Having just finished the first read-through of this article, I can safely say that it is a lot to take in. There are many nuggets of gold strewn throughout this soupy academic mire which have each been tiny eureka moments about my own work. In this article, the point is made that technology, and the obscured means of creating technological objects, are a form of enchantment and “it achieves its effect vie the enchantment cast by its technical means, the manner of its coming into being, or, rather, the idea which one forms of its coming into being”.

I”m starting (again, perhaps? I may have written a blog post on the matter before…) to view electronics as a form of strange ritualistic magic, in which the controllers of electricity place small objects in precise arrangements, invisibile forces act upon these objects, and a tangible effect is seen/felt/heard. Whilst also grappling with ideas about synthesis being perhaps a ‘done’ field, Gell’s ideas about the enchanting processes through which art is made having an effect on the viewer has made an impression.

I do disagree somewhat with his ideas – it seems Gell is saying that the technical proficiency of the artist and the mental difficulty that the viewer experiences trying to imagine themselves creating a particular art object are the primary sources of artistic merit. I may be mistaken on this front; the introduction, which seems to shed light on the exact framing of the argument, is full of lofty, inpenetrable sentements. It seems that Gell outlines his theory as a method through which anthropology can analyse art, but beyond that I am lost for now.

His describing of art “as a concrete product of human ingenuity”, amongst other similar descriptions, exudes a pleasing phrasology that appeals to my sensibilities as someone who dabbles with both art and technology to create my work. There is a feeling of awe around artistic objects as technologically advanced works, made only through countless hours of patient, quiet working. This is exactly how electronics projects come to fruition, and explains why his wording pleases me.

I will give this article another read-through at some point, and try to make more sense of the introduction. Perhaps this will help me frame the point of view better.

Pictured above is a double-page scan from one of my notebooks that shows the initial planning stages of the kinetic sound sculpture. Having written that phrase out a fair few times now, I’m starting to think it needs a name or title….

I’m lacking progress shots, which is proving to be a slight pain when dealing with the whole ‘evidencing’ side of things. Creative solutions will have to be found soon – paintings of progress? That is laughable and time consuming, but not altogether ridiculous.

Progress so far; parts 2, 3, 4 and 6 have been made and sanded, all fits nicely and works well. I have a motor and bearing, plus belt for the motor, so I think this project can be completed easily within the first week back of university if I book 2 or 3 days in the 3D workshop. In an ideal world, this is a first sketch of my electromechanical projects which will result in a more complex construction before May 11th.

I’ve got long term dreams of some electromechanical boxes that incoprorate gear ratios, flat metal rods that are excited like rulers held firmly off the edge of a school table, small chimes, sewing machine style sounds and more, but these sort of musical contraptions could easily be the life work of some 19th century clockmaker.

The mechanical project that is described in previous blog posts is underway now, scans of work pages will be found in the following posts. With the long break coming up I will be unable to work on it for several (3…?) weeks, so now is the time to begin work on my second project. This will be a synthesiser that follows on from the work that I did for the prototype hand in, with improved electronics that action on the knowledge gained during the construction of that prototype.

The oscillator design is the first area for consideration, I will be moving away from op-amp centered designs and instead focusing my efforts on constructing a transistor based VCO, in the hopes that it will reduce the strain on the PSU and thus reduce bleed. To be more specific, I’ll be making an astable multivibrator and then using an op-amp comparator to turn the square wave into a triangle wave.

INITIAL OSCILLATOR EXPERIMENTS

My tests are documented in the image above. This oscillator design seems a lot more tweak-able than the ones I have worked with before with a greater tendency towards odd behaviours and quirks. Imbued with more life than the rigidity of op-amps, this simple circuit topology is the latest in a series of transistor experiments that are wooing me with the analogue flippancy of simple circuits. The principle of biasing transistors is a lot more conversational than the prepackaged and finicky nature of op-amps (so far, that is. I presume that soon I will grow to be frustrated with transistors: I have already blown up a few, which is a rare occurrence with op-amps at low voltages).

After more testing, these oscillators (unmodified) will not be suitable as slope generators, op-amps with diodes in the feedback loop seem superior in that regard, although I’m now getting very curious about what happens when oscillating voltages are fed into the biasing network – what happens if low voltage broadband noise is injected into one of the bases of the transistors? First I shall need to build a noise osc… transistors are well suited to that, I have heard.

This mechanics-forward project involves a simpler assemblage of electronics compared to my previous work. I’m doing a couple of electronics projects for other people at the moment, and it is becoming increasingly frustrating to try and create electronics with an acceptable degree of cleanliness to them. My purely electronic synthesisers are giving me a lot of grief with oscillator bleed; as far as I can tell, the oscillator design that I am currently employing puts a lot of strain on the power supply, creating a voltage ripple with each cycle. This slightly modulating supply voltage is then used to power the amplifers, and the changing power is manifesting as bleed. I am doing investigations into this; either some sort of pulldown resistor that ties the output of oscillators to ground (this is presuming that they only bleed when unpatched…. not 100% about that…) or a completely different oscillator design – transistorised oscillators are looking to be a good bet, a la Buchla.

The project after these ‘acoustic’ synthesisers that I am dreaming of is a synthesiser that can sound nice. My current finished synthesiser is a bit abrasive and obtuse, characteristics that are definitely befitting of a first synthesiser, but I have learnt a lot about designing electronics and have realised that there are many faults and mistakes present. Moving towards more triangle waves, perhaps an envelope or slope generator or two, but keeping the cross modulation (with room for attenuation of this cross modulation, a feature which Is sorely lacking in my current synth, which makes it very obtuse and not at all delicate) seems like a good starting point for the next design.

The electronics that will power the acoustic synths will be fairly simple, but as this will be my first venture into CMOS chips I will be learning a lot. CMOS chips have long been heralded as great for beginner DIY synths due to their relative simplicity. Stanley Lunetta, a pioneer of synths focused around these chips, is the namesake for the CMOS sub genre of DIY audio electronics, which has a particular cult following and a particular sound. Shift registers, clock dividers, lots of intermodulation, plenty of square waves: these all result in a very digital, bitty sound.

I will be using some CMOS counter IC, but I’m not fully decided on which one. Some can count upwards and downwards, which seems like an appealing feature. With independent modulation of clock pitch, count direction and pulse width (not sure how PWM would br possible, as I have read that the CMOS counters are quite particular about the clock signals that they receive, and I’m currently not aware of any methods of altering the pulse width of a signal after it has been generated). The 4017 is a pretty standard chip that can go up to 10 steps, but there are other, more curious IC’s at my disposal.

The image above is taken from the data sheet of the 4029 counter IC. This seems to be generating some seriously interesting rhythms, but I’m curious how much control there is over these rhythms. There definitely seems to be options out there.

These 4000 series CMOS counters will be used to either trigger solenoids or control the turning of a motor. A low pass filter can be applied to these square wave clock signals to make a smoother curve, which might be good for controlling motors.