Musical jewel cases

September 17, 2005 6:57 PM

This jewel case makes its own music. One Bit Music is a project by composer and artist Tristan Perich. Merging his interests in physical computing and electronic music, Perich programs and packages electronics in a standard CD jewel case. The device plays minimal glitch/dance music when headphones are plugged in. You may remember him from such classics as the push button telephone to cellphone conversion.
posted by caddis (13 comments total)

that music is fucking ghastly in an uncanny valley type of way. it's almost listenable, but quite definitely not.
posted by es_de_bah at 8:19 PM on September 17, 2005

This music hurts my ears. Not to say I don't like it, but the tones are physically painful when played on big stereo speakers.
posted by Jawn at 8:24 PM on September 17, 2005

How about a cassette that generates its own music? I like the idea of a media that plays something new every time better than just a player in a CD case.
posted by abcde at 8:45 PM on September 17, 2005

I like GameBoy based music and that sort of thing, but this seems a bit more harsh (and not in the way I like). Could easily have built a passive lowpass filter in there to round off the hard edges a little.

Still... neat concept. :)
posted by Foosnark at 11:21 PM on September 17, 2005

Can I get one? Can't find a way to purchase this anywhere!
posted by dingobully at 4:37 AM on September 18, 2005

I like it.

Could someone please explain why this is called "one-bit"? I mean, it's not just binary on/off noise. Presumably the processor instructions consist of more than one bit. I don't get it.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:34 AM on September 18, 2005

It might be one bit. We'd have to hear it to be sure.
posted by Jairus at 5:41 AM on September 18, 2005

Clearly I'm a moron who doesn't know how to use the internet. Disregard my previous post.
posted by Jairus at 5:44 AM on September 18, 2005

The phone is kinda cute. It's definitely much more interesting than the Pokia. But the implementation leaves something to be desired. Using the phone's existing interface to provide all the necessary functionality would have been more "elegant", but would have required more complicated electronics in the body of the phone.
posted by djfiander at 6:43 AM on September 18, 2005

It certainly sounds like it's 1 bit - you wouldn't just get on/off noise with a 1-bit signal, you could generate different frequencies by varying the spaces between the on bits - but it would sound incredibly harsh and squarewavey. Which it does!

To be honest,though, I don't much see the point of this as a piece of artwork, especially since the music is godawful, but then I am a modern art philistine. I could be wrong.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:44 AM on September 18, 2005

A better "portable desk phone". And it's rotary!
posted by zsazsa at 11:24 AM on September 18, 2005

Jon Mitchell, one of the tracks has polyphony.
posted by Jairus at 11:47 AM on September 18, 2005

Yes, but the number of bits in an audio file doesn't have anything to do with polyphony, as far as I know..you should still be able to mix together 1 bit waveforms by ANDing them together. Might sound a bit weird. I'm actually quite intrigued by the whole thing now, since I'm working on a DSP system at work. It'd be laughably easy to knock up a few 1 bit generators within a 16 bit framework, although totally useless for what we need it for. Hmmmm.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 4:14 PM on September 18, 2005