Looks like Trent Reznor has got some new toys. Here’s a Youtube vid of them boys messin’ with a Jazzmutant Lemur and a 16×16 monome (with another 8×8 monome hanging out as a paperweight, for consistency of decor). The video implies that these devices are being used to remotely control the stand-up piano on the other side of the room. Neat stuff. The Lemur alone makes me drool buckets, but paired up with all that other buttony goodness I don’t see how they’ll ever want to leave the studio.
I imagine Mr. Reznor just nonchalantly scribbled “Jazzmutant Lemur” and “a couple of those monome things” on his daily gadget grocery list and they were placed at his feet, upon his nine inch nails.
This past Friday I received a large package from FedEx that I wasn’t expecting. It was clearly addressed to me, but it had a New York City return address that I didn’t recognize. Being a man possessed of a powerful zeal for adventure, I promptly opened the box.
It turned out to be a mutilated disposable camera, a basic pc microphone, and a tape recorder with the cassette door removed. The camera had a small electronic component soldered to its circuit board and spliced into a 1/8″ audio cable.
Although I had a pretty good idea of what this pile of junk did when it was all connected, I didn’t know who had sent me this mysterious equipment, or why they had done so. I poked around in the shipping box and found a contest card from Popular Science that I had filled out at the Austin Maker Faire in October. There was no other information about the stuff or why it had been sent to me. After a bit of looking about, I found a blog entry detailing the process of disassembling and re-purposing the very devices that I had received.
Here’s a basic explanation of what all this stuff is for. The microphone is connected to the tape recorder’s input. When it picks up a sound above a certain volume (say, a loud percussive sound), that sound is sent as voltage out of the tape recorder, through the cable spliced to the camera’s circuit board. This tricks the camera into thinking the shutter has just been activated, and it fires off a flash. To make this useful, set up a light-controlled environment and make it as dark as possible. Then set up a camera for a long exposure and take your shot, making sure that whatever you are doing to trigger the flash takes place before the camera shutter closes. Ideally, the sudden, audible event (a balloon popping, a bullet firing) that triggers the flash captures a very brief moment in time that would otherwise be hard to see or capture precisely with the shutter release.
I needed to try this out. I fetched some batteries, set up the little Canon Powershot for some 2.5″ long exposures, turned out the lights, and brandished my confetti revolver.
I stopped into the Barnes & Noble in Union Square in New York City and took a peek at the book. Overall it looks quite good, lots to learn and think about. However, there’s a pretty significant error in my chapter: throughout the tutorial section, most of the captions to the illustrations and diagrams are mis-matched. Doug Easterly is in the process of trying to resolve this, as it really hinders the usefulness of the tutorial. The mistake occurred after he turned over the materials to the publisher, and neither of us knew about the problem until I skimmed through the book at B&N.
Anyone who has already purchased the book should contact the publisher and demand a revised copy once Doug has got them to sort it out. A $50 textbook should not contain such a glaring problem, and I hope this is remedied before it reaches full distribution.
I have a chapter in a book that was just released this past week, authored and edited by Doug Easterly.
While I have not yet received my copy, it looks like a really nice compilation of artists working with Flash and I feel honored to have been asked to contribute.
