Dimitry Morozov, a.k.a. ::vtol::, is clearly a busy man. In the last year he’s made an 8-Bit photo gun and silk, a “cryptocurrency-tracking” musical instrument. His latest project, Ra, which comes just weeks after silk, is a sound object and synthesizer that uses a laser that scans irregularities on the surface of a pyrite disc and transforms the data to create sound.Morozov ran the laser-scanned sound through a reverb unit, various filters and modulators, and other effects programs to create the electronic sounds. The results are highly experimental, and sound—though this could just be our imaginations—almost subterranean in an early science fiction Journey to the Center of the Earth-kind of way.
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Pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, is found in quartz veins, metamorphic rock, sedimentary rock, and fossils. When subjected to intense compression between layers of shale (a sedimentary rock) over the course of 300 million years, the pyrite radiates outward to create the distinctive golden discs known as “pyrite suns” or “pyrite dollars”.Morozov was given a pyrite disc by a mineral seller in Boulder City, Nevada. When the seller heard about Morozov’s works, she asked him to do something with they pyrite disc, and refused to take payment for it.
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