WalkSX from Gijs on Vimeo.

As the Sony Walkman turns 30, many of the mobile cassette’s fans wax nostalgic. But it takes Gijs Gieskes to wire up a new Rube Goldberg-style musical instrument based on the Walkman’s simple tape playback.

Follow along carefully through the signal flow of this unusual instrument:

1. The Walkman has audio on the tape itself, sampled from a Roland TR-808 drum machine.

2. Because a compact cassette has two tracks (left and right, for stereo), one track is dedicated to the drums, another to the rim shot.

3. The rim shot track is fed as a mono audio input to an Arduino (the open-source microcontroller platform). The Arduino responds to the audio level, so each time a rim shot hit occurs, it ….

4. …sends a sequence event to the Gakken SX-150. That means that you can adjust the speed of the whole contraption by…

5. …adjusting the speed of the tape. (Bless you, analog playback!)

It takes Gijs to think that way somehow: put together, these elements are actually fairly simple, but strikingly effective. Fortunately, if this does inspire new ideas, Gijs has posted all his Arduino code, so you can check this out and try something yourself.

http://gieskes.nl/instruments/?file=walksx

July 1, 1979: it was thirty years ago today that the Sony Walkman went on sale, launching mobile music for the first time.

Wait – rewind (so to speak). That honor really belongs to the portable transistor radio – and, indeed, part of the reason America already knew and loved Sony by the time 1979 rolled around, having embraced their pocketable radios as early as the 1950s. In fact, if you want to blame a device for degrading audio fidelity, you should again look not to MP3s and iPods but back to — you guessed it — the same transistor radio.

But no matter. The Walkman did popularize carrying your own music collection with you. It was not only about mobility, but mobile music collections free of airwaves, mix tapes and the experience of walking around the city or doing a workout with your own personally-assembled soundtrack. It turned everyone into DJs and made the music something that could easily bounce around inside your head rather than around your living room or a music venue. The Walkman and not the iPod might also have to carry the burden of claims that music was made antisocial – but it also made for a uniquely personal experience.

And do we ever love cassettes, with their ability to accommodate our own mixes and recordings and stack in neat cubes.

True, the link that’s making the rounds on the Web parodies the clueless 13-year-old child of the iPod age:
Giving up my iPod for a Walkman [BBC News]

This comes from a different planet than the one on which we live on CDM. In this world, snarky 13-year-olds have no idea what the metal/normal switch does, and the zinger is “Did my dad, Alan, really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?” Okay, you snot-nosed brat, it’s a good thing global warming will revert us all to a primitive Stone Age existence and you won’t have to suffer the fate of technological advancement. PS – your dad says never to call him Alan again. (I kid, kid, really. Just can’t resist.)

Of course, on our planet some 13-year-old is probably assembling his or her own cassette player out of spare parts and turning it into a circuit-bent DJ machine, and knows the entire history of the Sony Walkman by model number, and can tell you which factory assembled your old broken model based on the serial number. In that demented spirit, I invite readers to share your own Walkman memories, and offer up a selection of my favorite cassette-themed posts from CDM (of which, I was surprised to discover, there are quite a lot).

I won’t even try to summarize the history of the Walkman, because I have no idea what it is, and Wikipedia has beaten me to the punch.

CDM on Cassettes

The best story of all time: Eric Beug on how to make a Mellotron sampler entirely out of Walkmans, as seen at an early Handmade Music with CDM, Make Magazine, and Etsy. See MAKE:blog for the full post.

The best-ever cassette quote: from experimental DJ Artjom (DIY machines and Max patches below):

Yes, you can contact with me. But, if you would want that I played on your party on cassettes, then I refuse. I do not play on cassettes any more. In general, I don’t want play in the club, because people come there to drink and to search partner for copulate. This is bad.

The best day for cassettes: when we read RIAA numbers that showed that DVD Audio and SACD combined were still matched by cassette sales. Some new formats catch on. Some do not.

Cassette tapes (and other tape media) as a way of making lo-fi samples:

Free Tape-Recorded Samples of Roland TR-606, 808

Cassettes for uses silly and uses practical alike:

Cassette Change Purse; Choosing Cassette Decks with Pitch Control

In other words, cassettes can be entirely useless and about nostalgia only — or they can remain a useful and inspiring musical tool even for digital users, helping you get out of your rut and approach sound in a new way.

