6:30 for 7:00pm Wednesday 4 February 2009

London Knowledge Lab - Institute of Education
23 - 29 Emerald St
London
WC1N 3QS

Nearest tube: Holborn, Russell Square or Chancery Lane.

The talk is about three enterprises of excellence that I have been intimately involved in. I describe my making the first geological map of the Cuillins mountains in Skye (1958), the problems of my early computers (1960's) in electronic music contrasted to some present day experiments (2008), and the preparation of my libretto for 'The Mask of Orpheus' (1984) by Birtwistle.

I show that these wildly different endeavours are not so dissimilar when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of their actual creation.

The lecture of 40 minutes is accompanied by archive videos, sounds and slides, as well as a display of rocks, pictures and electronic objects.

Peter Zinovieff is a pioneer of electronic and computer music. He is a British inventor of Russian ethnicity, most notable for his EMS company, which made the famous VCS3 synthesiser in the late '60s. The synthesiser was used by many early progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd and White Noise, Krautrock groups like Kraftwerk as well as more pop oriented artists, a good example being David Bowie.

Zinovieff also wrote the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Mask of Orpheus.