Director: Robert Fantinatto and Jason Amm
I Dream of Wires is a documentary about the rise, fall and rebirth of the machine that shaped electronic music: the modular synthesizer. The film explores the synthesizer's remarkable history, revealing how innovators like Robert Moog, working at Columbia University's Computer Music Center, helped built the foundation for the machine. It shows how cheap foreign imports destroyed the synthesizer's reputation. And it tracks the phenomenal resurgence of high end modular synthesizers being used by a new generation of musicians, many of them the progenitors of the electronic dance music genre.
Inventors, musicians and enthusiasts are interviewed about their relationship with the modular synthesizer - for many, it's an all-consuming passion. Established musicians such as Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), Gary Numan, Morton Subotnick, Carl Craig and John Foxx show off their systems and explain why they opt to use this volatile but ultimately rewarding technology.
Meanwhile, a new generation of dance and electronica artists including Clark, James Holden and Factory Floor explain why they've embraced the sound and physicality of modular synthesizers. Innovative companies like Modcan and Doepfer, driven by a desire to revive modular synthesizers, discuss how they planted the seeds that have grown into a major cottage industry. What started out as a "vintage-revival scene" in the '90s has evolved into an underground phenomena, with users and aficionados craving ever more wild and innovative sounds and interfaces.
Today, the modular synthesizer is no longer an esoteric curiosity or even a mere music instrument - it is an essential tool for radical new sounds and a bona-fide subculture.
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