Alex Baker: Other Interests Design
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In my spare time, I work on a variety of creative projects, including:


Circuit Bending

Circuit bending is the art of taking something electronic, and rewiring it to make it do something it wasn't intended to. Generally, there's no way to predict what is going to happen with a given connection, so there is a lot of experimentation, theory building, and unexpected results - making it extremely interesting. My first project was a Light Wars electronic game, but the circuit was too simple to be truly unpredicatable. The Talking Computron, on the other hand, continues to surprise me. I only made 5 new connections, but when activated in the right sequences at the right times, the resulting noises and displays can be pretty wild. I'm currently eying an old Yamaha keyboard I have lying around.




Assorted Digital Images

I''ve used Adobe Illustrator to create a variety of images, including a series of conceptual drawings of "office of the future" research concepts. I favor a simple, clean-lined style. And blue.

Phototheremin Theater



 This project started with an effort to build a proper theremin with Chad Wasser, which failed catastrophically in the 11th hour of construction. Later we built a series of 6 phototheremins, which create a square wave tone based on the light they recieve (as opposed to a sine wave tone based on disruptions of magnetic fields).

This change lead to a novel performance concept. The Hatebox was a structure built to house the 6 phototheremins and enble them to be played from the outside using a variety of light sources. The "theater" was 6 feet tall, and equiped with 2 curtains, 2 strobe lights, a siren, a shimmering party light, a ceiling hole for two hanging additional lights, 2 holes for flashlight access and a trapdoor in the "floor" of the main performance area for making set changes, as well as playing the theremins up-close with a headlamp.

A 10 minute interpretation of the myth of Prometheus and Pandora, consisting only of light and the resulting square wave noise, was performed in a darkened room by Chad and myself approximately 20 times at the 2005 Long Beach Soundwalk, leading to an extended performance later that year at the Machine Project gallery in Los Angeles.




NES Art

I've done a lot of digital art of various kinds over the years, but lately my focus is on pictures that leverage imagery from the original Nintendo Entertainment System. This is a rich vein of cultural capital for my generation, and there are a wide variety of ways it can be considered. Much more can be found at www.questionblock.com.




HTML to Midi

I've created a Java applet that automtically and deterministically converts an HTML document into a midi song, ignoring the content of page, but using the structure of its nested tags to create layers of melody. Certain types of tags trigger beat drops, chord changes, and solo sections, while certain characteristics of the code shape the song's tone, instrument set and tempo. Unfortunatley, the program is not currently availible online, but these are several songs that it created.

- www,yahoo.com (as of 3/26/05 at 19:21)
- www.evilmusic.com`(as of 3/26/05 at 18:41)
- www.google.com (as of 3/26/05 at 17:56)
- www.pitchforkmedia.com (as of 3/26/05 at 17:43) (check out the breakdown at 2:30 and the contemplative bit at 3:10)




Assorted Objects


I've made a variety of other stuff, including a handmade katamari, a metal bracket pig mask and the cacaphonous acid rain stick.



Board Game Design

Finally, I have an avid interest in board games, and have several prototypes in the works, though nothing quite ready for prime time just yet. I have a particular interest in cooperative games, asymetrical games, and elegant interaction mechanisms (though ideally something not quite so sterile as Knizia's games, for example).