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Performance Technology Projects

The Projects

The projects and tasks are designed to help you through the various courses and materials that you'll have to deal with, and also to provide an active and practical element to what could otherwise become a rather dry and technical exercise. Tasks are small exercises - you may be asked to complete one or two per week. Projects are larger and carry a higher percentage of the mark. We will undertake two, three, four or more projects and tasks. The final project is usually an individual choice project, and will be worth significantly more than the others in terms of percentages in your portfolio. We will usually try to set aside a time to perform the projects in a public setting.

Currently Available Projects

  1. Light-Theremin.php
    Control a sound making chip with light.

  2. Mapping2.php


  3. Pickup.php
    Make Your Own Pickup

  4. Hack-the-Clock.php
    Manipulate your toy/device's clock chip.

  5. Resistors.php
    Investigate the use and construction of resistors and their central role in hardware hacking.

  6. Cable.php
    Make a useful cable.

  7. Contact_Mike.php
    Make your own contact mike for a few pence...

  8. Piezo-Driver.php
    Use a piezo disc as a driver.

  9. Air-Mike.php
    From any number of places one can buy high quality 'electret condenser microphone' elements. These are the basic building blocks of recording mics.

  10. Boxing.php
    Box your toy/device.

  11. Synthesis.php
    This circuit is based on the misuse of an IC never intended for making sound.

  12. Laying-of-Hands.php
    Manipulate and hack your toy/device.

  13. Mapping.php



  14. Soldering.php
    "Repeat the process until perfect."

  15. Tape-Head.php
    A tape recorder works by translating audio signals into a fluctuating electromagnetic field - essentially flipping the north-south orientation of a magnet in response to the audio signal's wobbling between its plus and minus boltage extremes. This flipping magnet is the 'tape head', the small metal blob you can see inside a cassette player or answering machine. The tape head's undulating magnetism in turn aligns tiny magnetic domains in the iron-like powder covering one surface of the recording tape, as if they were tiny compass needles. As the tape is played back the process is reversed. Similar to a record groove and needle, or a set of digital on/off switches.

  16. Laying-and-Hacking.php
    Manipulate and hack your toy/device.

  17. 555_Touch.php



  18. Clock-Tickling.php
    Hacking is like hot-rodding your car: you don't need to be able to build a care from scratch to swap in a 5-barrel carburetor, but it helps to know what a carburetor looks like before you get too creative with the wrench. We'll use a simple but very useful hack as a way to learn how to identify basic electronic components and introduce some electronic axioms.

  19. Circuit-Sniff.php
    Pick up electrical activity in the air around you...

  20. Electret_Mike.php
    Make your own microphone, (based on chapter 9 of Handmade Electronic Music, Nicolas Collins).

  21. Amplify.php
    Connect your toy/device to a loudspeaker.

  22. Sudomini.php
    Make a Sudomini - based on the invention by John Richards