For Light Night, Access Space commissioned Simon Blackmore to make a Player Printer.
Throughout the day Simon lead a workshop with the help of Access Space visitors, transformed an old printer into a music player.
It culminated in an atmospheric sound performance in Access Space for Light Night, where the sound was generated by people making holes in their own sheets of card.
Simon preparing for the workshop
Showing participants equipment
Introduction to the workshop
Simon explaining programmable chipboard
Simon explaining chip programming
Wiring breadboards for LEDS
Music player motor controller
James burning chip
Programming a chip
Printer mechanism becoming music player
Aligning the music card
Preparing a music card
First run of the music player
Bill Paton Light Night Organiser
Linking music player to computer
Preparing to hang player
Hanging the music player
Matt setting up Super Collider
Jake testing player
First performance of music player
Harriet's composition
Music program in progress
Feeding in new player card
Simon celebrating
What was the Player Printer about?
In a similar way to clockwork music boxes and early computers, the 'Player Printer' read punched sheets of paper. This data was sent to a computer running
an open source audio program called SuperCollider where it was turned into beautiful music.
Workshop participants explored all of the hardware hacking techniques to get this
piece to work. This included stripping down printers, and using some electronics to
get things going again. They programmed a computer chip to detect the light through the paper
and flash lights and send MIDI. And of course there was time spent cutting holes out of paper to
make the musical scores.
