001 – Circuit bent Nintendo Entertainment System, Critter and Guitari Video Synth, DIY Video Mixer

Back around 2009/2010, I started making chiptune music and regularly attending (and eventually setting up) chiptune shows. There was not a local scene for this type of music in Rochester, NY so I mostly engaged with this community via the internet using now defunct websites like 8bitcollective and watching videos from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

As I became more and more interested in chiptune music, I also became more and more interested in the visual art being projected behind the performers. Traveling to Blip Festival 2011 and seeing Party Time! Hexcellent! perform with Noisewaves was hugely influential. I would eventually discover Batsly Adams and marvel at the elegance of his creativity.

Finally, I would find videos like those from the Playpower Foundation and bury myself in assembly code, mining whatever wisdom I could from No Carrier’s website.

This all led to the creation of the setup you see below.

Custom Nintendo Rom

I start by creating my own Nintendo ROM. I mentioned No Carrier’s work before but this was a heavy influence for sure. I know I wrote the code myself but I was of course lifting inspiration from GalleryNES. I would create custom art for each show where I performed.

Circuit Bent Nintendo

This is really the heart of what I do. I cannot recall now where I first heard of this – not sure if I learned of Notendo before or after – but I discovered you could circuit bend a Nintendo by simply connecting pins of the graphics chip to each other. This would scramble whatever ROM you had loaded and often in unique and bizarre ways.

For this, I wired each pin of the graphics chip to a serial port mounted on the back of the Nintendo. I connect that to a breakout box where I can then use patch cables to create glitches. The green arcade buttons make it easy to perform the glitches along to live music.

Custom Nintendo Controller

This is not necessary to creating visual art but I thought it would be fun to share. I was always looking for interesting ways to incorporate the Nintendo hardware into my performances so a foot controller, something I could step on like a guitar pedal while playing guitar with Revengineers, was a good idea. I took apart a standard NES controller and rewired each button pad to the foot buttons in the new enclosure.

“Dirt & Cheap Non-Sync Video Mixer” (Klomp, 2007)

https://videocircuits.blogspot.com/2010/06/dirty-video-mixer.html

https://makezine.com/article/craft/make-interview-diy-video/

Critter & Guitari EYESY

This slot has changed many times over the years. I’ve used a VCR to play bizarre old VHS tapes that I would find in thrift stores over the years. I’ve used a second Nintendo playing ROMS like glitchNES or XXX. Most recently I have been using the Eyesy from Critter & Guitari. It can produce lots of interesting shapes and animated colors.

The images attached were created by taking photos and videos of the CRT monitor directly with a Canon 6D. They were only slightly touched up by adjusting basic controls like exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, etc.