An old, wonderful mechanical
musical instrument, the polyphon, makes an amazing sound when a metallic
disc with punched holes is moving over little gearwheels, that pull at
small metallic tongues. Anke Mellin, the owner of that musical instrument,
asked me to make it work again.
The reanimated polyphon
Looking at the old metallic
discs, I decided to create a pi - disc, on which the holes are punched
in direct correspondence to the digits of pi. I began to punch the first
31 holes with a coordinate system x-y in the center of the disc. One hole
(tone) is defined by 4 digits, two digits for the radius and the next two
digits for the angle, counted from 0 degree. When all 31 holes are done,
the next group of 31 holes counts from the maximum angle of the first group.
This way I calculated the first 1464 digits of pi to get a polyphon - pi
- disc you can see below.
"starry sky" of the metallic
pi
- disc
Now that the disc is designed,
I have to find a very good craftsman to make it real. For all, who cannot
wait until the disc is done:
>>>>>> You have
the opportunity to hear the digital sound of the polyphone - pi - disc!
<<<<<<<<
I created this sound
using the amazing GRAPHIC COMPOSER by Jürgen Lange.