Cassette Jockeys at the 2007 Maker Faire

The work of DJ Artyom, who assembled DIY DJ gear using cassette tapes for a unique sound and mixing techniques:

Homemade Cassette Tape DJ Mixers + Max/MSP PC

An international collective shares mix tapes – the physical tapes, yes, even in the Internet age

Above: Andy Warhol shills for TDK. Video cassette tape, to be sure – but sublime nonetheless. If I had to remember my Japanese lines, I might have to close my eyes, too.

Tape collections:
The brilliant Project C-90
The Obsessive “Tape Jam”

Walkman Sequencer: Tape + Homebrew Sequencer + Nintendo Game Boy

Gijs Gieskes is a master circuit bender, and cassette is a favorite medium. Check out his Tape Seq 02, which varies cassette playback using controllable pots and synchronizes to a Game Boy. It’s an analog result that’s only possible in this way with tape as the playback technology.

Put a cassette deck inside a Windows PC (sadly, this product appears to be discontinued?)

You Tell Us

Nostalgia is one thing. But what to you have the cassette and the Sony Walkman meant for music? And is there anything these youngsters (well, anyone younger than … 20, I guess?) could learn about this technology? Is there a lesson from the Walkman?

Above: You know a technology makes an impact when it has its own graffiti. The cult of the cassette, as captured (CC) hugovk.

Artists Gijs Gieskes’ sequencers are almost like physical, mechanical software, an expression of musical structure in object form. As such, even as they make strange sounds, they become musical sculpture. His latest Servo Sequencer combines optical and mechanical process, as frequency circles spin on a turntable and tone arms float above them.

The Servo Sequencer is built for exhibition use – meaning, yes, he’s brave enough to let you play with this contraption. Sequence the arms using buttons, then adjust the volume mix and placement of each arm using the joystick.

Serv Seq from Gijs on Vimeo.

This project is unusually well-documented. Gijs provides complete specs, the script that controls the arms, and even a little web app that generates those lovely patterns.

http://gieskes.nl/instruments/?file=serv-seq

But for those of you near the Netherlands, you should go check this out in person. Updated: The piece will be part of an exhibition in Breda through August 23, with multiple opening events featuring local artists from Eindhoven and Breda, plus live performances and concerts including Gijs and his talented brethren and neighbors.

Here & There Exhibition, mu.nl [Info in English]

The events:
Opening Part 1:
KOP, Breda
Thursday 25/06 08.00 pm

MU, Eindhoven
Friday 26/06 08.00 pm

(It’s a bit confusing as the events swap between Breda and Eindhoven — there’s a second opening Saturday July 25. Gijs explains “the first [opening] is in breda (thursday), then a day later (friday) in eindhoven, where my machine will be. and then a month later its the other way around.”)

You know, Breda. Like, right … here. We’ve got a number of readers in the area (whom I suspect know more or less exactly where this is); let us know if you make it!

Handmade Music hits Brooklyn again Thursday night with a terrific lineup:

• Robotic gamelan instruments with the Gamelatron, created by Zemi17 and the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) – check the video above!
• Rescued PDAs and iPods making music, with the Linux-powered ReWare project (which even allows you to run Pd on an old iPod), by Hans-Christoph Steiner – expect a box full of handhelds making noise
• Gestural Android handheld music, as I demonstrate the possibilities of the Google Android platform and G1 phone for OSC
• The Arduino-based Hard/Soft synth, designed by Gijs Gieskes and built by MAKE’s Collin Cunningham

Full project details at:

http://handmademusic.noisepages.com/

How to participate:

Online! Wherever you are in the world, you can join our live video stream:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cdm-tv

Apologies: while a test of the connection had worked for us last time, network performance was inexplicably poor. We’ll try to work on a better solution for the future. It’s the challenge of relying on a connection other than your own.

Schedule:

7:00p Online chat with the creators

7:30p Public event starts

8:00p Performances + demos

You can also ask questions to our creators by leaving them in comments here, or the day of / during the stream by sending a Twitter message with hashtag #cdmtv. (Follow CDM on Twitter) We’ll have clips of the show available by Friday

In NYC:

FREE, at Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward, 7:30p Thursday. rsvp@3rdward.com or on Facebook

Directions

3rd Ward

Thanks to Pabst Blue Ribbon for the free beer, plus our co-organizers at MAKE, Etsy, and XLR8R.

Last-minute NYC-area projects! If you have a project you want to bring, we will have a PA, amp, and projector. We welcome those last-minute projects that manage to come together. Just bring it by and find me at about 7p.

