Felisha Ledesma, originally from Portland, Oregon, is a Berlin-based sound artist and musician. She co-founded the S1 arts performance space in Berlin, and is the co-creator of Fors, an experimental project dedicated to building software synths. The aspect of her work that I found the most interesting during her talk was her non-profit organisation The Synth Library, which was founded in 2016 with the idea of making synthesisers more accessible to those that can’t afford them, whilst also giving educational classes on how to use them. The concept of The Synth Library actually works very similarly to the way that we can hire out the synth bench at LCC – you sign up, get a brief introductory course on how to use the synths, and then you can book ‘library time’ to record and experiment with the instruments. The classes they run are also free – two recent examples I found on the organisation’s Instagram page are ‘Coding Interactive Visuals for Total Beginners’ and ‘Using Max’.
With learning and creating being the nature of the project, it has become a useful space for sound artists and musicians to interact with each other, with many artists who booked out time at the Synth Library having been given opportunities to perform at Ledesma’s S1 performance space. Ledesma describes it being “really cool to be in there… because when you’re surrounded by other people working on something and experimenting, you’re also throw into that”. I think that is a huge benefit of making a space that is completely accessible to artists who may not have the money to be able to afford all of these instruments – you start to create an ecosystem of creators who all work with and inspire each other, which then gives way to new opportunities. If I didn’t have the facilities already available to me at LCC, I would definitely be interested in finding something similar to this project in London – maybe one day I could set up a branch here myself!
References
- Ledesma, F., 2022. SL. [online] Synthlibraryportland.com. Available at: <https://synthlibraryportland.com/> [Accessed 25 May 2022].