Three Loud Objects

This is a fun one.

Loud Objects are a group of lo-bit noise performance engineers who, among other things, perform by slowly building a noise circuit live on an overhead projector, soldering wire by wire until noise, then rhythms and glitch spew from the speakers in staccato bursts. It is really beautiful to watch as smoke rises from soldering irons on stage, wires carefully move into place by silhouetted hands, and triangle-wave sequences sound. Here's a great video of their performance in the Blip Festival 2007, doing what they do. (Loud Objects is: Tristan Perich, Kunal Gupta, Lesley Flanigan). Tristan also created one of my favorite noise objects, The 1-Bit Music device, a super-lo-fi 1-bit electronic instrument composition completely self-contained in a CD case.

I had the great opportunity to play with them at BentFest LA 2007 and their performance blew my mind! I have their "performance" hanging on my wall (they sold it to me after the show): a 2'x2' plexi sheet with wires, custom chips, a battery, output and toggle switch attached. Really great.

At that same show, and when I saw them the next year at BentFest LA 2008 I bought some of their Noise Toys, these really great tiny 1-bit noise objects that had a large ON OFF toggle and two tiny buttons to cascade through various noise logic settings.

Unfortunately you can no longer buy them from Loud Objects (or from Make, which they were available as a kit from for a while) but here's an instructable that may help you make one of your own.

I decided to take the three noise toys I got, and see what I could do with them. Since they are logic based, not sample or resistance based, there wasn't much I could do as far as circuit bending and changing the sound.
So I tried adding alternate control surfaces. I added 3 toggles to trigger and hold the different logic "states" cycles, controlling the change of sounds. I also added 3 human contact points and an optical res it or per unit that equate to the toggles in the sense that they also trigger logic "states" cycles.

I then mounted them onto a piece of dot-stencilled plexi (clear so you can see the beautiful red circuit boards underneath), installed it all into an antique wooden box and gave them all individual outputs.

I really love this instrument. I has a unique soundscape unlike any of my other instruments. Very otherworldly, gritty-grainy and mid-brain fiddling. From pulsing triangle waves to deep long-drones to spheric satellitoses.

I wish I had bought more.

The box and guts, wiring and all.

10/24/09

AudioVisual Bits:

A small movie demoing Three Loud Objects in action!

It also appears about halfway through The Univac Index, Live @ Robotspeak along with uniPet 04 and gang.

Here is an audio tour of Three Loud Object being played through a weird old rotary reverb unit by UK Arbiter Electronics called The Soundimension: Soundimension And Three Loud Objects (16:34)