FauxAudioVideo

The permutator is a circuit bent video synthesizer made from a children’s television drawing pad. Its control interface consists of a breakout box with 22 point patch bay, 2 patchable momentary switches, and 1 patchable 8 pole rotary switch (above) - All of which are wired to the main video chip of the device (left).

While no bends are engaged the drawing pad functions as it was originally intended. Colors and line weights can be selected and drawings can be made directly to the television (or other output device). Fills, text, geometric shapes, and simple ‘clip art’ can be applied in real time. Engaging the bends distorts, skews, and pixelates the drawings into glitchy abstractions of the original drawing. Short term engaging and disengaging of the bends allows the user to redraw over the abstracted output to add additional colors and line.

A short video of the permutator’s video output can be seen below. In the clip my signature (in light blue on a white background) was the original (visible only briefly at the beginning of the video). The pattern changes and resulting pixelation is from an almost constant changing of the patches via the momentary switches and rotary switch controllers. All additional colors and shapes displayed are the result of mis-routed signals in the drawing pad’s internal video processing chip. The soundtrack on the video is a compilation of the output from a circuit bent casio sa-2.

The permutator is included in Nicolas Collins‘ book Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking (second edition). The video short also appears on the book’s accompanying DVD. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about ‘hardware hacking’ and the processes involved in creating electronic music from scratch. It contains a wealth of knowledge that is accessible to the beginner, as well as inspiring to the guru. The first edition of his book was (and continues to be) very influential and inspiring to me in the creation of my work.

Still images taken from video:

In the image above the ‘R’ from my signature (light blue) is visible.