Circuit Bent B-Card

You gotta admit, this is probably the second dumbest bent thing you've ever seen. The first may be this.

This is one of those $1 musical Birthday cards that everyone gets at least once, then throws disgustedly into the trash because it made the dog's ears bleed.

I made this one for the ever-dynamic and vari-talented sound wrangler Fausto Caceres (on the right, of the really excellent Shirley & Spinoza internet radio (I highly recommend listening, lots of experimental music of all kinds, it's pretty much what I listen to 90% of the time, and available from the website or under "eclectic" in the iTunes radio tuner) and formerly of Radio Free Berkeley) for his Birthday in 2005.

This image shows the envelope. As with most of my other gadgets, I sprayed dots all over this one.

Below, left, is the card open, with a detail of the optical resistor on the right. I added the optical resistor for slow to fast optical pitch control, and chained to the card is a blinkyblinky LED ring for optical sequencing. The output is very nice, noisy, and strange. Kinda satellite-like.

Assaulting the airwaves (of the internet) whenever the fancy strikes Fausto.

Audio Bits:

BCard01.mp3 Happy Birthday with a degenerative twist.
BCard03.mp3 Breaking down into satellite conversations. Using blinkyblinky LEDs to sequence.
BCard04.mp3 The noisy bits.
BCard05.mp3 More satellite speak.