cora]], [[Shelley Hirsch]], [[Christian Marclay]], [[Zeena Parkins]], [[John Zorn]] and others. Collins's compositions frequently ask performers to respond to unpredictable musical cues, as in ''Devil's Music'' (1985), in which the performer DJs with snippets of live scanning radio, or ''Still Lives'' (1993), in which a solo trumpet player improvises against a skipping CD of Renaissance brass music. More recent works include ''In Memoriam Michel Waiswicz'' (2008), in which a birthday candle 'plays' a light-sensitive circuit until it burns down; and ''Speak, Memory'' (2016) in which the digital data of photographic images is played as sound in a room, where it is allowed to decay, and the decay is reflected in the photograph, which changes and eventually disappears as sound fades to silence.

As a studio artist at PS1 in 1983-84, Collins exhibited sound sculptures of 'backwards guitars'—found instruments modified so the pick-ups resonated the guitar strings with live radio signals. Subsequent installation projects at [[Musée Malraux]] (Le Havre), [[Kunstmuseum Den Haag|Gemeentemuseum]] of the Hague (now named the Kunstmuseum), [[ZKM]] (Karlsruhe); and the Sonambiente sound art festival (Berlin), featured performing devices such a model train that 'plays'a long amplified wire, as well as multi-channel video works.

Collins' musical compositions have been presented at venues around the world, ranging from [[CBGB]] to the [[Concertgebouw, Amsterdam|Concertgebouw]]. 
As a composer-performer he has presented concerts and workshops on every continent save Antarctica.
<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lovely.com/bios/collins.html|title=Nicolas Collins|website=www.lovely.com|access-date=17 February 2019}}</ref>

He has also been active as a curator, policy adviser, and board member for numerous cultural organizations, since first taking on the post of Curator of Music Performances and Sound Installations at PS1/The Clocktower (now [[MoMA PS1]]) in 1985.<ref name="hyperreal.org"/> In 1992 he left New York to become Artistic Director of [[STEIM]] (Studio for Electro Instrumental Music) in [[Amsterdam]], and later moved to [[Berlin]] on a [[German Academic Exchange Service]] (DAAD) composer-in-residence fellowship.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.issueprojectroom.org/2010/02/17/loud-objects-nicolas-collins/ |title=Nicolas Collins with Ben Neill and Andrea Parkins+ Loud Objects – ISSUE PROJECT ROOM |access-date=2010-08-30 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110921174554/http://www.issueprojectroom.org/2010/02/17/loud-objects-nicolas-collins/ |archive-date=2011-09-21 }}</ref> From 1997 to 2017 Collins served as Editor-in-Chief of the ''[[Leonardo Music Journal]]'', a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the [[MIT Press]].,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.leonardo.info/lmj/collins.html |title=Leonardo On-Line: About Nicolas Collins |access-date=2010-08-30 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716235911/http://www.leonardo.info/lmj/collins.html |archive-date=2011-07-16 }}</ref> and he sits on the editorial boards of ''Resonance: the Journal of Sound and Culture'' ([[University of California Press]]), ''Acoustic Arts & Artifacts: Technology, Aesthetics, Communication'' ([[Fondazione Giorgio Cini]], Venice), the ''Journal of Sound Studies'' (The Netherlands), and ''Resonancias – Revista de Investigación Musical'' (Chile).

Collins is Professor of Sound at the [[School of the Art Institute of Chicago]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.saic.edu/faculty/fac_lists/index.html#alphasections/SLC_6091 |title= Faculty alpha listing : SAIC - School of the Art Institute of Chicago|website=www.saic.edu |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100527121355/http://www.saic.edu/faculty/fac_lists/index.html |archive-date=2010-05-27}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/ChristianMarclay/Bios |title=Whitney Museum of American Art: Christian Marclay: Festival |access-date=2010-08-30 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100830083040/http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/ChristianMarclay/Bios |archive-date=2010-08-30 }}</ref> and has been guest professor at Institute of Sonology, [[Royal Conservatory of The Hague]]; Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany; [[Universität der Künste Berlin]]; [[Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile]], Santiago; and [[Technische Universität Berlin]], among other locations.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://ausland-berlin.de/hardware-hacking-nicolas-collins|title=Hardware Hacking with Nicolas Collins - ausland-berlin|website=ausland-berlin.de|access-date=17 February 2019}}</ref>

