Benn Jordan transforms a casual university Q&A into a masterclass on creative friction, arguing that the most profound artistic breakthroughs often occur when technology refuses to cooperate. Rather than offering a polished tutorial, the piece captures the raw, unscripted reality of a working artist who treats equipment failures and logistical chaos not as obstacles, but as the primary source material for new work.
The Aesthetics of Accident
Jordan frames his recent road trip not as a promotional tour, but as an experiment in embracing imperfection. He describes a journey spanning twenty days by car, from Atlanta to Los Angeles, where the goal was to capture abandoned malls and oil fields without the safety net of professional gear. "I was just like, you know what if it just came from the camera's microphone like what if I didn't make a big deal out of it and just went lo-fi," he explains. This deliberate stripping away of high-fidelity expectations forces a shift in creative focus. The resulting audio, captured on a camera that eventually sank into the Pacific Ocean, becomes a testament to the idea that the medium's limitations define the art's soul.
The narrative takes a sharp turn when Jordan recounts the loss of his Sony camera to the ocean. "The ocean wanted it more than I did," he jokes, but the underlying point is serious: insurance and replacement are mundane realities, but the creative impulse must survive the hardware failure. He notes that finding a replacement was nearly impossible due to global chip shortages, yet he finished the project anyway. This resilience highlights a critical insight for modern creators: the tool is disposable; the vision is not. Critics might argue that romanticizing equipment failure ignores the very real financial barriers for independent artists who cannot afford to lose gear, but Jordan's point remains that the artistic process must be robust enough to outlast the technology.
"If you can solder it, I suppose so... I can just have it do whatever I want essentially with any other object in the house."
The Modular Rabbit Hole
The conversation pivots to the architecture of sound, specifically Jordan's journey into modular synthesis. He traces his entry point back to 2016, scoring a film about the history of astronomy at a planetarium in Chicago. When challenged to use "old Christian music" for a piece on cosmic history, he proposed using logic gates instead. "I had no idea what I was saying like I was just like this will be easy," he admits, revealing how ignorance can sometimes be the catalyst for innovation. He invested his budget directly into hardware, starting with the Mother-32, Maths, and Rings modules from Mutable Instruments.
Jordan's reverence for the now-defunct Mutable Instruments is palpable, particularly regarding the "Rings" module. He describes it as a paradox: "It's such a simple module but it's such a complicated module at the same time." He laments that the company's founder, Emilie Gillet, has stepped away from the business, noting, "I'm so sad that her creativity isn't going to be a tool I can use anymore." This sentiment underscores a broader tension in the maker community: the reliance on individual visionaries versus sustainable institutional structures. While the open-source nature of their firmware ensures the legacy lives on, the loss of the primary creative mind is a significant cultural blow.
The Paradox of Choice
As Jordan's collection grew, he encountered the paradox of abundance. He now possesses a massive, curved Eurorack case that he admits is too large to manage effectively. "I have more than I use," he confesses, revealing that sixty percent of his modules are rarely touched. He describes the interface of certain high-end modules as "painful," suggesting that complexity can become a barrier to flow. "When I have something that does what it does in a different module form factor then yeah I might as well unplug it," he says.
This self-awareness leads to a counter-intuitive conclusion: constraints are more valuable than options. Jordan expresses a desire for "smaller setups" that act as "walled gardens," forcing him to be more creative by limiting his palette. He critiques the current state of modular hardware for its lack of flexibility, wishing for a system where modules could be moved instantly without the friction of screws and rigid mounting. "I really wish that I could just take things and move them around," he argues, highlighting a disconnect between the theoretical flexibility of modular synthesis and the physical reality of using it. This friction, he implies, is where the real work happens, even if it is frustrating.
Bottom Line
Jordan's commentary succeeds by reframing the narrative of the "perfect setup" into a celebration of the messy, broken, and constrained reality of creation. His strongest argument is that the limitations of our tools—whether a sinking camera or a cumbersome synthesizer rack—are not bugs to be fixed, but features that shape the final work. The piece's vulnerability lies in its reliance on the artist's specific privilege of having the resources to experiment with failure, a luxury not all creators possess. Ultimately, the takeaway is clear: the most compelling art emerges not from seamless execution, but from the struggle to make the broken work.