Adam Jansch : The Chaos Engine

The Chaos Engine (2010)

4'46; hardware pop piece with live radio

The Chaos Engine

The Chaos Engine is a unique artistic work – a hardware-based open outcome pop song which integrates live broadcast radio. This physical tune merges a fixed pop song element with a serial-linked FM radio receiver, united by a sequencer which has control over source volume levels and radio tuning parameters. Controls for play/stop and output volume are provided for a listener.

Being about the size of a medium-sized paperback novel and requiring power through an external supply The Chaos Engine should be viewed as a proof of concept: that live radio hardware could be integrated with recorded sound sources in an aesthetically acceptable and technologically viable way. The likelihood of a mass-producible version is unlikely however.

Inside The Chaos Engine

The hardware implementation includes a Vinculum VMusic2 MP3 player, a Sparkfun Electronics AR1010 radio receiver breakout board and an Arduino Duemilanove as controller. There are also circuit modules for mixing, amplification and UI components. A custom Arduino library was written by Jansch to interface with the AR1010.

Jansch wrote about the significance of using radio within The Chaos Engine in his paper ‘The voice and the vehicle’, which also covers his other radio pieces Synth Radio and Travelling. Below is a video of The Chaos Engine in action.

The Chaos Engine - demo from Adam Jansch on Vimeo.

The Chaos Engine (demo 1) by Adam Jansch

The Chaos Engine (demo 2) by Adam Jansch