DIY Bionoise is an instrument in which the performer can generate sound and control noise, deriving from their own body. The instrument DIY Bionoise contains a circuit that can measure the bioelectricity from living beings to create bionoise. Which can be controlled by tactile sense. As a result, this instrument has two functions; a modular synthesizer with an eight-step sequencer and a bionoise controlled mode. DIY Bionoise is developed from my previous work "Sonomatter" which explored the transformation of bioelectrical energy from soil bacteria to sound. Its design has been based on electronic music devices like modular synthesisers and step sequencers as well as devices emerging from the DIY culture. The instrument can easily be customised by changing electronic parts with different values such as capacitors and sensors. And creates systems to a musical instrument and adding a tactile element to interact with bioelectricity from the human body.

DIY Bionoise is an instrument in which the performer can generate sound and control noise, deriving from their own body. The instrument DIY Bionoise contains a circuit that can measure the bioelectricity from living beings to create bionoise which can be controlled by tactile sense. This instrument has two functions -- a modular synthesizer with an eight-step sequencer and a bionoise controlled mode. DIY Bionoise is developed from my previous work Sonomatter (https://ahn.hotglue.me/sonomatter) which explored the transformation of bioelectrical energy from soil bacteria to sound. Its design has been based on electronic music devices like modular synthesisers and step sequencers as well as devices emerging from the DIY culture. The instrument can easily be customised by changing different values of electronic parts such as capacitors and sensors. And creates systems to a musical instrument and adding a tactile element to interact with bioelectricity from the human body.

The technical implementation of DIY Bionoise is developed from a customized circuit called BCO (Bioelectricity-Controlled-Oscillator) module, which uses bioelectricity as CV (Control Voltage) to operate an oscillator. BCO has an instrumentation amplifier chip for amplifying bioelectricity, and Hex Schmitt oscillator chip (CD 40106) to make sound. In this work, I want to reformulate this BCO module to be used with bioelectricity from human tactile sense, and to mingle with DIY fun. With this instrument, performer can choose between modular synthesizer mode and bionoise mode. In the noise mode, when the performer touches a touchpad, their bioelectricity is feeding to the circuit therefore the performer can control there own bionoise. Technically, a perfermor’s electrical energy is interrupting the sound of oscillator. For the synthesizer mode, I added an 8 step sequencer, made of a CD 4040(14 stage binary counter) and a CD 4051(8 channel multiflexer) to make variable sound. The bioelectrical signal from a performer is amplified by an instrumentation amplifier and routed to an oscillator. The oscillator is connected to a counter and a multiplexer, so that the sound of pitch and duration can be controlled by customisable knobs. For the live performance, I add a visual element by connecting a custom designed video synthesizer from a workshop by Wolfgang Spahn (https://paperpcb.dernulleffekt.de/doku.php?id=vga_synthesizer:vga_main), so the audio signal is visualized, and the audience can watch how the performer can customize the instrument in real-time.

Instrument size: 19cm x 38cm x 8cm (h) Weight: approx. 1kg Audio output: Stereo