Archive for the 'instruments' Category

X-Spirituaahl Sound Hacks, Workshop with Keith Lam, Hong Kong

The one and only, first time ever "X-Spirituaahl Sound Hacks" workshop, combining the easy hackable mantra boxes with some local sound toys, buddha machines and maybe even some musical souvenirs from indonesia. We plan an introduction into simple music toy hacking for making experimental and noisy tunes, first steps into lo-fi electronic circuits needed to expand the hacked circuitry with oscillators and amplifiers and most of all having fun hacking!

By dusjagr & Keith Lam, dimension+ studio, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong

X-Spirituaahl Sound Hacks Workshop from dusjagr on Vimeo.

see more impression on dimension+ fbook page

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Sruti Box Hacking aka X-Spirituaahl Sound Hacks


Background
After my visit to Bangalore, jamming with Yashas, shopping cheap electronic gadgets on the streets and some experiments on the beach in Goa, i finally got really inspired to work on some new musical instruments. The Gmoettophon MK2 is still with me, but i thought I could use some new noises, this time its spirituaaahl. At every corner in the streets of india you can buy these little divine "mantra chanting boxes" ... ooooohhhhmmmm navashivaaaa ganapathiiiii, just a few rupees, and maaaany tunes 9in1 at least! They are super easy to hack, they come with a speaker, a nice little plastic case, a 220VAC plug and inside an AC/DC converter (uiuiuiui indian electronics loooks daaaangerous), this is then powering the little sound chip (seems that one is made in china). On the board is as usual one resistor for the clock, which already allows to bring the mantras directly into the noise of hell. A few other connections can be made, eg to the LED output or the speaker, generating weird echoes and distortions... Naaaiiice.

Upcoming Workshop with Keith Lam, Hong Kong
After talking for hours with Keith about workshops, OpenSpaces, Hackerscenes etc, we decided that we have to do a workshop in Hong Kong before I fly back to Zurich. Said and decided, so we are looking forward for the one and only, first time ever "X-Spirituaahl Sound Hacks" workshop, combining the easy hackable mantra boxes with some local sound toys, buddha machines and maybe even some musical souvenirs from indonesia. We plan an introduction into simple music toy hacking for making experimental and noisy tunes, first steps into lo-fi electronic circuits needed to expand the hacked circuitry with oscillators and amplifiers and most of all having fun hacking!

Details about where and when will be posted soon, see the SGMK wiki for more info...

1, 2, 3, 4 Noise-Mantra hacks already done...
While the first mantra chanting box hacks we made in Goa at the beach, new ones have already seen the light of day. And the first thing to do in the new year, make some new toys. Instantly the appartement's coffeetable at Jalan Wora Wari, where I stay during my residency at HONF, was turned into a hacklab...

Radel - Mantra Hybrid Hacks

Gmöttophon A/V - born in Brrrrlin

I have been finally working on a new instrument: the Gmöttophon A/V. After the earlier series of musical/noise instruments, i wanted to build a new one that combines audio and visual experimentation, while keeping everything small. Earlier discussions and projects with Niklas Roy, seeing his vektron modular, and the experiment with the NanoŠmano TV during the session in Ljubljana with Stefan Doepner and Feargal Parkes.

Thanks to Haunz, who found an old video-camera on Boxi, i got my hands on a tiny little CRT monitor from the viewfinder. these little things are beautiful small cathode ray tubes, that allow a lot of messing up with the video signal or directly of through coils. they are quite easy to reengineer to figure out where to connect power (usually around 5 V) and GND, and then just try to connect a composite video to the other cables until you find it. The first experiment, see image below, sadly failed, cos when trying to remove the cover, we cracked the tube and lost the vacuum... it was a nice round one though.

Anyway, i managed to build the first prototype ot the Gmöttophon A/V, and in fact its bloody awesome. a bit like Ryoji Ikeda for you pocket :-)
Its controlled by an ultra simple circuit with two oscillators using a 4093 and an amp LM386, then there is various ways to patch the signals togehter. as video source i used a small surveillance camera, from the chinese market in Budapest. The options are endless... The video above just shows one of the late night experiments.

First vjing the pd_microscope @ cellsSONIC, Yogya

At the cellsSONIC, part of the cellsbutton#03 Yogyakarta media art festival, we have played a spontanous experimental jam session. Togar (Yogyakarta), playing on various solenoids, Kanno So (Japan) with his Jamming Gear, Alex Schaub (Netherlands/Switzerland) using a variety of bamboo flutes and other instuments and me, dusjagr (Switzerland) first time vjing using the hackteria pd_microscope.

here is a short clip:

and it was even in the indonesian press...

article_cellsbutton_1_sm

a new microscope is born...

if you have troubles with the java plugin try to open the following stream in your favorite video player (VLC, qt, mplayer...)

open stream: http://stream.giss.tv:8000/diy_microscopyr.ogg

below is the newly built webcam-streaming-microscope..

Dr. Dusseiller am :::BOSCH::: microBOSCH v2.0

es gibt wieder mal eine low-tech microbosch night. und ich wurde eingeladen ein bischen auf meinen geräten rumzuspielen.... wahrscheinlich wirds eine uraufführung des Gilbometers, dusjagr's antwort auf das neue iPhone.

diesen montag in der Boschbar

hier noch ein kleines bild für die pixel freaks
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