If this sounds a little crazy to you, just go with it.
Maximillian Lawrence built a karaoke machine that mashes up different songs (in one instance, Prince’s “When Doves Cry” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”), and when someone sings into it, it changes how the songs are mashed up. That’s one part of the machine. The other part involves a video game-like setup with a surfer who’s surfing on the MIDI files of the song (“Surfin’ the MIDI,” as Lawrence puts it).
“How well does it work?” Lawrence said. “Nah, come on, it’s terrible, it doesn’t work at all.” Cool.
Lawrence, one of the founders of Chinatown’s Space 1026 artist collective, was one of The Hacktory’s artists in residence last year. Based at the Department of Making + Doing, the residents presented their arts and technology experiments last December.
Watch a video about Lawrence’s karaoke machine below. (You can also see videos of residents Michael Kiley, Tara Webb and Jacob Rivkin.)
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