Making a musical found-sound collage is hardly rare (The Books are kings of it), but when it’s all noises from ancient PCs in the UK’s National Museum of Computing, it becomes our business. Musician Pixelh8 was inspired by these humongous machines and the variety of noises they make, and is putting on a series of shows with the music he’s put together from them.
There’s lots more info here for the curious. It’s not your momma’s chiptunes, so be ready for some abrasive stuff. Not as crazy as Oval but still.
There was actually a contest a while back to make music out of the sounds of dying hard drives. Interesting results, as you might expect.
[via the Register]
That’s a strange arrangement, but digital. In 1961, the first computers we had were GE analog kits that had 3 potentiometers, a tone generator, and headphones. We listened to the tone generator sing through the headphones, then dialed the pots until the tone was nulled out, reading off the answer on the faceplate.