the panic

<------------up date with the quick ness------------>

hands-circuit-done



this is the back of the mess of wires




these circuits are controlled by



copper plates which will have



designs like this etched into them creating an interface of body contacts to manipulate the audio




and by wired to the etch-a-skletch (see previous post) via a mutilated sega game catridge manipulate video as well




above the hands the video will be a constellation made up of tiny speakers that have been on our fridge for a very long time
they will make sounds once we figure out the what and the how


this is a scrawled diagram note thing

sicks A M post

sick end night in a row stayed up to sicks in the mourning war king on these is
made a few of these in faux toe shop to etch tomb morrow. correct shun, lay tar two day.
there will bee five etched hand pcbs in toe tall, three as the in tear face of the sound sir cuts, and two as the in tare face for the etch a skletch, so pee pull can make call her full im age dre.



more bid words are strict lee a cow in side dance of this stew pid word game

translation

from this


to this


to this


late nights mean bad lighting and less words
apologies but more to come image, audio, video, object

awe day oh

doubble trippple - see previous post

radio burner - me and colin built radio transmitters for free at a work shop run by Red76 and Neighborhood Public Radio (photos and info coming soon) and then we tuned 2 key boards to the same station and found that they gate, modulate, and distort each other in incredible waves.

ants

burr ache it down
comp own ant row bots
micro mash ins
a close her look

double triple gated oscillators

Taking much inspiration from Peter Vogel and schematics from Nicolas Collins book I built a pretty chaotic sounding mess of wire.


The Hex Schmitt Trigger IC allows you to make 6 simple oscillators on one chip, and when you wire 2 or more outputs together through diodes they start to interact and distort each others signal. I tired to base my design my off of images of yantras but after the first few components were soldered I realized this was not going to be a work of any sort of refinement, skill, or craftsmanship. Its extremely fragile, unstable, and sounds like a hell where the evil electronic appliances from The Brave Little Toaster go when they die.







I originally aimed to make it a self contained device with speakers integrated into the device but the little crappy toy speakers I found couldn't handle the extremely high and low frequency's the thing produced, so I had to add outputs.







audio samples coming soon

Palmistry, the secrets thereof disclosed, or a familiar easy, and new method, whereby to iudge of the most general accidents of mans life...

...from the lines of the hand : withal its dimensions and significations. Also many perticulars added, discovering the safety and danger of women in child-bed. VVith some choice of observations of phisiognomy, and the moles of the body. As also that most useful piece of astrology (long since promised) concerning elections for every particular occasion, now plainly manifested from rational principles of art. The second time imprinted. Englished from Latin and much inlarged by the author, Richard Saunders, author of the former book of chyromancy and phisiognomy.

Cascading gated oscillators depicting chiromancy diagrams for the divination of fortune and the planets power and influence of the lives of men women and children. Metoposcopic signification drawn from electrical schematics for the interpretation of dreams, futures, and personality via the interaction of ones eyes and face and moles with Venus (copper) and Saturn (lead). The biophysical energy nexus of the body will interact with strange machines to create bio-electrical feedback emanating from sonic generative devices arranged in accordance with natural and artificial astrologie. Promised to please and delight men women and children from all across the land.

pretty much that's where I'm at right now
reading a lot of ridiculous Victorian literature about chiromancy and astrologie and some cool books about chakras
started making the gated oscillator prototypes while waiting for a huge shipment of components to arrive. Have many many (too) many ideas for this thesis show. Hopefully the main 3 three devices will be done by next week and I can start on the more specific logistic problems of presentation, installation, and power. If I can figure out a way to plug the installation into the wall, I may or may not need a donation from Duracell to power the whole thing for one weeks time. Have 3 possible solutions so hopefully one of them work.

here oh !

While Reid decided to do a post about the future, I am going to do a
post about the past. In the month of January I went on a little toy
shopping spree and found myself the radical rhythm guitar. Just after finishing Reed Ghazala
's Book on Circuit Bending I had the unstoppable urge to refine my instrument building. Aside from the looping station, I have finished two other instruments post-Ghazala's book. The first one is "The Cricket Stomper" which can be seen in a post earlier in this blog. "HERO" is the second and it started with the radical rhythm guitar. The guitar was shipped to me in a box that was labelled "guiter."

I'm not sure what happened in my brain; maybe it was the southern accent we mocked the word "guiter" with and some association with Lynyrd Skynyrd and patriotism, or possibly the patriotic images left all over the apartment from an ex-tenant:













Something made me want to make this the American Guitar. I sat down to the drawing board, which was actually just a piece of note book paper, and this is what I came up with:













After deciding that the circular pattern looked too much like something England's "The Who" might be sporting, I straightened up. I was also getting anxious to make the damn thing, so after zero hours of deliberating, i just started going at it, using the American flag, patriotic symbolism, and improvisation as my template. There is definitely some sarcastic cynicism to the whole piece, commenting on the post-9/11 flag waving epidemic that blinded most of the country in a red white and blue blur, but the name HERO, although commenting on the same content, is very serious to me. It was such a tiny little puny guitar that I didn't have much hope for to start with but now it shines with the same blinding red white and blue; the sounds it produces are as booming as the "bombs bursting in air." This little guy is now larger than life and I am proud to call it HERO.

after math and future problems

The performance on Thursday at the Lab Space gallery went fantastic. The art was great, the turn out was amazing, despite the weather and far out location, and overall, the event had a wonderfully positive vibe to it. Still don't have any photos, hopefully I will get a few up here sometime this week. There was an art/mixtape trade as well, for which Colin made 5 gorgeous Frog Opera cds. Hand collage and drawn covers, all super pretty, hopefully they will entertain and/or confuse in loving new homes.

Now that the performance is over its time to pick up the neglected pieces of my remaining academic career and focus on going to all my classes (cant miss anymore after my 2 and half week "work break") and start work on my thesis show in early April. I am still torn over what to do for my thesis. For the past several months my life has been split between the physical of circuit bending, electronics, video hacking, and the digital with Max/MSP and Jitter. This blog so far has only really shown the electronics side of what I have been up too (hence the name batteries required), but Ive made a lot of progress with the digital side of things. I figured out how to turn motion into music in a very primitive way and let a Betta fish control an oscillator depending on its location in a bowl, how to mix movies in real time, and a whole bunch of super geeky technical crap. In just one week of cramming I learned a lot, and I can only imagine what I can do if I dedicated the next month to it, but some part of me just cant stop thinking about video bending, hacking instruments, and making robots out of toys. Whatever I choose to do for the next month, I will have to devote all my spare time and creative energies to it. So just in case it gets a little boring on the blog with updates about how I figured out how to fix my CFM error messages by installing an UB app into my MSP blah blah blah, Ill start posting pics, info, and hopefully sound samples of past instruments, and works. I also plan on updating the hell out alloverthewhere.org so check that in the coming weeks as well for more audio and visual fun.