I recently attended a presentation and demonstration from one of my favourite living artists, Theo Jansen. I was thrilled to see him in person and was impressed with his bare bones engineering, his thoughtful creation process and his use of everyday materials (pvc tubes, cable ties..) to create such beautiful, moving creatures.
Each Strandbeest follows an organic evolution, a natural process that makes Jansen's creatures come alive elegantly and poetically. They roam the beaches in Holland and the world now. We were treated to a live demonstration of the Animarus Umerus after two consecutive presentations, the spectators gasped with delight, applauding until the end. The best part, he signed my latest issue of MAKE magazine.
Just saw this on BoingBoing. Industrial design student Andrew Haarsager created this gorgeous 60's Moog inspired real-time blog scrambler/RSS feed reader. No music making but it's still wonderful.
This is the second post concerning the bar set order, we decided to throw in some little extras, a cardboard keyboard and a cardboard amp.
The keyboard is a simple enough affair as it is based on a simple circuit that involves a 555 timer chip to produce a square wave. The casing was created by laminating lots of layers of cardboard together using glue and wood screws. In the video below we are playing the keyboard into the ring modulator of one of our earlier instruments, Fotosis No. 003. The resulting sound is the effect of the square wave noise section from Fotosis No.003 being fed into the carrier input of the units ring mod. and keyboard on the main input.
The amplifier is actually three amps and three speakers in one box. The amps are LM386 chips providing 2.5 Watts each. This set up allows us to play three separate devices into the amp where each device will have its own input, volume control, amp and speaker.
Connie here. We've been working on a custom order set the last 4 weeks for someone I am very close to. If anything, I wouldn't think anyone else would be capable of supporting 'fotosis' like he has with this one project. In the infancy of our little 'business', it's the friends and loved ones who help us get through the days of uncertainty; the ones who understand our simple dream and allow us to feel that for everything we make, they truly want to be a part of our growing passion and humble expertise. (FYI - I thank all our friends at the end of our blog and also through regular posts)
This set will be showcased in a local popular bar downtown that is known for weekly live music. The requirements were in keeping with our love for recycled materials and parts, as the need for the instruments to be durable to withstand euphoric drunken customers and also the respect of a handmade retro aesthetic including Meccano pieces & salvaged vintage connectors.
We really enjoyed designing and creating this interactive ensemble, something that anyone passing by would want to touch (very important) and an experienced musician could properly plug and play with.
Here is John with the specs;
The optical sequencer contains two oscillators one generating a sine wave the other a square wave. These oscillators are set up as optical theremins, their frequency being determined by three LDR's mounted on the front or the unit.
There are also a number of patch leads, permanently connected at one end to the outputs of a micro-controller. These leads can be connected to banana jacks on the front panel allowing the micro-controller to send trigger pulses to opto-couplers that reroute the frequency determining components connected to the oscillators. The time between trigger pulses is set by a value read from another five LDR's that are connected to the analog inputs of the micro-controller.
Both sound producing sections of the unit are then fed into and mixed by a passive ring modulator before amplification. The resulting noise is a random series of beeps blips and noise that you can interact with by applying lights or shadows to the eight LDR's on the control panel.
The sound producing chips I used for this build were the XR2206 (Sine Wave) and a 40106 (Square Wave).
As this unit is for public use it was important to make the controls as simple as possible so the pots are all dual pots. Example the volume also controls intensity and the filter is also square wave frequency.
The matching theremin with the Egg Beater for an aerial is a solid state unit based on a modified schematic we found online a while back.
All of the materials used to manufacture the casings were found objects like Meccano, random collected screws, bits of metal and wood also a strange French industrial on/off switch.
The whole setup runs off a single boss PSA 230, 9v DC supply.
Another artist and musicianordered a portable theremin a couple of weeks ago. I just recently made this one that allowed for an interchangeable aerial which means you can connect the clip to a spoon or a guitar, or say, a drum set while you're touring with your band (rightleftoverking?). This handmade theremin would be similar to that one. LOK and I agreed on using a recycled theme and he wanted something durable, which is the idea - portability, ease of storage and tough.
The case is made out of recycled wood, newspaper, cracker packaging and bits of steel & aluminum and has 2 vintage knobs. John made the crocodile clip. It's a unique little instrument that I hope the new owner will enjoy experimenting with.
I've been admiring Max's work since (again, I know I am obsessed with them!) CDM posted about this incredible modular synthfrom their flickr pool back in August. Here is the "The Sound Destruction Unit" if you haven't seen it in action.
I have just conducted an interview with not only Max the creator, but also Audrey his wife and fellow artist. These two co-exist with music making, circuit bending, robots, recycled art, dancing, photography and japan. Amazing. It's an interesting and long read, it's in full over on my mog.
Here's more,
"MAX: since I was younger, in the early 80s, electronic music, video games and home computing were my first interests and I lived electronics and computer technology always with a creative point of view. I went deeper in my hobbies studying for some years electronic engineering and taking piano lessons for seven years. Thanks to my studies in electronics I went addicted to robotics and I built a mini-robot for a couple of national competitions."
"AUDREY : my interest in making art with recycled stuff has started when I was watching Max making his electronic experiments and all the junk or surplus material he left on the table. Since now I like finding shapes like faces or body parts in every plastic or metallic piece I take in my hands. After I find such shapes, assembling them is really a natural process. It’s funny when you image me into skip diving in Verona, really funny indeed, but it’s incredible how many unused things can be found simply at home. One of the most beautiful aspect of this kind of art is giving a second life to things...Watching max working on his instruments I’ve found a lot of ideas to make my robots more alive and interactive with little lights and circuits."
"MAX : More than half of my retro and vintage stuff was mine when I was child or teenager. Other hardware comes from friends or eBay bids. The line in balancing the old and new when I’m making a new instrument is always different and is traced putting the old stuff in a modern context, and if needed ignoring also the original rules on which it was based on."
I am really impressed with these two. Everything they make is done in their spare time, and not for profit (though they are both planning to sell work in the future). I wish them the best and hope that they find more avenues to show off their talent.
We create handmade analog electronic andelectro-acoustic instruments. Each unique build is designed and built by us. Our blog includes the building process, in combination with our other DIY projects, music and interests.
I recently attended a presentation and demonstration from one of my favourite living artists, Theo Jansen. I was thrilled to see him in person and was impressed with his bare bones engineering, his thoughtful creation 
process and his use of everyday materials (pvc tubes, cable ties..) to create such beautiful, moving creatures.
come alive elegantly and poetically. They roam the beaches in Holland and the world now. We were treated to a live demonstration of the Animarus Umerus after two consecutive presentations, the spectators gasped with delight, applauding until the end.
