Fellow Internet Caretaker Miss Cellania directs us to the latest project by Linus ร
kesson (see previously here and here) with eight-bit modified accordion made with two Commodore 64s and a bellows made out of floppy disks. We suspect that ร
kesson’s next ingenious instrument will be C64 bagpipes after this exercise and master-class. More at the links above.
Saturday, 5 November 2022
the commodordion (10. 273)
Thursday, 3 November 2022
7x7 (10. 269)
memorymoog: Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo shares his synthesizer collection
erry & merry: the portfolio illustrator Walter Schnackenberg whose subject and style was informed by Toulouse-Lautec’s Parisian cabarets

star-bellied sneech: verification for sale
astronomicum caesareum: an exploration of an intricate, antique tome commissioned to prognosticate one’s destiny
waverly abbey: an ancient yew in Surrey is accorded the UK Tree of the Year title
ondioline: a demonstration of this precursor to the synthesizer from Jean-Jacques Perry—via Pasa Bon!
Tuesday, 13 September 2022
fiftyshapes ltd (10. 130)
Incorporated on this day in 1967, the Beatles’ Apple Electronics venture was headed by a television repair technician named Yannis Alexis Madras, whom had been discovered by John Lennon two years prior after seeing a selection of his Nothing Boxes (plastic housing with blinking lights) at a London Gallery. Given the moniker “Magic Alex,” he reputedly pitched a series of increasingly fantastical (but ones we’d like to see) inventions including a seventy-two track tape machine, an air-buffer to prevent car accidents, replacing Ringo’s drums with a sonic force field, a wallpaper sound-system, invisibility paint and an artificial sun—none of which unfortunately materialised.

Monday, 5 September 2022
7x7 (10. 110)
ch-ch-ch-chia: University of Virginia research team 3D prints living walls and roofs
the road to rhรปn: more interactive LOTR maps to explore—see previously

doctor doolittle: translating non-human animal vocalisations into language with artificial intelligence
the hunt for the golden walnut brain of ronald reagan: an adventure from John Hoare (previously)—via Things Magazine
lady woman: a sample track from Boris Midney’s reimagining of 1979 “Evita” as a disco opera
reefer madness: researchers make an advance in the race to save Caribbean coral, whose health also affects hurricane intensity
catagories: ๐ช, ๐ฑ, ๐, ๐ถ, ๐บ, ๐บ, ๐ช, architecture, the Caribbean, Tolkien
Wednesday, 17 August 2022
i let the music speak (10. 067)
Released as a record album at the end of November 1981 and the groups last studio album for four decades until their 2021 reunion, ABBA’s The Visitors was among the first to be digitally mixed and recorded and on this day in 1982 became among the first to be pressed and issued in CD format (Polygram Records also put out a disk of Chopin waltzes and Phillips would be releasing a tranche of some fifty artists including Billy Joel available in stores in the autumn). Despite personal conflicts that strained their professional relationship and musical partnership, this final collaboration was a success, cathartic and critically well received. Still getting accustomed to the new technology, the sound engineers thought the recording to be too clean and missed notes and beats would be harder to overlook.
Sunday, 14 August 2022
everybody wants to rule the tuba (10. 060)
Monday, 20 June 2022
glastonbury fayre
The free four-day concert hosted in Pilton—the second Glastonbury festival, opened on this day in 1971 with the venue of a special Pyramid Stage, a one-tenth scale model of the one at Giza constructed of sheet metal and positioned over a water source discovered with dousing and was documented by filmmakers Nicolas Roeg and David Puttnam—released the following May. Performances included numbers by Melanie, David Bowie, Traffic, Fairport Convention, Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, Mighty Baby and Hawkwind.
Saturday, 4 June 2022
7x7
2slgbtqia+: a calendar of Native American and First Nations’ Pride events—the 2S is for “Two-Spirits”
about the damn end: DJ Cummerbund (previously) mixes Lizzo and Linkin Park—via Waxy
sacred modernity: McGregor Smith explores Europe’s superlative post-war churches—via Things magazinewhy ernest saves christmas: wholly machine-generated articles on any number of topics—the logorrhoea of infinite neural networks producing infinite copy, via Web Curios
signature sound: a 1957 musical horoscope album (see also here and here) orchestrated by Hal Mooney
the endangered california bumbletrout: court declares bees are fish to afford them better defence under the state’s species protection act
night of a thousand judys: a tribute concert for charity on what would have been Garland’s one-hundredth birthday
catagories: ♏️, ✝️, ๐, ๐ถ, ๐ณ️๐, ๐, ๐, ๐ค, architecture
Friday, 4 March 2022
that’s how the cookie crumbles
Via Web Curios we learn about a clever browser extension (along with a suite of similar incognito tools) sponsored by UNESCO that is designed to reveal the subjectivity of one’s tailored and idiosyncratic experience online by inviting one to adopt a range of personae that influences the direction and tone of one’s directed advertising and anticipation in inscrutable ways (see also) that the user would have no way of knowing was markedly different than the underpinnings presented to someone else. While we may not be able to exactly remove the blinders, we can at least perhaps be attuned to different pitches, perspectives.
Tuesday, 1 March 2022
6x6
serenade: French illustrator Gaspard portrays musicians harmonising with feathered friends in lush settings
bon temps roulez, mes amis: New Orleans celebrates its first full-scale Marti Gras in two years
donzig: a rather clever mashup of Donna Summers and Danzig’s cover of The Doors’ Mother
complications: a clock face engineered to make telling the time a challenge—see also
displaced persons: a historical pamphlet on the situation in Ukraine following World War II
aux in: a superlative collection of boom-boxes from Japan
Sunday, 6 February 2022
dass modell / computerliebe
The first West German act to chart in the UK in the latter half of the twentieth century, the double single (A-side and B-side) from Kraftwerk (see previously here, here, here and here) first rose to number one on this day in 1982 and held its place for twenty-one weeks. This success led to the group’s first concert tour. From their eighth, bi-lingual studio album Computerwelt, the thematic tracks dealt with the effects of technology and computers on society, the songs debuted in May of the previous year with the likes of “Pocket Calculator,” “It’s More Fun to Compute” and “Heimcomputer.”
Saturday, 5 February 2022
golden nose slim (knows where you’ve been)
On this day in 1972, T·Rex again topped UK charts—the third out of four do reach these heights in a run comparable to Beatlemania and first-wave British Invasion—with their single “Telegram Sam,” with a similar beat and instrumentation as their previous hit “Bang a Gong [Get It On],” for a run of two weeks. The glam rock group headed by Marc Bolan (off their seventh album, The Slider, since they first got together as Tyrannosaurus Rex in 1967) popularised the term “main man” and was ostensibly about being loyal to one’s dealer.
Sunday, 2 January 2022
7x7
2020—too…: the moment it hits you
the colours of motion: spectral analysis of contemporary film classics
forefather time: on the trial of the masqueraded, marauding Jukace that herald the New Year for one Polish city
visual vernacular: Jayme Odgers—one of the montage artists behind California’s New Wave aesthetic, creates a legacy repository of his works
ham and banana hollandaise: a cursed collection of dishes from McCall’s Great American Recipe Card Collection
those we’ve lost: a more comprehensive compilation of celebrity obituaries from the past year from Bob Canada’s Blogworld