ExtremeFreeStyleHacking.class
Project2.bin

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PROJECT1.html                     1980Ko
PICTURES/                            DIR
purpose.txt                          4Ko

purpose.txt
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This was a hack and a half for me. I am normally extraordinarily 
high-tech, very polished when it comes to what I do and what I 
enjoy. This was the first time that I had ever done things like 
use a soldering iron or even a Dremel tool. 

The idea came to me while I was playing Guitar Hero II. I wanted
to create a true instrument from electronics, a meld of 
videogaming and music that many software developers try to create,
but seem to fall short on. Even with Guitar Hero, my personal
favorite, you are limited to what was pre-programmed to be
allowed. With circuit bending, though, the bender is literally
going beyond what was originally there and creating something new.

I teamed up with Saturday to help me, as I had never circuit bent
before. He and I thought about fusing video games and music more
literally, taking an old Atari 2600 console and fusing it with a
children's keyboard. To do this, we tapped into the controller
ports on the Atari as well as the switches on the main board. For
a more advanced project, we originally wanted to tap into the
video board and output video based on the sound, but this would
take extensive programming on a dead system, interfacing with
ROM interfaces that may or may not work anymore. *So,* that was
out of the question.

At any rate, for about $50 and a lost weekend, we created two 
unique instruments and broke the bonds of convention by creating
a hardware solution to the videogame/music remix instead of the 
more traditional software solution. 
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