[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/11606420]
This is an interesting take on a music box. [Blair Neal] is using an overhead projector with a roll of transparency to make a synthesized music box. A camera watches the projected image and feeds data to Max/MSP to produce the sounds. Customization merely requires creative image analysis. In this case, different colored pens or different tracks can be assigned to a sound with the speed of the track based on how fast you wind the transparency spool.
Very cool! it wold be nice to advance to something more “gestural” (I mean, more fluid drawings)
and eventually make the inverse to “print” a music on a new way
The music is absolutely horrible, but the idea itself and the project is really a neat idea. The man operating the machine looks like he is having some flash backs from childhood, and its kind of freaking me out…
Kick ass project, but would have been infinitely cooler had anybody with any sense of rhythm or melody been drawing on it.
Interesting idea, but lose the god forsaken bells.
Old tech. the design is the same as how we used to detect pins in a bowling alley. simply sample a single line of video and detect from that.
I could detect every pin in 2 alleys at a time with a singel video camera. there is a spot on the lane where all 10 pins are visible. put camera there, you now can easily spot them.
A story on a spool would be neat.
That would have been fun for about 5 minutes.
Mr. Rogers would have ended his time in Make-Believe Land and rolled in his grave after a musical performance such as the one above.