But that got me thinking. I think for creative health it’s important to spend some time out waterskiing or birdwatching that isn’t musical time. But what about those time when you have music making to do and you have to reconcile it with pretty outdoors time? Have you found a mobile setup that you take with you to the park? Let us know. Maybe I do need one of those HP Mini-Notes like our friend Brad just picked up. Some micro PC, solar power … sounds rather nice, right?

And if you’ve got an image of you, a keytar, and a surfboard, or perhaps a solar array powering a mountain-top Reaktor programming session, send them our way!

Updated:

That didn’t take long! Here’s Soundfreaks playing, complete with keytar and Speedo, on a lake outside Munich. Nice one, guys. Now, I just need a waterproof computer…

The beauty of musical instruments lies partly in their strangeness: odd objects that have mysterious sound-making powers. So really, why not a toilet?

Toilet, Pooh, Pikachu: Cementimental’s “Optical Theremin Loo” packs an optical theremin (with a photoresistor, in other words) into a plastic toy toilet. (Tom at Music Thing should like this as it’s white, not silver.) You can control the flow of light into the device using the lid. That’s just one of Cementimental’s strange creations: on his circuit bending projects page are various other toy modifications, including a fantastic Ghostbusters Ghost Box, Winnie-the-Pooh toy turned black box with plastic man pilot, and a Pikachu who seems to have taken up body modification. Suggestion: do NOT take his project Parcel Bomb on the subway. Cementimental describes these as part of his “anti-quality aesthetic. [insert joke about least favorite music manufacturer here]

Link Love for Benders: Cementimental’s real claim to fame is that he’s got the largest, most obsessive list of circuit bending links anywhere. If you want to see why CDM will never try to catalog bending links, go look at the enormous vastness of his list.

Other candidates for bizareness from the world of circuit bending:

Horrible things happen to Howdy the Talking Pony and a toy turntable gets a new lease on life [carrionsound]

Remember those Beat Blenders toys I pointed out in January, saying they’d make a great bending project? Tech Dweeb has circuit-bent “Bling Bling” and “Dreck” (think Shrek) models. Other fantastic projects: turning the dancing daisy toy into the noisy flowerport Opera Daisy and remaking Billy Bass, that talking bass toy thing.

Thanks to Adrian Dimond for turning me on to stop of this stuff; more on his work later!

Elsewhere on the Web: Get LoFi is a circuit bending blog; this week’s posts include a bent/hacked Sega Master System II and Bent TI99 and Atari 2600, both outputting bizarre video art that looks a bit like what happened when my ColecoVision bit the dust.

Previously on CDM: Reed Ghazala, father of circuit bending, writes CDM shares background on his work; scroll down for some terrific links

Straight from the files of "Looks-like-an-April-Fool's-but-it's-real":

From owlProject: The Log1k and iLog are instruments built from logs. (via near near future) The Log1k
is a log with a gearbox motor that spins wooden disks to produce
rhythmic noises, complete with "touch-sensitive switches" — wait, as
opposed to non touch-sensitive switches? Don't forget the flat panel
display. (It's a blank opaque flat panel that lights up, in other
words. But it is flat.) The iLog
is a new portable version with the same wooden toggle switches. The
iLog records samples, but much of the sounds have to do with "the bare
sound of electricity." And how does it sound? Completely terrible. But you know, in a good way, if you're into woodland noise art. (Is that a baby crying in the second video? Nothing like log instruments for terrorizing children.)

And, as if that weren't strange enough, the same team of Simon Blackmore and Antony Hall has created an instrument out of a lathe (scroll down to see it), with sensors to pick up the sounds of woodworking. Quoth Hall and Blackmore: "From a practical point of view, the lathe can easily produce truly round objects." Something that cannot be said of the latest USB keyboards from Edirol.