If you stop for a moment at the supermarket, stop what you are doing, concentrate and tune your ears, you will be able to hear that sound that comes from the boxes and that sounds every time a barcode is read to find out its price. In fact, with so many code readers playing at the same time, a curious melody is formed that seems to be taken from some electronic music album from the 70s or 80s.
For the project Electronicos Fantasticos! This is not nonsense and they believe that real music can be made based on the barcode system that all those items that can be found on the shelves of large supermarkets carry.
As each pattern in the code is scanned, it sends a signal to its audio component , emitting its corresponding sound wave. The black and white stripes would be capable of producing a wide range of rhythms and tones. For its ‘interpretation’ the group proposes two instruments. The first of this is the Barcoder , which would be the classic barcode reader ‘gun’.
In addition, they have created another contraption called ‘Barcodress’, a dress covered in patterns that reproduces if the person wearing it moves in front of a scanner.
However, these two tools could be just the beginning. From Fantastic Electronics! Their objective is to create a complete orchestra of instruments of this type based on the reading and musicalization of bar codes.
Wada, the ‘circular economist’ of music
32-year-old Japanese musician and artist Eli Wada is the man behind the curtain of Electronicos Fantasticos! This project was launched in February 2015 in order to give a second life to all those electronic devices that had become useless or obsolete.
After a trial and error process, Wada began collaborating with a team of engineers to create multiple “ home appliances turned into musical instruments ”. Since then they have experimented with all kinds of things: from fans to televisions.
The artist, champion of the circular economy and “native electromagnetic music” is the inventor of several curious instruments , such as a harp made with an electric fan, the Terelele, the Fantar or the CRT-TV Gamelan.
Wada’s first steps came in 2009, when he founded the Open Reel Ensemble group, which handled and played cassette recorders.
The guitar with Lego, another instrument that you will not find in the conservatory
This is just a sample of how you can make music with unusual channels or instruments , but it is not the only one. A few weeks ago we were talking about how a Turkish musician and youtuber, Tolhagan Coğulu, built a guitar fretboard with Lego blocks and other printed materials using a 3D printer.
For the work he needed the help of his son (a great fan of Lego constructions) and his cat, 2 years of work and multiple pieces. After so much effort, he managed to make his invention fully operational.
