Many years ago, Suss Müsik purchased cabinet lighting from the local IKEA. Although the fixtures were functional and attractive, they were also dangerous. Halogen bulbs can become very hot, and at least one unit needed to be removed when evidence of charring appeared on the surrounding wall surface.
Over time, these hazardous lamps were replaced with safer LED “puck” lighting fixtures. It seemed a shame to simply discard the old units, however. The housing was constructed of a strong but soft metal, most likely stainless steel, and the form factor resembled the design of a white Korg Nano or M-VAVE controller. Maybe something could be done with these leftover parts.
After a few prototypes, Suss Müsik is happy to declare that these former lighting fixtures have found new life as resistive-optical oscillation and granular synthesis controllers. “Resistive-optical” is merely a fancy term to mean that the digital input is controlled by the brightness of an LED placed inside a reflective cone. That data is then passed to another device to generate sound.
There are three pieces in total. Two of them have been paired with a custom-built volume/panning console and a thin-film transistor (TFT) touchscreen sample trigger to comprise a tabletop setup. Perhaps some live performances will come out of this instrumental arrangement.
