Trying to record and mix sound, especially when you’re simultaneously attempting to squeeze cats and slap your lower back in burst of rhythmic flare, can be both daunting and painful. There’s a lot of high priced equipment that makes it easier–one of my favorite being a BOSS VE-20 Vocal Processor–but if you prefer the more inventive DIY route, you’ll love the auto-mixing form-factor of Jun Fujiwara’s RE:Sound Bottle. A project during his studies at Tama Art University, it has received accolades from many a design site and took home the 2012 Naoki Sakai Prize from the Mitsubishi Chemical Junior Designer Awards.
RE:Sound Bottle
Inspired by the MusicBottles project of Hiroshi Ishii at MIT Media Labs – Tangible Media Group, RE:Sound Bottles take the idea of using bottle to control digital data and gives it an Aurduino-driven makeover, capturing the sounds around you when the top is off and pushing a music generation algorithm to remix the bits into a blend of break beats fit enough for flanking your earlobes at the local discotheque.
This is a music medium that can reproduce a recorded voice as music,” says Jun Fujiwara on his Vimeo page. “It makes a database of sound sources that is managed and used as formal and automatic repetitions, and forms a music medium of the day. I felt something missing in the habitual use of music reproduction media, so I thought to create an interactive music medium that changes. By using everyday voices as sources of music, the sounds that are heard all the time every day carry infinite possibilities and help us reaffirm the enjoyment of music. I hope people can experience their own music.”
Re:Sound Bottle from Jun Fujiwara on Vimeo.
This is screaming to become a Kickstarter project, and from the comments on the Vimeo video, people are hoping to see it show up there as well. While you wait for that, enjoy images of the RE:Sound Bottle and Dub FX showing you how he mixes his own sounds up on a VE-20. (Skip to the 1:00 mark for the good stuff.)
Via booooooom
