In the 1980s Collins was "a pioneer in the use of microcomputers in live performance, and has made extensive use of 'home-made' electronic circuitry, radio,
found sound material, and transformed musical instruments." Trained in the experimental compositional tradition of
Alvin Lucier,
David Behrman, and
David Tudor, all of whom he worked with closely, Collins also immersed himself in the New York Improvised Music scene of the 1980s. Using home-built instruments that combined circuitry, simple computers and traditional instruments such as trombones and slide guitars, he collaborated and performed with
Tom Cora,
Shelley Hirsch,
Christian Marclay,
Zeena Parkins,
John Zorn and others. Collins's compositions frequently ask performers to respond to unpredictable musical cues, as in ''Devil's Music
(1985), in which the performer DJs with snippets of live scanning radio, or Still Lives
(1993), in which a solo trumpet player improvises against a skipping CD of Renaissance brass music. More recent works include In Memoriam Michel Waiswicz'' (2008), in which a birthday candle 'plays' a light-sensitive circuit until it burns down; and
Speak, Memory (2016) in which the digital data of photographic images is played as sound in a room, where it is allowed to decay, and the decay is reflected in the photograph, which changes and eventually disappears as sound fades to silence. As a studio artist at PS1 in 1983–84, Collins exhibited sound sculptures of 'backwards guitars'—found instruments modified so the pick-ups resonated the guitar strings with live radio signals. Subsequent installation projects at
Musée Malraux (Le Havre),
Gemeentemuseum of the Hague (now named the Kunstmuseum),
ZKM (Karlsruhe); and the Sonambiente sound art festival (Berlin), featured performing devices such a model train that 'plays'a long amplified wire, as well as multi-channel video works. Collins' musical compositions have been presented at venues around the world, ranging from
CBGB to the
Concertgebouw. As a composer-performer he has presented concerts and workshops on every continent save Antarctica. He has also been active as a curator, policy adviser, and board member for numerous cultural organizations, since first taking on the post of Curator of Music Performances and Sound Installations at PS1/The Clocktower (now
MoMA PS1) in 1985. From 1997 to 2017 Collins served as Editor-in-Chief of the
Leonardo Music Journal, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the
MIT Press., and he sits on the editorial boards of
Resonance: the Journal of Sound and Culture (
University of California Press),
Acoustic Arts & Artifacts: Technology, Aesthetics, Communication (
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice), the
Journal of Sound Studies (The Netherlands), and
Resonancias – Revista de Investigación Musical (Chile). Collins is Professor of Sound at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has been guest professor at Institute of Sonology,
Royal Conservatory of The Hague; Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany;
Universität der Künste Berlin;
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago; and
Technische Universität Berlin, among other locations. In 2006 Collins' book
Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking was published by
Routledge, and a second edition was published in 2009. A broadly expanded third edition, released in the summer of 2020, documents the grass-roots spread of 'Hardware Hacking' through local art and music organizations and collectives, often in conjunction with feminist and/or regional cultural concerns, from Brazil to Indonesia. He was a major influence on the establishment of the
Musical Electronics Library in
New Zealand. Collins lives and works in Berlin, Chicago and rural Massachusetts. ==Discography==