In Your Neighborhood:

We have folks interested in starting up Handmade Music around the US and internationally. Sign up via Google Docs if you have any interest in helping organize (no commitment) and expect information in the next couple of weeks.

What does it mean to truly democratize technology? When is DIY more than just the creation of an object? That’s the question asked by our friend Julià Carboneras, who curated the new Nerdeferences feature of the OFFF digital design conference in Portugal last week. DIY is more than just cool devices, argues Julià: it’s social hacking, too. He brought together myself, Instructables.com founder Eric Wilhelm, and musical inventor and artist Gijs Gieskes (who stole the show, showing some creations live onstage). But there was a bigger picture, too, that I wanted to share.

Julià wrote, in Catalan and English, an introduction to the idea for the conference catalog that I thought was really compelling. OFFF has allowed this text from their catalog to be reprinted here, and Julià has given us a Spanish translation, as well. (Spanish first, English second.)

I’m actually pleased that on CDM we have the chance to talk about radical DIY and open source ideas alongside more traditional commercial projects. In that way, you see design in a larger context. You can see the tools that allow people to be creative alongside one another. And my sense is that people do find ways to build business models and economic independence around notions of open source and DIY, which is vital in the capital-driven world in which we live. What draws together people, whether using commercial tools or building their own, is some desire for real independence instead of dependence, for expression and not just consumption.

I’ll let Julià take it away, though, because the issues he raises goes well beyond the insertion of some of these ideas (and some very nice, loud sounds) into a design conference. I know many of you working in communities and events elsewhere are thinking along similar lines.

(Photos here from the event itself; we expect to have additional video, too, soon. Let me know if you were there in Lisbon!)

NERDFERENCES [ESPAÑOL]

Desde sus inicios la llamada “democratización” de la tecnología ha estado limitada por demasiados factores para poder considerarla genuinamente democrática. A pesar de que realmente la caída de precios ha permitido un acceso más amplio a sofisticados dispositivos digitales, también ha determinado la manera de utilizarlos impuesta por sus fabricantes. Hoy en día, miles de usuarios están rompiendo estas limitaciones a través de la ética del DIY (háztelo tu mismo).

Desde que Reed Ghazala acuñó el término “circuit bending” en los años sesenta para referirse a la modificación de la circuitería de aparatos electrónicos para generar sonido, la influencia del movimiento DIY en la creación contemporánea ha sido obvia, y algunas de sus invenciones y descubrimientos se han convertido en recursos básicos en el arte digital actual, como el software Processing o las superficies de control Monome. Pero no podemos pensar en el circuit bending y en el software de código abierto como meras técnicas o dispositivos. La naturaleza de su propia existencia está fuertemente vinculada a ideologías que se asocian a movimientos sociales y políticos alternativos. Frecuentemente relacionado con el punk y los movimientos anticapitalistas, el DIY es, ante todo, una postura en contra de la producción en masa y las políticas de comercio multinacional. Pero lejos de usar técnicas de confrontación abiertas y directas, su beligerancia se expresa principalmente a través de estrategias de “copia y mejora”: algunos de los dispositivos más famosos que han nacido del DIY tienen sus orígenes en la reformulación o modificación de tecnologías ampliamente conocidas vendidas por multinacionales. En realidad, cuanto más popular es el producto, más atractivo es piratearlo.

A Gijs creation. Photo courtesy OFFF Festival.

Nerdference es un nuevo panel enfocado al DIY digital que se presenta en el festival OFFF: un movimiento social, ideológico y tecnológico bajo el cual pueden encontrarse múltiples formas conceptuales a través de disciplinas como el circuit bending, el software y hardware hacking, el desarrollo en código abierto, superficies de control de fabricación casera, entre otras muchas. Nerdference es una oportunidad única de dar una visibilidad física y una exposición offline a un fenómeno que vive mayoritariamente en internet. La red ha permitido desde el desarrollo de proyectos colaborativos tan grandes y conocidos como Linux a poder compartir con el resto del mundo dispositivos caseros realizados individualmente como hobby. Una red internacional de tecnologías de dormitorio que ha contribuido substancialmente en la evolución de las herramientas digitales usadas ampliamente en la creación con nuevos medios actual.

