Its always fun to see brilliant tinkerers repurposing old devices. To follow up on Daniella’s Neatdesk Desktop Scanner review earlier today, here’s something a bit unorthodox you can do with a digital scanner: make it sing.
Vimeo user PURETONE has shown us just how cool old computer parts can be by attaching an HP Scanjet 3P to a Linux box and feeding it commands to move the scan head at the proper velocity to create certain tones. These tones, after being mixed with some old hard drives for percussion and a pair of oscilloscopes for musical accompaniment, are then synchronized to play a chilling digital rendition of “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals.
The Animals House of the Rising Sun Old School Computer Remix on Vimeo.
Honestly, watching the hard drive heads smack themselves for the bass drum and cymbals makes me cringe. I’ve heard that noise come out of old computers and it never meant something good. However, watching that scanner play the vocals is nothing short of amazing. The only thing that could have made this any more epic would have been to team up with the folks behind the floppy drive Imperial March.
In my opinion, videos like this are why the internet exists.
Comments are closed.