Biography

Michel Waisvisz ( VYSSE-viss; 8 July 1949, Leiden – 18 June 2008, Amsterdam) was a Dutch composer, performer and inventor of experimental electronic musical instruments. He was the artistic director of STEIM in Amsterdam from 1981, where he collaborated with musicians and artists from all over the world. His involvement with STEIM goes back until 1969, when it had been co-founded by his mentor and friend Dick Raaymakers. He has been a member of Amsterdam's Electric Music Theatre scene of the 1970s, performing intensively and raising critical voices against the upcoming high-tech culture.

He co-founded and organised the first sound festival in the Netherlands:The Claxon Sound Festival.

Waisvisz had a passionate dedication to a physical, bodily approach to electronic music which he has expressed in the use and presentation of his many developments of hardware and software instruments. From his point of view electronic music is created in direct musical interaction with individual technology, allowing for instant travels into sound through improvisation. This multidimensionality in electronic musical practice has been summed up in the expression of Touch in an essay together with Joel Ryan and Sally Jane Norman in 1998.