Sisters with Transistors: Electronic Music’s Unsung Heroines with Lisa Rovner and Marcus Werner Hed

On March 18, 2021 we were joined by director Lisa Rovner and producer Marcus Werner Hed of Sisters with Transistors: Electronic Music’s Unsung Heroines, an award-winning documentary that maps the history of twentieth century women experimental music pioneers.
Narrated by Laurie Anderson, Sisters with Transistors features the work of visionary composer and Rensselaer professor Pauline Oliveros alongside Wendy Carlos, Clara Rockmore, Daphne Oram, Bebe Barron, Delia Derbyshire, EMPAC-alum Maryanne Amacher, Eliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani, and Laurie Spiegel. Through rigorous research, interviews, and archival footage, the film follows the electronic music composers’ radical experimentations with machines that redefined the boundaries of contemporary music.
This event was a collaboration between EMPAC and the iEAR Presents! series as part of Rensselaer's Department of Arts.
Curators: Vic Brooks, Kathy High, Branda Miller.
© 2008-22 The artists / EMPAC at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

[@KennethDonnellyStargazer21]

Love it 👽 I so enjoyed seeing women doing their electronic thing in the little fests I would play in in the DC Baltimore area some years ago. I'd been experimenting with guitars, later synth (once I could afford one), beginning around 1976, bc I saw the possibilities of all sounds since youth. Cheers to all experimenting 🎃

[@phalliccc]

Queens

[@faithhealer3154]

What a SHAME! You missed the Great WENDY CARLOS to Mention...Foolish??

[@EMPACRensselaer]

Hi Stephan, thanks for pointing that out. Not on purpose, obviously.

[@burime13]

same question.

[@brianlittle717]

This is a documentary about women. They did mention Walter, but there were a lot of men who were great pioneers of music. I just thought it was sickening the disrespect this program gave toward men by saying these women didn’t want the dead men’s notes. Those dead men laid the foundation and the groundwork to make this possible both in the realm of music, and in electronics.

[@TheHowlingEye]

@@brianlittle717 Wendy is a woman

[@andrewclough660]

@@brianlittle717 yes Brian, they couldn't have done it w/out the men. ffs!

[@mardipantz]

W O W - Missing Wendy Carlos in todays political backlash against us is telling. The whole point of the Doc is lost by doing that. I can hear Sylvia Rivera screaming in Central Park at all of you right now

[@josegustavotalavera]

I just watched the documentary. And I noticed that even tho Wendy is shown in the movie, she is not shown on the credits... There is a part where they put all the 'featuring' women, but Wendy is not there... like ??

[@brianlittle717]

Why not have a documentary about electronic music? Why does it have to be a man hating show about women who show nothing but disrespect for all of the ground work that was laid out before them? And I have two albums by Walter Carlos. He was a man. I don’t care what he is now, but I’m not the one who released his work as a man. He did. It is sickening to try to change the history of what was what at the time. As a matter of fact, on the back of his album cover for By Request, it refers to him many times in the masculine. I have no problem recognizing women for their accomplishments, but it’s a terrible thing for them to disrespect the very people who allowed them to achieve their success. It’s also a terrible thing to re-write history into something that wasn’t true.

[@andrewclough660]

agh didums, mummy will pick up your dummy

[@mardipantz]

We had to do shit like that to survive back then. And you would know that if you're soul wasn't rotten.

[@brianlittle717]

@@mardipantz do shit like what? Bitch and moan about the men who helped you achieve your goals?

[@DMarie0824]

Oh give us a break, Brian. 😂🙄

[@LaughingStock_]

@@DMarie0824 How about reading what the guy is saying. I don't see anything unreasonable in his comments.