Robert "Bob" Ostertag (born April 19, 1957) is a musician, writer, and political activist based in San Francisco. He has published seven books, one feature film, a DVD, twenty-six albums, and collaborated with numerous musicians. Musically, he is known for his politically charged compositions created from found sound (Sooner or Later, All the Rage), his work with synthesizers over 45 years (from Bob Ostertag Plays the Serge 1978-1983 to Wish You Were Here in 2016), and his many collaborations (Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Justin Vivian Bond, Shelly Hirsch, and Roscoe Mitchell to name just a few). In his writing, films, and podcasts, he has addressed LGBT issues, poverty, climate change, and technology, from a militant yet non-ideological perspective. On March 25, 2006, Ostertag made all of his recordings to which he owns the rights available as digital downloads under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license. Early career Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in Colorado, Ostertag studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. At Oberlin, he worked with an early Buchla 200 synthesizer. Thirty-six years later, Ostertag's student work with the Buchla was remixed by techno DJ RRose and released under the title The Surgeon General. While at Oberlin he built a Serge synthesizer and began doing improvisational performances with it, along with Ned Rothenberg on reeds and Jim Katzin on violin. In 1979 this work was released by Parachute Records under the title Early Fall. In 1978 he dropped out of Oberlin to tour Europe with Anthony Braxton's Creative Music Orchestra, which had just won the 1977 DownBeat Critics' Poll Album of the Year. Ostertag's work playing the Serge synthesizer with Braxton is documented on Creative Orchestra (Köln) 1978. Later that same year, Ostertag relocated to New York City, where he befriended John Zorn, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, Wayne Horvitz, Toshinori Kondo, and numerous other musicians interested in collaborative improvisation. Ostertag was not the first musician to perform live with a keyboard-less modular synthesizer, but he was the first person to make it his main instrument in the context of free improvised music. In 1980, Ostertag released Getting a Head with guitarist Fred Frith and percussionist Charles K. Noyes. Here Ostertag played an "instrument" of his own creation involved three reel-to-reel tape recorders, an audio mixer, and six helium balloons. The instrument was a sort of analog sculptural sampler, which allowed live manipulation of