Though housed in a CD jewel case like his first circuit album (1-Bit Music 2004-05), Tristan Perich's1-Bit Symphony is not a recording in the traditional sense; it literally "performs" its music live when turned on. A complete electronic circuit—programmed by the artist and assembled by hand—plays the music through a headphone jack mounted into the case.
A return to the format of Perich's lauded “1-Bit Music” (described by the Village Voice as "technology and aesthetic rolled into one"), 1-Bit Symphony further reduces the hardware involved while simultaneously expanding its musical ideas. 1-Bit Symphony utilizes on and off electrical pulses, synthesized by assembly code and routed from microchip to speaker, to manifest data as sound. In artistic terms, the device treats electricity as a sonic medium, making an intimate connection between the materiality of hardware and the abstract logic of software.
1-Bit Symphony is $29 from Cantaloupe Store (now shipping). The signed/numbered Artist Edition is limited to 50 pieces and includes a silkscreen print of the microcontroller source code and schematic.
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