Forum - Week 1 - Victorian Synth

This is late as I had trouble uploading the video.

This week's forum was quite stimulating to me, and not just the battery-licking incidences. I had never thought of such a thing as the Victorian Synth (if can even be denoted a synthesiser) so it was great fun experimenting with analogue sound creation. In fact, I wonder if it technically "digital" sound, as it is produced using on and off cycles. Semantics aside, I built an automated tapping machine (= FUN!), where the + of a battery is connected to the + of a speaker, and the - of the speaker is connected to a piece of aluminium covering the front of the speaker. When the - of the battery comes in contact with the aluminium (still with me?) the speaker pushes out, moving the aluminium. I set this up so when the speaker pushes the aluminium, the - of the battery is disconnected from the circuit, and thus the speaker and aluminium move back, allowing the - of the battery to reconnect. This creates a loop, the speed of which depends on the amount of pressure applied on the aluminium from the object carrying the - battery charge. While I was doing this, Will created 'Electric Popcorn' with a similar premise to mine, however the completion of the loop depended on the popcorn (little balls of aluminium) allowing a constant flow to the outer aluminium 'bowl'. On Wednesday Will and I got back together to create a symbiotic amalgamation of our ideas, and included a third which was a speaker on its side that would push pieces of 'popcorn' up a slope, which would then slide back down to be pushed back up again. Raucous fun! Dave was enthralled. Will's synth ran off of its own battery, however we set his up so the continued popping of his popcorn would rely on my tap-tap-tapping. I never thought I'd have to say a sentence like that. Experience. The difference.

Here's the amalgamation.
~VSynth.MP4 930KB~

Here's Will's popcorn in the dark, so you can see the sparks.
~ElecPop.MP4 123KB~