Little Smart Super Sound Works : Reconstruction
Theory
The Little Smart Super Sound Works was designed to help teach kids about sounds and introduce them to music making. The entire method of interaction with this small keyboard is through listening. I wanted to fundamentally change this method of interaction with the keyboard. I chose to create a visualization system that would take the sound outputs and recreate them as video. None of the internal workings of the keyboard would be changed except its output.
This transformed the keyboard from an audio toy to a visual toy. It changed the most basic way that we receive feedback from the keyboard, and it allows us to examine the output of its inner workings in a very different way. Instead of listening to how the sound waves interact to form patterns that we recognize as instruments: a dog, a cat, a trumpet. We see these recognizable sounds as unrecognizable shapes and shifting patterns.
Application
In order to bring this modification about I had to combine the keyboard with something that could produce visuals. In this case I used a small TV. A television operates by aiming an electron gun at a fluorescent screen. When the electrons strike the screen light is emitted. This beam is deflected by electromagnets in precisely the right pattern to create an image. There are two deflection coils. One deflects the electron gun vertically and the other horizontally. In order to create the waveform image on the screen I have replaced the regular signal to the deflection coil with an audio signal. This causes the deflection coil to move according to the waveform of sound that is fed to it which results in the image on the screen.
The television is a JVC TM-131SU. It is a small 13 inch television that I purchased just for this project. Here you can see the unmodified insides of the TV. The prominent 4 colorful cables control the deflection coils and were cut and rewired to a simple patchbay I created on the side of the TV so that I could control all the inputs.
Modification was simple. I cut the cables, made extensions that could be disconnected if necessary, and wired them all to the patchbay. I also created a few cables to control the patchbay.
It was then necessary to modify the keyboard of course to output its sound in such a manner that I could get it to the TV. I chose to use RCA connectors because of their popularity in the audio-visual market and this allows the Little Smart Super Sound Works to be plugged into amplifiers. All I did was disconnect the speakers and soldered those wires to the connectors on the RCA jacks.
The only problem I came upon in my modifications is that the oscilloscope only works vertically. I am unsure why this is, but I cannot seem to get the same effect if the patch cables are switched to use the vertical deflection coil instead of the horizontal deflection coil. However, I am extremely satisfied with this project. I was able to work with electronics in a way that I had never been able to do. The TV, now basic oscilloscope, can take any kind of audio input because again I used RCA inputs in my cabling. I have been able to successfully hook up my iPod to the TV with no problems.
