LED Mouthpiece for Vocal Performance #WearableWednesday
Adam Wolf collaborated with musicians from Doomtree to create an illuminated experience. Dessa writes:
I wanted to do some special costuming for the Icehouse Blowout set–something with lights. Something beautiful and spooky. I wanted our sternums to glow, and I wanted lights in our mouths. (After about ten minutes of daydreaming, I realized I was striving to recreate a dramatic [and formative] scene from the Little Mermaid.)
Adam wired together a device with three parts: a light, a battery, and a little switch that was magnetically activated. The electrical circuit remained open until a magnet was near, then the circuit closed and the light flashed on. The earth metal magnets he gave me were small, but crazily strong. It was hard to pull them apart, hard to keep them apart, it was hard to handle them without losing one as it jumped towards the nearest mic stand or metal shelf.
The tricky part, Adam said, was making sure your mouth didn’t close the circuit. To ensure that my spit didn’t interfere with the electronics, Adam covered each of the three parts with a mouth-safe moldable plastic. Here he’s heating the plastic with a hot-air gun to do a little shaping.
Check out the video demo:
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Very cool. Encouraging to see a way to create that effect without needing to put a hole in your cheek like Till Lindemann did here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NvnWJU5Ak8
Very very cool! Now that’s something I would want to try out with my choir! Is there any chance we can see more pictures of the device and also more specifically what kind of plastic was used! Thank you for this very nice project!
Very cool. Encouraging to see a way to create that effect without needing to put a hole in your cheek like Till Lindemann did here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NvnWJU5Ak8
Very very cool! Now that’s something I would want to try out with my choir! Is there any chance we can see more pictures of the device and also more specifically what kind of plastic was used! Thank you for this very nice project!
I first saw Laurie Anderson do this in the early 1980s. It is still a cool effect.