Electronic Music At The National Institute Of Design,India 1969–1972
Q&A Chaired By Rupert Howe

The history of India’s first electronic music studio founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad by David Tudor. Subcontinental Synthesis explores the history of India’s first electronic music studio, founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad with the support of the composer David Tudor. The essays and writings unravel the narrative and context surrounding the studio as well as the work of the Indian composers who created groundbreaking recordings during its four years of activity. The texts reflect on the role of electronic music within a post-independence India, considering its interconnections with experimental design, radical pedagogies, and the international avant-garde, as well as the encircling conditions of Western ideological soft power within the global expansion of Modernism.

Paul Purgas is a London based artist and musician working with sound, performance and installation. Originally trained as an architect he has presented projects with Serpentine, Tate, Kettle’s Yard and Spike Island. His written output includes essays for the Unsound:Undead collection published by Urbanomic/MIT Press and contributions to the critical journal Audimat. Recent curatorial work has been the Open Sound programme for Outpost and guest curating Wysing Arts Centre’s annual festival. He is one half of the electronic music project Emptyset working with electroacoustic and computer music, broadcasting and spatialised sound, presenting commissions with the Architecture Foundation, David Roberts Art Foundation and Tate Britain's Performing Architecture programme and recent performances including Sonic Acts, Wien Modern and Berghain for Transmediale 2020.

RUPERT HOWE:
Rupert Howe is a Stroud-based writer, sometime DJ and habitual playlist compiler who has covered electronic music in virtually all its forms since the early-90s, from radicalised rave to ambient abstraction. Back in the day he was a regular contributor to numerous publications, including Select, NME, Mixmag and The Face - and once witnessed Aphex Twin clear a Moscow dancefloor with a single record…