Databending - Creating and Listening to RTF Files

Last week Boing Boing had an interesting post about using EXE files to create found audio clips. The basic idea is to use an audio editing program such as Audacity to open and listen to raw data files as audio files. The process is called databending and has been around a good many years (I know, I'm always late to the party). Anyway, I played around with this a bit, randomly selecting program files from our computer at home to see what kind of audio they would generate. Uncompressed files seem to work the best since there's more data to "read", although shorter files can be copied & strung together to create repeating noise patterns. Compressed files (such as .jpgs) seem to yield mostly static.

I thought about this over the weekend and wondered if you could have some measure of control, based on the makeup of the original data file. I played around with this a bit more using MS Works word processor to create & export various file types (DOC, DOCX, RTF, TXT, HTML) and open them as audio files. I found that RTF (Rich Text Format) files work great because they contain a lot of data, especially if you use the paint function to draw something into your file (files that only contain text are still pretty small). Also, adding clip art can make for some interesting audio. The only problem with the audio from RTF files is a constant high frequency squeal, which can be reduced/eliminated using Audacity's noise removal feature.

So.... here's an example:

A four-page document containing clip art pictures of accordions and keyboards, saved and exported as an RTF file.

The resulting audio file with removal of high frequency squeal, otherwise unaltered and exported as an mp3 file:

Oddly, the same clip art document minus the two brown keyboards pictures yielded the same audio pattern, but at a higher pitch.

Circuit Bent Sing-A-Long Barbie Karaoke Tape Recorder

My plans for a productive 3-day weekend devoted solely to art-making were dashed by some charitable person who donated a Barbie Karaoke tape recorder to the local Goodwill. Not too long ago I read about circuit bending one of these on Peter Edwards fantastic Casper Electronics site, and I've been on the lookout for one ever since. After buying a stack of fresh batteries and looking over the bending schematics I started poking around the main circuit board and identified a bunch of bend points, mostly around the echo circuit. The Barbie Karaoke has a cheap "echo" feature that when bent creates strange and wonderful noise which are generated once you turn the tape player on. After finding about 20 different bend points I decided to build a separate panel on which to mount the the various components, similar to what I did with the Caisotone. The Karaoke machine would be attached to the top of the panel with the wiring running through holes drilled in the bottom, then soldered to the various components inside the panel. Each wire attached to a bend point on the circuit board was soldered to one of twenty banana jacks, which can then be connected by lead wires to a series of potentiometers. I also added a pitch adjustment (located towards the back of the panel, on the left) and both an input and output jack - another cool thing about the Barbie Karaoke is it has two input lines (one for an audio source like a CD player, and the other for a microphone) so you can plug other stuff into it, such as other Barbie Karaokes.

Some photos:

Partially wired panel with banana jacks, switches, and potentiometers.
Each pot can be turn on & off with it's own switch.

View of circuit board back in place with bend points all soldered up & wires fed through holes drilled in the bottom of the karaoke. The bundled wires at the top of the photo are all soldered to points on the echo chip.

View of bottom of completed panel.
The Barbie Karaoke is attached to the top of the panel with a single screw.

Finished!

Finished view with lead wires plugged into various bend points.

I'm really pleased with how this piece turned out. There are a few other mods you can do, such as adding a variable speed controller for the tape player that involves replacing some circuitry - maybe next time. For now I'm happy to experiment with this as-is: