Monday, February 06, 2012

The generous Mr. Castro and squeaky circuits

Last week, I recieved a gift from André Castro (www.andrecastro.info) when he generously shared his circuit diagrams and plans for his noise circuits he calls Tactile Noise Machines. I combined his drawings and with my new drafts using Eagle CAD so that I could prepare PCB's and printed guides for my students.

here are my files to share:
tactile_noise_machines/tnm1.brd
tactile_noise_machines/tnm1.sch
tactile_noise_machines/tnm2.brd
tactile_noise_machines/tnm2.sch
tactile_noise_machines/tnm3.brd
tactile_noise_machines/tnm3.sch

Experimenting with these circuits over the past two weeks, they are making circuit bending instruments using found circuits in a 'sound toy' and adding in one of the Tactile Noise Machine plans. Next we start working on HMI. THey are all assigned to look at the act of making an instrument and consider the aesthetic/symbolic and maybe semiotic value of the methods that the instrument will require to 'play'. Taking a cue from the criticisms in Hertzian Tales by Anthony Dunne, I have asked them to look for these additional interpretations and metaphors that they can create in the instrument's form.

The sounds they are achieving from both explorations are pretty darn fantastic.