- Home
- Music
- Genres & Styles
- The STEIM Touch
The STEIM Touch
| Expected release date is Sep 22nd 2026 |
- Availability: Confirm prior to ordering
- Branding: minimum 50 pieces (add’l costs below)
- Check Freight Rates (branded products only)
Branding Options (v), Availability & Lead Times
- 1-Color Imprint: $2.00 ea.
- Promo-Page Insert: $2.50 ea. (full-color printed, single-sided page)
- Belly-Band Wrap: $2.50 ea. (full-color printed)
- Set-Up Charge: $45 per decoration
- Availability: Product availability changes daily, so please confirm your quantity is available prior to placing an order.
- Branded Products: allow 10 business days from proof approval for production. Branding options may be limited or unavailable based on product design or cover artwork.
- Unbranded Products: allow 3-5 business days for shipping. All Unbranded items receive FREE ground shipping in the US. Inquire for international shipping.
- RETURNS/CANCELLATIONS: All orders, branded or unbranded, are NON-CANCELLABLE and NON-RETURNABLE once a purchase order has been received.
Product Details
Overview
The STEIM foundation in Amsterdam was a music studio radically dedicated to the live, physical performance of electronic sound. From 1969 to 2021, the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music supported artists in building new instruments, insisting on tangible, hands-on engagements with electronic sound.
This book provides a comprehensive overview of STEIM's work, drawing on original interviews and extensive primary source research in the archive of its longtime artistic director, Michel Waisvisz (1949-2008). It traces the studio's evolution from its roots in the anarchic, situationist spirit of 1960s Amsterdam to the famous Cracklebox and to a long line of pioneering developments in sensor-based instruments between 1984 and 2000.
A primary focus is Waisvisz's landmark instrument The Hands (1984) – the world's first sensor-based gestural controller – and the SensorLab platform it inspired. This emerging expertise fuelled an international artist-in-residence programme, attracting figures like Jon Rose, Nicolas Collins or Laetitia Sonami among many others and fostering a global wave of experimental instrument design.
The common thread through this history is a paradigm called Touch, which championed musicians' embodied presence over automation and predefined control. By documenting the pursuits of immediacy within highly mediated technologies, The STEIM Touch offers a crucial historical lens for today's ongoing negotiations between artificiality and physicality in music creation.