Nerdference es un amplificador para una generación de artistas con voz propia. Una generación nacida con un portátil bajo el brazo; adolescentes que han aprendido a programar de forma autodidacta y se han convertido en hackers famosos; músicos que elaboran todo un proceso de producción, con suficiente imaginación y conocimientos técnicos como para crear desde sus propios instrumentos hasta sus redes de distribución musical; artistas que desarrollan su propio software y lo distribuyen libremente…

La primera edición de Nerdference en el OFFF Oeiras 09 tiene el honor de presentar a Eric Wilhem, Peter Kirn y Gijs Gieskes.

Eric Wilhem es el fundador de instructables.com, un web de referencia mundial donde todo aquel que quiera puede mostrar sus dispositivos caseros hechos por ellos mismos. Instructables.com es, tal como Wilhem declara, “el web de Muestra y Explica más grande del mundo”, y se ha convertido en la Biblia del DIY. En él se puede encontrar lo más inimaginable: desde como se diseñó y programó la propia web, a como customizar instrumentos musicales o como fabricarse uno mismo el detergente para lavar la ropa. Esta será una oportunidad única para disfrutar del amplio conocimiento de Eric sobre DIY.

Peter Kirn es el nombre que está detrás de createdigitalmusic.com, createdigitalmotion.com y
createdigitalmedia.com. Estos blogs son puntos de encuentro esenciales para artistas, programadores y VJs, y son una guía para conocer las últimas novedades tecnológicas y de DIY. Y por último, pero no menos importante, el artista holandés Gijs Gieskes nos mostrará como lleva el circuit bending al extremo en Nerdference. Aprenderemos como concibe, diseña y construye sus extraordinarios artefactos y software de modificación de navegadores web.

Julià Carboneras

NERDFERENCES [ENGLISH]

Since day one, the so-called “democratization” of technology has been constrained by too many determining factors as to be considered genuinely democratic. Although it’s true that the prices drop has improved a wider access to sophisticated digital devices, it also has determined the way of using them through the limitations set by their manufacturers. Today, thousands of users are breaking these limitations through the DIY (Do It Yourself) ethos.

Since Reed Ghazala coined the term “circuit bending” in the sixties to name the modification of electronic devices internal circuits to generate sound, the influence of the DIY movement in contemporary creation has been obvious, and some of its inventions and discoveries have become basic resources in today’s digital art, like the Processing software and the Monome control surface. But we can’t think of circuit bending or open source software as mere techniques or devices. Their most intimate nature, their existence itself, is strongly connected to an ideology that deals with alternative social and political issues. Often related to punk attitude and anti-capitalist movements, the DIY is, first of all, a stand against mass-production and mainstream trade politics. But far from openly confrontational techniques, its belligerence is mostly expressed through copy-and-improve strategies: some of the most famous devices born in the DIY scene have their origins on the re-formulation or modification of already existing and well-known technologies manufactured and sold by multinationals. Actually, the most popular the product, the most attractive the hacking.

Nerdference is a new panel at OFFF focused on the digital DIY: a social, ideological and technological movement whose multiple formal and conceptual traces can be found on disciplines like circuit bending, software and hardware hacking, open source development and homemade control surfaces, among many others. Nerdference is a unique opportunity to bring physical visibility and offline exposition to a phenomenon mostly living on the Internet. The net has been a determinant platform for the development of so big and well-known community projects as Linux or the worldwide sharing of self-made devices made out by individuals all over the planet. An international bedroom technologies network that has become a substantial issue in the evolution of digital tools massively used in today’s new media creation. Nerdference is an amplifier for a generation of artists with an already own voice. A generation born with a laptop in its hands; teenagers who learned how to program by their own and have become famous hackers; self-taught music producers with enough imagination and technical skills to build up their instruments and create their particular distribution networks; artists that develop original software and give it out to like-minded others.

Nerdference’s first edition at OFFF Oeiras ‘09 proudly features Eric Wilhem, Peter Kirn and Gijs Gieskes.

Documenting process via Instructables. Photo (CC) Anna Fuster / Tartanna.

Erik Wilhelm is the founder of instructables.com, a world reference site where anyone can show his / her self-made devices and applications. instructables.com is, as Wilhelm himself declares, “the world’s biggest show and tell website”, and it has become the bible for the DIY believers. It covers almost every imaginable topic: from designing and programming the site’s pages themselves to customizing musical instruments and creating your own washing powder. This will be a unique opportunity to enjoy Erik’s broad knowledge of the DIY industries.