In 2006 Collins' book ''Handmade Electronic Music:  The Art of Hardware Hacking'' was published by [[Routledge]], and a second edition was published in 2009. A broadly expanded third edition, released in the summer of 2020, documents the grass-roots spread of 'Hardware Hacking' through local art and music organizations and collectives, often in conjunction with feminist and/or regional cultural concerns, from Brazil to Indonesia. He was a major influence on the establishment of the [[Musical Electronics Library]] in [[New Zealand]].<ref>{{cite web|last1=Kraus|first1=Pat|title=MEL prehistory 1|url=https://musicalelectronicslibrary.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/mel-prehistory-1/|website=Musical Electronics Library|date=24 March 2014|access-date=15 July 2014}}</ref>

Collins lives and works in Berlin, Chicago and rural Massachusetts.

==Discography==
*1982 - ''Going Out With Slow Smoke'', compiled with Ron Kuivila's works (Lovely Music)
*1984 - ''Let The State Make The Selection'' (Lovely Music)
*1986 - ''Devil's Music'' (Lovely Music)
*1988 - ''Real Landscape'' (Banned Productions)
*1988 (with [[Robert Poss]]) - ''Inverse Guitar'' (Trace Elements)
*1989 - ''100 of the World's Most Beautiful Melodies'' (Trace Elements)
*1992 - ''It Was a Dark and Stormy Night'' (Trace Elements)
*1999 - ''A Host, Of Golden Daffodils'', collaboration with Peter Cusack (Plate Lunch)
*1999 - ''Sound Without Picture'' (Periplum) 
*2004 - ''Pea Soup'' (Appelstaartje)
*2009 - ''Devil's Music ''(EM Records)
*2015 - ''Salvaged'' (Trace Elements Records)

==Bibliography==
*Nicolas Collins,''Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking'', ([[Routledge]]), Third edition, 2020; Second edition, 2009; First edition, 2006. Japanese edition, 2013. Korean edition, 2016.
*Nicolas Collins, ''Micro Analyses'', Paris: van Dieren Éditeur, 2015 
*Nicolas Collins, "Grazing the buffet : the musical menu after Cage," in Schröder, J. and Straebel, V. ed.''Proceedings of the symposium John Cage und die Folgen / Cage & Consequences'', Berlin, 2012
*Nicolas Collins, "Live Electronic Music," in Collins, N. ed., ''The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music'', [[Cambridge University Press]], 2007.
*Nicolas Collins, "Beim nächsten Ton ist es..." ("At The Tone The Time Will Be..."), in ''Dialog III: Musik im Klangkunst und Musiktheater'', 1999.
*Nicolas Collins, [[Matthias Osterwold]], [[Volker Straebel]], ''Pfeiffen im Walde'', Berlin: Podewil, 1994

==See also==
* [[Bart Hopkin]], another author with a focus on somewhat identical topics

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://www.nicolascollins.com/ Official website]
*[http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/intervs/collins.html Interview] February 1995 by and copyright © Brian Duguid
*[http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/lmj/collins.html Leonardo Online]
*[http://www.ubu.com/sound/tellus_20.html Nicolas Collins's "Devil"s Music 1" (Excerpt) (3:15)] published at [[Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine]]
*[http://www.artic.edu/saic/programs/faculty/sound.html School of the Art Institute of Chicago]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20040419164628/http://www.cdemusic.org/artists/collins.html CDeMusic: Nicolas Collins]
*[http://www.newmusicbox.org/page.nmbx?id=42hf01 NewMusicBox asks Nicolas Collins: How do composers use the web as a creative medium for music?]
*[http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=5099 NewMusicBox cover: Nic Collins in conversation with Molly Sheridan, April 18, 2007 (includes video)]

{{DIY Culture in Electronic Music}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Collins, Nicolas}}
[[Category:1954 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Wesleyan University alumni]]
[[Category:21st-century American classical composers]]
[[Category:20th-century American classical composers]]
[[Category:American male classical composers]]
[[Category:Watson Fellows]]
[[Category:Musicians from Chicago]]
[[Category:American experimental composers]]
[[Category:American noise musicians]]
[[Category:20th-century American male musicians]]
[[Category:21st-century American male musicians]]