Technology
Mix Fix
Dystopian Bodies
by Michael Magee
In past Balkan Beats issues we’ve looked at transportation technologies and the more and more feasible colonisation of Mars, but soon, sci-fi tech will be finding its way closer to home; into our own flesh. About a year ago, a video surfaced on youtube
of an electronic music producer with a prosthetic arm. While having a prosthetic may not be as bad for a synthesizer player as it is for a guitarist or a pianist, turning the small knobs and dealing with the abundance of cables is problematic at best. Understanding that his prosthesis functions by receiving electrical signals from his muscles while the synthesizers in a similar way to how synthesizers receive electrical signals to control them, Bertolt Meyer got to work to see how he could combine the two. By amplifying the electrical signals emitted from his muscles with a specially constructed DIY prototype fitted in place of the prosthetic hand, Bertolt can then control aspects of his synthesizer (such as the pitch of the tone it produces) simply by thinking about moving his hand a certain way.
In fact, a similar effect can be achieved with an EEG (electroencephalogram) device, which picks up faint electrical signals from the scalp. Another Youtube user, “The Apples in Stereo,” uses a commercially available EEG connected to a synthesizer to change the pitch with the
intensity of his thoughts by going from “totally, like, zen” to a more mentally aroused state in order to make the synth tone go high or low.
The Age of the Cyborg
Cyborg-like
prosthetics represent the good side of innovation, although it has its own downfalls and points to improve on. Less modern and advanced prosthetics can function on a lever-like system where, for example, a mechanism for moving the prosthetic is attached to the opposite shoulder, requiring the user to perform awkward hunching movements to operate the hand. Nowadays, however, there are prosthetics available with individually moving fingers attached to a hand that can turn 360
BM - Bertolt Meyer with his synthesizer prosthesis.
© Bertolt Meyer, youtube.com
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