This project came out of a desire to make a computer-controlled percussion instrument as well as an interest in things being translated or, more appropriately, mistranslated.

After investigating various MIDI to CV converters and microcontroller programmers, I realised that printers did what I wanted already - namely receive instructions from a computer to control motors. After opening up an inkjet printer I found two motors, one to move the paper through and another bi-directional motor to move the print-head.

I removed these motors from their original housing and built them into small percussion instruments made from bits of stationery. On the left of the picture is a 'guiro' made from a pencil and cable-tie, and in the centre is another cable-tie which lifts a ball-point pen and then drops it to hit another pen. When a document is sent to print, the motors move as if it were printing as usual, but instead of controlling the paper and print-head they play little rhythms.

In the recording there is an additional MAX/MSP patch which plays a random steel-drum sample when the pen falls.

Printer mp3 clip