Science or Art?

Reported May 2006

NEW YORK (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- It's a cross between an iPod and a record player. Here's one CD case you probably haven't seen before.

This man is using new technology to go back in time.

With a set of headphones plugged into a jack on the side of a CD jewel case, composer and artist Tristan Perich combines his love of music and computer science to create these personal music players with a twist!

"The sound generated on this device is much simpler in its digital representation than on a CD you'd buy in a CD store," Perich tells Ivanhoe.

That's because instead of a hi-fi MP3 player that contains up to 16 bits and generates a smooth sound, Perich uses just 1 bit in his device to create more raw-sounding music. His music is generated by a computer program he wrote that is stored on a computer chip. Simple electronics put it all together.

"The chip gets power from a battery," he says. "This is just an on-off switch, and this is a skip button that lets you go to the next track."

Perich's professor says he's bringing science and art together.

"It's much closer to a painting or something like that where the artist has literally kind of come in contact, literally, with the thing you've got in your hands," R. Luke DuBois, Ph.D., assistant professor of telecommunications at New York University, tells Ivanhoe.

The CD music cases are expected to sell for about $20 to $25 at avant-garde type record stores.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Tristan Perich
mail@tristanperich.com
http://www.onebitmusic.com

For more information on engineering inventions:

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
IEEE-USA
1828 L Street, N.W., Suite 1202
Washington, D.C. 20036-5104
(202) 785-0017
ieeeusa@ieee.org
http://www.ieee.org

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Listen up! Here's one CD case you probably haven't seen before ... A cross between an iPod and a record player.