[2] 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.
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), Gemeente Museum Hague (den Haag), 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.
[1] In 1992 he left New York to become Artistic Director of STEIM (Studio for Electro Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam, and later moved to Berlin on a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) composer-in-residence fellowship.
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.