Peter Kirn is the man behind createdigitalmusic.com, createdigitalmedia.com and createdigitalmotion.com. These blogs are essential meeting points for artists, programmers and Vj’s, and extremely useful guides to check today’s DIY state of the art.

Last but not least, Dutch artist Gijs Gieskes will show his extreme take on circuit bending at Nerdference. We’ll be able to learn how he conceives, designs and constructs his amazing artifacts and web browsers modification software.

Julià Carboneras

More resources:

Instructables.com

Trackmate Tangible Controller: A terrific example of documenting a tangible music interface project via Instructables (which in turn this group linked back to their Sourceforge page, a case of using the right tool for the right job)

Gijs Gieskes

Links from my presentation:

Adobe Rants Produces Unexpected Glitch Art
(proof that having tools that don’t always work perfectly, or that can be pushed past the point at which they function properly, can make them more powerful)

TUIO + reacTIVision: a protocol and open source vision library for touch, tangible interfaces

opensoundcontrol.org: a means of making devices and software more intelligent, more expressive, and more connected in a way that benefits artists and musicians

Save that Old PDA: Run Reware, Play Pd Musical Creations, Android (OFFF, NYC) – a way to harnass open source software to make supposedly “disposable” devices powerful again

handmademusic.noisepages.com: an opportunity to work on this stuff with other people, live, in person – and a call to extend this around the world, beyond Brooklyn, has already resulted in a number of cities in the US, plus London, Berlin, and Porto, Portugal

http://paia.com a source of DIY kits, including solder-free, business-card-sized kits that can be used to teach kids about electronics and sound early

Finally, here’s my presentation via SlideShare, complete with (some) of the embedded videos:

The Netherlands is already a artistic-technological hotbed, and today (Wed. 29.10) some of their best circuit benders are gathering in one place, including regular favorite of ours Gijs Gieskes. (Gijs made the wonderful, spinning device above, which I missed when it came out — see it on Music thing.)

If you can make it, we’d love a report!

29 oktober ’s-Hertogenbosch (The Netherlands)
Nerdlab (initiative of CBK-Digitale workshop) organises topic evenings in the Verkadefabriek with artists who work on the borders between art, science and physics.
The topic of the first edition is circuit bending.

On this evening the following artists will performing:

Gijs Gieskes+Karl Klomp ( http://gieskes.nl/ – http://www.karlklomp.nl/ )
Rumatov ( http://www.myspace.com/rumatov )
Luc van Weelden ( http://www.lucluc.nl/ )
The Circuit Band ( http://toysfornoise.blogspot.com/ )
DJ DMDN ( http://www.myspace.com/dj_dmdn )

Location: Verkadefabriek – Boschdijkstraat 45

Time: 20:00 till 00:30 free admission

Be there early! Program starts at 20:30

http://www.nerdlab.nl/

Thanks to Martin Verhallen! (Yes, I’m behind, to those of you complaining. Yep, I was traveling / bad wifi / jetlagged!)

In other news: I think it’s nearly Circuit Bending Challenge season again, huh?

Moving house is a tiresome affair at the best of times, but takes a whole new level of energy when you are basically something of a geek. When you have a room converted into a studio and most rooms in your house or apartment contain at least some element of gadgetry spilling out with a mess of chargers, documentation, manuals or interfaces then you probably don’t want to move often. Or at all. Much like learning the tooth fairy is not real (sorry) or realising that Sony has nothing but contempt for its customers (blackhat) it is an inevitability. It will happen. When it does, consider some of these tips that I have found useful in my own recent moving.

1. Keeper of boxes

Keep boxes for your studio visual monitors – such as LCD screens – and your studio audio monitors – such as reference speakers. For sake of shipping for repairs or warranty claims, and given their delicacy, it pays to keep the boxes for your studio monitor speakers in any case. This stuff is the most difficult to do without should something happen to it, so more than most other items you should consider packing down and storing these boxes where possible.

2. Plastic storage treasure

Plastic storage containers are much better then cardboard boxes for cables and electronic gear that might be affected by moisture and dust, or require some greater protection from clumsy handling. With the clip-on lids it only takes a small band of packing tape over the handles to secure, and they can be stacked for storage afterward. If they are unpacked after the move, they fit neatly enough inside each other for storage, and are always useful for shepherding gear around where sherpas are rare.

