Oramics to Electronica

Oramics to Electronica

Daphne Oram (1925-2003) was a pioneering electronic composer who developed a technique that allowed her to draw sounds, which she called Oramics. The unique instrument which she developed, the Oramics Machine, was at the heart of the Oramics to Electronica exhibition on display in the Science Museum from October 2011 to December 2012. Oramics to Electronica was the foundational project for the Research and Public History Department and took the topic of electronic music as a focus for the Museum’s first public history investigation. The Oramics to Electronica exhibition explored the history of electronic music through the work of three British studios: Electronic Music Studios (EMS), the BBC Radiophonics Workshop and the private studio of Daphne Oram. The exhibition was co-created with a group of musicians, local historians, subject enthusiasts and people who made electronic music in the 1960s. Students from the National Youth Theatre’s Acting Up 2 course and a group of women writers also supported the exhibition by providing their own interpretations of the life and work of Daphne Oram. This collection houses the content of the Oramics to Electronica exhibition and supporting materials.
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    Commentary on Searching for Pioneers: a performance by the National Youth Theatre at the Science Museum
    (2024)
    Waller, Laurie
    Searching for Pioneers was a performance given by students of the National Youth Theatre in the Science Museum during 2011. This paper presents a detailed synopsis and commentary of the performance.
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    Photos of the Oramics to Electronica: Revealing Histories of Electronic Music exhibition
    (2024)
    Science Museum Group
    The Oramics to Electronica exhibition was displayed in the Science Museum in London from October 2011 to December 2012. It explored the history of electronic music through the work of three British studios: Electronic Music Studios (EMS), the BBC Radiophonics Workshop and the private studio of Daphne Oram. This document contains photos of the exhibition.
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    Installation of the Oramics Machine
    (2024)
    Science Museum Group
    The Oramics to Electronica exhibition was displayed in the Science Museum in London from October 2011 to December 2012. This document contains photo which show how the team installed the Oramics Machine into the exhibition.
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    Item type:Journal article,
    Oramics to electronica: investigating lay understandings of the history of technology through a participatory project
    (2014-10-08)
    Boon, Tim
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    Vaart, Merel van der
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    Price, Katy
    Oramics to Electronica was a 2011 Science Museum project designed to put the tools of museum participation in the service of research into public history, taking the history of electronic music as our example. The primary output was a temporary exhibition. Whereas the term ‘public history’ is often used to denote popularisation of academic history, in this inflection we are primarily concerned with how lay people like our visitors think about the past in general, and about the past of science and technology in particular. Taking the opportunities that arose, we worked with two ‘expert’ groups – of original 1960s participants in electronic music and of 12 recruited present-day music enthusiasts. We also enrolled a group of theatre students and another of writers to respond to the themes of the project and, in particular, to the ‘Oramics Machine’ a unique sound synthesizer created by Daphne Oram. In this essay, an account of our practice is bookended with consideration of related practice and reflections on the implications of the project. It is suggested that the project demonstrated the virtues of proceeding by way of engagement with micro-audiences to understand the ‘cognitive exclusion’ of potential visitors who do not see their interests represented in museum displays.
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    Nick Helm-Grovas presentation
    (2024)
    Helm-Grovas, Nick
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    Science Museum Group
    On 29 September 2012 the Science Museum hosted an Electronic Music Day, a programme of talks and discussions reflecting on the history of electronic music in the UK. On this day Nick Helm-Grovas discussed changes that were made to the music syllabus of Adwick High School in 1966 to 1968 with the help of Daphne Oram to include electronic music and musique concrete. Nick Helm-Grovas has postgraduate degrees from the University of Oxford and the London Consortium, and was asked by the Science Museum to research Daphne Oram’s involvement in music education.
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    Item type:Doctoral thesis,
    Oramics: precedents, technology and influence : Daphne Oram (1925-2003)
    (2018)
    Richards, Tom
    Since the recent re-emergence of the work of British composer and inventor Daphne Oram, and the purchase of her Oramics Machine by the Science Museum, and their subsequent Oramics to Electronica exhibition, there has been much enthusiastic comment and re-appraisal of her work since she faded into obscurity from the late seventies onwards. Some of her recordings have been (re)released and she is now regularly written and blogged about, yet still, relatively little is known about her in terms of real detail with regard to her research and innovational achievements. Drawing heavily on the Daphne Oram archive at Goldsmiths, and the Oramics Machine in the collection of the Science Museum, this research is an attempt to define and contextualise Oram's achievements with the Oramics Machine and her subsequent attempts to miniaturise and commercialise the concept with Mini Oramics. It is an investigation as to why her ambitious and holistic approach to electronic music production did not make a bigger impact, at a time when the palette of the electronic musician was rapidly expanding, and anyone with good ideas, technical prowess and financial backing might have succeeded, before the eventual domination and homogenisation of the synthesiser/sequencer market by the major electronics corporations of Japan; before the era of the home studio. Central to this research is the construction of a version of Mini Oramics, an existing design (of Oram’s with a considerable input from John Emmett, Norman Gaythorpe and others), which, had it been developed further and brought to market, would have become Oram's commercial and educational product. The newly constructed Mini Oramics has been experimented with and evaluated by musicians and composers. This practice-based research will inform the other strands of the research and will feed into arguments about the artistic, technical, and commercial feasibility of the Oramics Machine at what became a pivotal moment for Electronic Music and Music Technology.
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