Console automation came into use to automate changes to faders on mixing consoles. Since then, software like Ableton Live has integrated automation and controllers to keep changes in parameters that are performed during recording.
Controllerism allows a sound artist to remotely change a sound either during live performance or during the process of pre-production sound design.
Midi and OSC are key components of controllerism, and are what devices like a Midi keyboard or software like TouchOSC use to remotely control parameters during performance.
In artistic practice, controllerism is an interesting way to perform live. It could be used to make changes during live performance, to respond live to improvised dance/movement, or to play instruments within a DAW for sound design/composition.
Sound artist Esther Kehinde-Ajayi takes into consideration what it means to use or own a system. Controller mapping is a system, so what does it mean for us to use this system? It is interesting to consider as we exist with oppressive systems, and the liberatory potential for those of us who exist outside of normative forms within these systems to own our own systems is interesting to think about.
In Sonic Cyberfeminisms, the article ‘Don’t Touch My MIDI Cables’ addresses the “embodied, sensorial and live technological–human relationship that is recursively iterated through sonic and visual outputs based on what we argue are kinship relations between and through bodies and technology”
Networks of controllers and mapping technologies have an interesting image and connotation for a glitch feminist. To own a system, made up potentially of midi cables, or OSC, potentially a laptop or a DJ controller has not long been a space that those who were not cis white men could occupy. This speaks to a male-dominance within audio technology and related fields. In this context, ‘Don’t Touch My MIDI Cables’ becomes a refrain against mansplaining and misogyny in live audio spaces.
Controllerism can be understood as a system of ‘networked interdependencies’ (Kafer, 2019, p. 6) and taken beyond the literal into a system by which we understood how our bodies are also all part of systems, and what that means for us to consider as sound artists when we work with consoles and controllers.