From my sketchbook musings..
Playing with dada and surrealism in my sketchbook and finding new fascinations to exploit, including the "optophone", an extinct early bit of technology with varied symbolic potentials.
The optophone is a device, used by the blind, that scans text and generates time-varying chords of tones to identify letters. It is one of the earliest known applications of sonification. Dr. Edmund Fournier d'Albe of Birmingham University invented the optophone in 1913, which used selenium photosensors to detect black print and convert it into an audible output which could be interpreted by a blind person. (Wikipedia)
The Israeli press describes a new and improved optophone ("Opto-Phone") designed by Zev Zavlesky that allows you to eavesdrop on conversations 100 feet away using laser beams.
I'm so taken in by the old school optophone right now- electrical circuitry and simple lines- that I printed this aged model as a coloring page for the little people. Eager to see how they'll "improve" upon it, perhaps with colors or collages.