3. Pull the power

If you are like me you will have packed the bedroom, bathrooms, kitchen and lounge room well before you will even have moved one item from the studio or studio space. There are always so many projects to work on, so many great sites to read, and so much internet to download. You are addicted to being awesome. Go cold turkey. Pull the power to your computers, unplug the studio monitors, turn the modem/router off and disengage. Commit to the move and the hunger to get precious interwebz and megahurtz again will motivate you to hurry up and finish the process!

4. Mobile geek life

Any moving tips and hints document I have read lately has recommended making an overnight bag of the clothes, work items and documents you will need. The same should be said for your geek lifestyle. If you have user names and passwords you haven’t memorised, then copy those down somewhere portable and secure. Just as importantly, get yourself geeked up in a way that will keep you productive. Once you accept the downtime of moving house, you can work out what you can do instead of staring blankly at the walls. Even if that just means playing Sudoku on a Nintedo DS. A lot.

5. Have no mercy

This is a great chance to look at the box you haven’t opened in the last 4 years, yet you have lugged between houses multiple times. Have you ever used those old XLR cables? Are you EVER going to use that Behringer patch bay? Are you really going to circuit bend that Casio? Does that soldering iron even have a power supply? Take stock of this stuff and be merciless. Whilst the golden rule of music production hardware is cited as “sell nothing”, there is much to be said for clearing out clutter and freeing up your workspace and storage space.

6. Back right up

I shouldn’t even have to say this, but this is a time back your data up. Back your data up even from the back-ups and back those up. Maybe not that far, but I’m simply stressing the need to back-up. By saying “back-up” a lot. More then likely somewhere around your geek desk is a pile of CD-R’s and DVD-R’s. You probably have an external drive with data backed-up on it that has some “temporary” back-ups of stuff you mean to “file and sort later”. The time is now. The golden rule here is to consider this your ultimate deadline to have healthier filing and back-ups. Consider purchasing (if you haven’t already) a disc filing case. Consider committing to a simple but effective back up system once you have moved, which takes the pressure of the backup you need to do now. The chances of something being dropped, stolen or otherwise affected in the move are very real, and anything you can do to prepare for this will make your life easier.

7. Accept the different

This is a strange point, but one worth mentioning. Despite my adventures, I struggle to let go of my ergonomic and tweaked studio space each time I have to move. This makes less sense looking back over each move, and realizing I have had a significantly better studio experience each time, going from the “in the bedroom” setup in a share house, through to custom furniture in a converted and dedicated room. In between however, I have made makeshift studios by pushing trinkets off of cluttered tables in short lease corporate apartments, almost entirely re-arranged hotel rooms, and even selfishly dominated entire bench tables in rowdy European backpacker hostels. Beer stained optical mouse and all. Some of my band’s best tunes (and most of the worst) have germinated in some of these challenging and inspiring places.

8. Boxes beat seats

The average studio setup has a lot of gear that I call “back seat” gear. Those things with knobs and faders and LED’s that don’t lend themselves to being thrown in a box with other stuff and would better be put on the back seat of the car. This can include computer monitors, but you have hopefully kept the boxes for those. For synthesisers, mixers, effects units, grooveboxes, drum machines, VJ gear, midi controllers and similar, it quickly becomes evident that a lot of foam and more boxes than one would have anticipated are necessary. People who aren’t geeks or creative types won’t get this. They will look at the studio like a kitchen or bathroom and presume you can just throw it all in a box and be done with. These are the people you make carry the heavy boxes. The obvious point here worth repeating is to have more boxes than you think you need, and as much foam, bubble wrap or blankets as possible. A lesson learnt the hard way.

9. Warn your helpers

There is a chance that you will be utilizing the assistance of someone – or some people – who have offered, for some strange reason, to help you to move. There is a chance that they will not be from the same mindset as you. For example: Where you see a sought after vintage analogue synthesiser, they probably see a battered old keyboard. Where you see a Torrent box, they might see an amusing old Pentium III housed in a sun discolored case. Where you see an Important Thing in a Logical Temporary Space, they might see some clutter that’s getting in the way. Be kind to them and be patient. They are after all helping you.

10. Try some alternatives

If you can’t make music, play WoW, edit video, write code or design during the move, and the idea of being constrained to wherever your laptop ends up doesn’t appeal greatly, then consider the time as a holiday to test some alternatives. If you have a PSP or a DS and the appropriate OS modifications then try some homebrew applications like PSP Rhythm or Protein DS Scratch. If you have been curious about Linux or alternatives to Windows, why not try an install? If you have web access you could waste hours on ffffound or playing with online 303 emulators under the pretence of inspirational immersion. Once you feel guilty for that time wasting, you could go to the library and get out books on programming or music theory or photography, and consider a life where everything is on loan and you never have to box or move a single possession again. Consider moving in to the library itself. Plot where you might build a little fort for entertainment and, well, defense.

