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cowboy hats.
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I've got an ongoing project, reprogramming the firmware in these 1985 Epson LQ-500 printers to turn
them into musical instruments.
I originally just wanted to make a sort of homemade
mellotron,
but it's evolved into a much deeper project.
These printers (like all printers) have a computer inside that operates
all the motors and handles the parallel port, etc. The software
that drives that computer is all on an EPROM (a reprogrammable ROM chip.)
I remove the EPROM, erase it, and reprogram it with my own software that I've
developed by reverse engineering the printer and its computer.
This page covers my most recent iteration of the project which is currently
in the Nexus Texas Exhibition at the
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston through Ocotber 21st.
This work has been exhibited previously at
transitio mx in Mexico City,
The New Museum of Contemporary Art (ny),
Rum46 Gallery in Denmark
for the readme software art festival,
and some other places in ny.
You can read about previous versions of the printer software on these pages:
dot matrix 1.0 (w/mellotron)
dot matrix 2.0
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3.0 is an interactive installation piece.
The user presses
buttons on an attached control interface to play different notes. As the printer is played, it's also printing
a set of images that are programmed into the printer's EPROM with the software.
The printer creates sound from the print head firing pins against the paper and the
vibration of the stepper motor driving the print head back and forth.
To generate different notes, the software adjusts the frequency of the printing process.
Higher pitches tend to come from the firing of the pins against the paper,
and lower pitches come from the rattle of driving the stepper motor.
The external eight-button interface plugs into the printer's font cartridge port. Each button has an assigned pitch, and pressing
multiple buttons simultaneously activates the arpeggiator that quickly cycles through the notes you are holding down.
The software also has the ability to run without
the button interface, using the three buttons on the printer's front panel instead.
There is interaction between the images and music. The image
dithering patterns fluctuate depending on what notes are played, and the
music's volume and rhythmic patterns change depending on the pattern
in the current horizontal section of the image. The printer can store about
three pages of black and white images which print in order and then repeat.
I also have an alternate version of this printer that automatically plays programmed sequences and
is used in my music and live performance.
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New! Full page pigmented printout:
red_full.jpg (720K)
Here's a hi-rez scan of one of a printouts:
dot_matrix_printout.jpg (560K)
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version 3.0 audio clips
Played using the button interface:
printer_arp.mp3 (1.7MB)
Here's a small Quicktime movie that the Fluxfactory made when it was installed there:
movie
tree wave
This is a song by my band tree wave
that uses the dot matrix synth and a lot of other old computer gear.
sleep_by_tree_wave.mp3 (4.2M)
version 2.0 audio clips
These are three recordings of the printer using my new software that plays sequences
using the print head, paper roller motor, and error beeper:
printer1.mp3 (400K)
printer2.mp3 (400K)
printer3.mp3 (400K)
version 1.0 audio clips
This is a sample using both the print head and the tape/walkman
setup.This was recorded live with the printer head playing a sequence I wrote
and me playing the walkman/tape setup. The printer head was recorded with a microphone
and the walkman
was plugged into the mixer directly (in stereo.) I put a light reverb on it,
but if you want to hear a dry version listen
here.
dotmatrix_rev.mp3 (800K)
This is a sample of just the tape based part of the instrument recorded directly
from the walkman.
dotmatrix.mp3 (800K)
This is a sample of the first sequence I got playing on the printer head. The sample is
recorded from a microphone placed near the print head. The audio clip makes
it seem that the print head is rather quiet, but it's actually pretty loud.
matrixhead.mp3 (800K)
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