This uniPet turned out really great. I made it for my friend Phil “Silverman” Knight of The Legendary Pink Dots. I made an Opera Daisy for The Dots some years before (They used it on Alchemical Playschool), but Edward Ka-Spel, Phil’s cohort in LPD, claimed it as his own, conversing with it late into the long Nijmegen nights, so I kept threatening to make a gadget for Phil also. After a doing keyboard bend that ended up being far too cantankerous to give to him, I built this uniPet for him instead. He calls it “The Artifact.”
I enclosed the uniPet in a previously white makeup case from the 60’s, painted the case black, stenciled dots onto it and made a custom luggage tag. I told Phil not to treat the case preciously but throw it into the mix with the rest of his road gear as the black will scratch off over time to reveal the white case below, giving the case an accelerated aged look.
The round thing at the bottom of the pic is a color changing LED light (also patinated) to be used as an optical sequencer on the optical resistor.
The beauty of this particular series of gadgets is that the electronic basis is an AM radio. Depending on where the gadget is played the sounds are entirely different. I’ve played my uniPet 01 in the mountains and have gotten beautiful pulsating soundscapes which are entirely different than the sounds I get when I am at home in Orange County, CA or in the Bay Area. I can’t wait to hear the sounds Phil gets in Nimegen, Holland, or in other European locales. (hint hint, Phil…sounds please…)
I spent lots of time with the design, engineering and patina finishing of this uniPet.
The base is made from an old lamp and a 60’s microphone holder with USB flexible lights used as cable runs to service the optical resistor behind the red LED cover. The silver ring between the lamp base and mic holder is the platter locking ring from inside a hard drive.
For human contact resistance points I used 2 punk rock spikes on the bottom of the ball radio and a handle from an old ice bucket on the top. The leathery trim under the punk rock spikes was cut from an old rotting trunk I had in my garage.
The rust patina turned out really great. Lots of layers and rough sanding in-between. I also learned the trick of spraying water onto the layers, letting dry, then re-applying patina agents. This gives it a really great left-out-in-the-weather rusted look.
This one also has a UV LED in the dial area which works like a magic eye as in old radio sets, glowing brighter with stronger signal and pulsing with audio volume changes.
Here I just presented uniPet 03 to Phil at Cafe Du Nord, 11/14/10, The Legendary Pink Dots’ 30th Anniversary Tour! He was floored! He has said that he really loves this gadget, takes it on tour with him throughout Europe (The Dots tour quite a bit) but is apprehensive of travelling by plane with it. Security people tend to get a little freaked out over circuit bent gadgetry. I travel by plane quite a bit too with circuit bent gadgetry and its always interesting to see the looks on the TSA workers faces when I show them my gear.
Phil says of uniPet 03: “We all name our house pets and my uniPet I’ve named “The Artifact”……because it looks like something that could be off-world technology, and what emits from its bended circuits between the radio stations can sound rather spectral and rather special too (btw: an early Silverman cd release bore the name “Spectral Artifact”).
“Artifact’s range of use is huge, I’ve found. On it’s own with no processing it can be as brutal as a brick; sweeping the edges of station frequencies through simple delay/reverb will have you sounding like your favourite space rock band. The light sensor brings into play trance possibilities. Even moving your hands close to Artifact’s body will subtly change the sound.
Altogether a most wonderful and versatile noisemaker.”
Thanks, Phil.
Big City Orchestra (the art/anti-art noise group I’m involved with) opened up for the Dots, which we tend to do whenever they are in the Bay Area.
Cafe Du Nord San Francisco Nov 19, 2010. Randy Wentzel short video
Source: http://techdweeb.com/uniPet03.html
this is a blog that i’ve wanted to write for ages.
This version of the Opera Daisy was created especially for The Legendary Pink Dots. They used The Daisy on their EP Alchemical Playschool.
I had mapped out the board already, and the new gadget would have basically the same functionality as the other Opera Daisy (2 optical resistors sewn onto the leaves to control the issuing noise optical-theremin-style) with some minor interface changes, so doing the electronix was the easy part. The paint job was fairly complex and took the most time. I decided to go with a black and white theme, with a few pink dot accents here and there: pink around the main toggle switch (which is: center mute, up and down make noise, each slightly different, the down adding a bit of distortion to the sound), and pink at the center of the flowers. Each flower had to be taken apart and individually painted, as well as the stripes on the stems. See here for some construction shots.