Twittering Machines

Tristan Perich
1-Bit Symphony

Remember the Buddha Machine? Well Artist/Composer Tristan Perich has gone 1 bit further and created a movable feast inside a CD jewel case:

1-Bit Symphony utilizes on and off electrical pulses, synthesized by assembly code and routed from microchip to speaker, to manifest data as sound. The device treats electricity as a sonic medium, making an intimate connection between the materiality of hardware and the abstract logic of software.

Perich programs the music directly onto (into?) a microchip and hand-assembles the CD case which includes a complete electronic circuit, battery and headphone jack. So in effect you’re buying a handmade self-powered ‘master’ music machine that literally plays itself. Lovely.

You can pre-order 1-Bit Symphony for $29.00 from Bang On A Can. Release date scheduled for August 24, 2010.

There’s also an “Artist’s Edition’ which is a signed/numbered limited edition of 50 that includes a silkscreen print of the source code and schematic for $150.00. Available direct from the 1-Bit Symphony site.

Somehow I missed Perich’s first 1-bit device, 1-Bit Music from 2006 – “1-Bit Music probes the foundations of digital sound. An electronic circuit is assembled inside a CD case with a headphone jack on the side. The device plays back 40 minutes of low-fi 1-bit electronic music, the lowest possible digital representation of audio.”

The regular edition has since sold out but the Artists Edition is available through Tristan Perich’s website for $100.