YouTube Uploaded by MediaArtTube on Mar 13, 2011
"The Modular Music Box consists of several interconnected, plug-and-play devices that collectively reproduce the functionality of the familiar 19th century clockwork musical instrument.
At the heart of the piece is a custom-made electro-magnetic rotary sequencer. Melodies are stored on a series of interchangeable, acrylic, 10" disks embedded with small magnets arranged in a regular circular grid. In the same way vinyl records are located on a turntable these disks are centered on a spindle and rotate over a 'play head' made up of a line of magnetic field sensors -- effectively replicating but superseding the set of pins on the revolving cylinder that pluck the tuned teeth of a steel comb in the traditional device. Additional units are 'daisy-chained' to each other via single cables and include a self contained and controllable sound source (to hear and effect the musical output) and an animated representation of a dancing ballerina automaton -- realised as a modern-day interpretation of the praxinoscope (the successor to the zoetrope -- the popular visual parlour toy of its era -- but which improved on it by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors).
Monomatic : Nick Rothwell and Lewis Sykes
http://www.monomatic.net/"