Eyecillator: A Small Yet Surprisingly Complex Little Light-Sensitive Noise Maker

Presented at A New HOPE (2022), July 23, 2022, 11:30 a.m. (50 minutes)

Meet the Eyecillator, a small DIY tabletop opto-synthesizer for musicians, STEM evangelists, and other weirdos, brought to you by the folks at VauxFlores. Technically speaking, it's a four-oscillator, cascaded NAND opto-synth with controls over pitch and voltage sag, as well as the addition of a third control over the frequency of a misappropriated telephone chip that acts as a strange filter of sorts. Non-technically speaking, it's a chirpy sound thing that kind of sounds like that motorized garbage can robot from that one space movie\... but with a drug problem - and you get to build one yourself! Even better, for this workshop, no prior electronics experience is needed and, yes, you get to keep this synth at the end of the day. As is tradition, we strive to keep things casual, informative, friendly and safe - so feel free to bring a snack and a story and let's build and be friends.

Presenters:

  • Travis Johns
    **Travis Johns** is the head of VauxFlores, an audio electronics company that specializes in the design and manufacture of unusual sound-making devices. Inspired by a fascination with analog electronics, as well as a good minute spent in the trenches of experimental music, he strives to create devices that tip the hat to the unheralded relics of the past, focusing on the sounds of the underground - whether they be garage rock, tropicalia, space music, swamp blues, harsh-noise, field hollers, non-idiomatic western free-improvisation... and so on.

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