[Matt Kemp] remade this super 8 film camera into a synthesizer. Inside you’ll find a light sensor pointed through the lens. This way, zooming, focusing, and pointing the lens elsewhere will change the sound. He also refit the original controls to monkey with the output. Turn your speakers up when you watch this, your co-workers will love you for it.
@Sneakypoo: You could say the same thing about a saxophone or a theremin. A poor musician blames the instrument.
its funny that it was made as part of a recent Neanderthal Electronics workshop, because before i read that article, after i watched that video, i was thinking ‘just imagine how life would be if like cavemen had that technology.’ i wish that the device in the video be cloned and multiplied because it has so much more potential than explained in the demonstration. this thing is awesome, and i would participate in a gathering of these devices and their operators in large quantities in various locations, such as pyramids, stonehenge, stuff in america like caves..
i would like to see large groups of humans operating these devices in unision, and procession, etc. if this be an analog video to audio converter, then creating the device that can perform an audio to video conversion would be an awesome next step. then people could record cool shit and make music. or if you could completely emulate this device in a downloadable format, allowing any video input, from cam or video playback.. you could convert every experience into musical format :D
i like how the story is all to-the-point, yet when i try to get to the point it is all big and inefficient because i am incapable of efficiently converting thought into language.
two oscillators, a high pass filter and a band switch, easily emulated, right? so all i need is a light sensitive resistor emulator to go with it and i can emulate it all like FLstudio can emulate electric guitars and their mods? because where the fuck do i get a super8, that thing looks ~20 years old but also looks like shit that might have been around in the 60s.
@sneakypoo: The sounds this make reminds me of both Kraftwerk and Daft Punk tunes, so you can definitely use this as an instrument. In fact, add a couple of tape recorders and sequence like the old guys did, and you can probably make great tunes using only that instrument.
you can get super8 cameras from flea markets and ebay.
but before you tear them apart check that your not destroying a functioning colectable braun nizo camera thats worth from 200-400 euro depending on condition, like the guy in the article did.
cool mod but some people actualy stil use these things.(me included) don’t destroy the good ones!
@ewan: I should have mentioned that this camera was a complete dud I bought from eBay before modding it. I’m a Super 8 lover too, especially Nizos, and would never destroy a working example of one of these beautiful cameras!
Still nice to know that even when you get scammed on buying broken cameras that they can have a second incarnation, even in a form as silly as this one..
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I will never understand what people see in these things. Seems like 95% of the time all they do is create horrible horrible noises. The remaining 5% are handled by people that can actually tame the device and make something resembling music with it.