I saw this Make: article on Facebook, and watched the video. His short wiki is here. I find this guy extremely fascinating, because he is doing what I wanted to do decades ago. I think if I had known about him decades ago, I would have been very tempted to contact him and try to collaborate with him to see if I could help him, and make some of these circuits myself. I adore and admire how he has made these functional circuits into works of art. Normally, the sound artist would try to hide the circuitry inside of a box, possibly to try to keep it a secret. But Peter does just the opposite! He puts the whole circuitry on display as a work of art. It most likely looks strange to the average person, but up closer, all the components can be seen, with all the colors and details of the components. For those who know how to follow a circuit, they could draw a schematic or duplicate the circuit with components. Fascinating, as I said!
The movie showed how he has made up a wooden jig to hold the wiring while he adds the parts. He has a good stock of analog and simple digital parts. He just sits there and solders all the parts to the power and other bus wires until he has completed the circuit. What’s amazing to me is that one of the ‘sculptures’ on the wall is as long as a car, and it doesn’t look like it can be broken down into sections. The whole thing looks too delicate to be moved in one piece, but I don’t think he could have built it in a single piece. He has had enough experience building previous pieces like this one, so he must know what works and what doesn’t, physically, visually and musically.
I would like to be there to ask him so many questions. I know enough about the circuits to be able to make them using just a block diagram of how the shadows are processed into the sounds. Playing this musical sculpture is something else. It’s like no other musical instrument. Well, I guess a synthesizer would be able to make the same music. But it would be done in software with nothing to look at. And 2 or more people would not be able to interact with the synthesizer like they can with the sculpture.
Again, I find this just fascinating. If I was there I would enjoy every minute of it. 😈 😁 🙌
