Plink Jet
28 May 2008
2 Comments
Who needs to buy art materials these days with all the disposable electronics at our fingertips? I feel as if the time has come where we all should begin to recycle in our art making materials too. From Rhizome.org:
Plink Jet, developed by Lesley Flanigan and Andrew Doro, is a robotic musical instrument made from scavenged ink jet printers. The mechanical parts of four printers are diverted from their original function, re-contextualizing the relatively high-tech mechanisms of this typically banal appliance into a ludic musical performance. Motorized, sliding ink cartridges and plucking mechanisms play four guitar strings by manipulating both pitch and strumming patterns like human hands fingering, fretting, and strumming a guitar. Plink Jet is designed to play itself, be played, or both. The result is an optionally collaborative performance between both the user and Plink Jet, with the user choosing varying levels of manual control over the different cartridges (fretting) and string plucking speeds (strumming).
The repurposing of consumer technology is a growing trend for artists and technologists in the DIY genre exploring circuit bending, hardware hacking and retro-engineering. Artists who have used the mechanics of printers for producing sound include Paul Slocum with his dot matrix printer and Eric Singer’s scanner-inspired musical instrument, GuitarBot. Inside an ordinary ink jet printer are the same toy-like, clockwork mechanisms that have delighted people and sparked imaginations for centuries. In the creation of Plink Jet, Flanigan and Doro have investigated how human improvisation can interact with these mechanical forms. Plink Jet transforms the predicable function of a printer into a unique and irreproducible performance.
by the way i began my bike commute to work yesterday. it’s 12 miles each way and really not fun. i’ve readjusted my scope to doing two commutes a week and shooting for three soon. I’m out of shape and my bike even with the retrofitting isn’t well suited for that distance. I saw road bikers going by me at three times my speed, at least. It took me one hour each direction and I was tired all day. Granted, I’m out of shape but now I’m beginning to think that purchasing an electric moped would be a good bet and a good investment. will report back on electric scooters and mopeds soon. and do plan on commuting to work tomorrow by bike so maybe it will be easier the second time around. I’m thinking not by reading the soreness of my legs.
Your body uses calcium for any muscle contraction (so the sliding filament theory goes). I haven’t seen this as professional advice, so don’t take it for granted, but I’m guessing if you take calcium on top of stretching and massaging (and maybe icing if they’re that bad), the soreness will go away faster. Have you checked bus schedules and all of that? Maybe there’s a way you can use JTA. Speaking of, I don’t get why bikes aren’t allowed on the SkyWay. Can someone explain that?
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