And then it’s time to unpack.

Note: we are temporarily having problems with Vimeo’s embedded video. (So is MAKE, evidently, so it’s not our fault!) Click through to see the video, or enjoy the lovely garbled characters if they’re there.

Regular followers of the music tech blogs know the wild and wonderful work of bender/inventor Gijs Gieskes (here or all over here), in which Casio keyboards get massive mechanical add-ons and Sega games become fuzzy, distorted video art. Phillip Torrone writes us to let us know MAKE has taken a closer look at the artist:

In the illustrious world of case-mods and console hacking, artists and makers are re-inventing the design and function of these ubiquitous consumer electronics devices by creating hybrid systems and creative artifacts that challenge the corporate status quo. Taking this credo to an extreme with his inventive hardware projects is Dutch artist and maker, Gijs Gieskes. From casting a Nintendo Gameboy in concrete in order to build a garden path with “GameBoy Bricks” to creating an analog version of the hated spinning cursor in the Mac OSX operating system with “Spinning Beach Ball of Death”, Gieskes’ work and live performances are an inventive look at how closely entrenched we’ve become in the world of glitchy hardware and scrambled noise producing machines. MAKE recently caught up with Gieskes to discuss his practice, philosophy, and exactly how important the current crop of hackable consumer electronics might be to future generations.

Modding consumer electronics devices into DJ tools with Gijs Gieskes

The author of the interview, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, is an artist himself, so for a little meta-interviewing, check out Regine interviewing Jonah for we make money not art.

Of course, if you’d like to challenge the likes of Gijs and think your bending kung fu is better, get applying to this year’s Bent Festival.

And if you’re in London, MAKE also points to what looks like a really cool toy bending workshop there. Let us know if any of you go!

West Coast vs. East Coast vs. Third Coast: now it’s on, circuit bending fans. If you’re in California or Minnesota and were cranky that New York got the awesome Bent Festival and you didn’t, it’s your turn this week. Thursday through Saturday, Bent is moving out to Los Angeles, then on to Minneapolis for the 19-21 before returning here to NYC. And for the whole world to enjoy, hardware inventor Gijs Gieskes’ latest creation, involving a hacked, sequenced Sega MegaDrive. Details on both after the jump.

If you are in L.A. this week:

Bent Los Angeles Schedule
Bent LA press release

Prefer your circuits to be kept all proper and not, um, bent? In addition to the CD hacking, alternative misbehaving interfaces, an “exquisite corpse” exercise with circuits, and circuit bending artists, there are workshops for “straight” circuits, too. Think basics of electricity and chips.

After that, it’s Minneapolis for the Third Coast:

Bent MN

MN’s Bent features workshops on parallel ports and “Analogue Drum Machine Hacks and Mods.”

Then Bent comes back to New York, where we’ll be comparatively cynical and unfriendly, and make harder-edged music. Okay, not really. But we’d better throw down to keep up with our Californian and Midwestern brethren.

Info on the New York show, local guides, and circuit bending in general as an introduction — with plenty of info if you’re in neither New York nor Minnesota nor California:

Bent Festival Site

Speaking of the world beyond America, our friend Gijs Gieskes sends his latest mad-scientist creation, a Sega Megadrive with a Sequencer. Direct control over gaming via a homebrewed, circuit-bent interface:

VISUAL-EQUIPMENT/SEGA_SEQ_1

Technically Create Digital Motion fodder, but let’s enjoy the hacked Afterburner anyway.

Gijs could be his own category here on CDM; see our past stories, with workshops and sequenced Game Boys and Casio keyboards.

How much does circuit bender Gijs Gieskes love circuit boards? Enough to make them into puppets. A little paint, lots and lots of colored lights, and the ability to receive clock signal (MIDI sync) from LSDj, the homebrew music app for Game Boys, and you have a geeky, wonderful animated character who can flash along to your Game Boy beats:

gieskes.nl/visual-equipment/pcb-puppet

Gijs conceived it as a way to add to his Game Boy performances.

This may be not safe for work. It depends on how what you think those flashing circles are. I do think someone in comments on Gijs’ site is reading way too much into the eyes, though.