circuit bent nes makes a fun video synthesizer

September 8th, 2009 comments (1) stumble it! digg it! by: technabob

What happens when you splay open the guts of a classic NES console, and wire up a bunch of knobs, buttons and a patch panel? This, of course.

nes_circuit_bending

Not to be outdone by the classic Atari Video Music synth, Pete Edwards of Casper Electronics put together this highly modded Nintendo Entertainment System capable of cranking out a wide variety of hypnotic and just plain weird video patterns.

circuit_bent_nes

By adding a patch bay and connecting them to various locations on the video processing chips, the images on screen can be modified by interconnecting the patch points or by feeding in external signals.

nes_circuit_bent_interior

Here’s a video of the circuit bent NES being controlled by signals from Pete’s modular synth:

You can also achieve similar effects from your NES by smashing it with a hammer while plugged in – for at least 10 seconds. Check out the complete worklog here.

[via Make:]

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