MusicBox
Latest
The humble music box gets a 21st century update
Outside horror movies, music boxes are pretty cool, but their big flaw is that they can only play a few bars of one song. This inflexibility wasn't so much of an issue a century ago, but in the era of Spotify, it's not great. That's why Taiwanese company Tevofy Technology has sought to update the music box for the modern age, in the form of the Music Robot Box, or Muro Box.
A sleek, Star Wars-inspired music box
That's no moon -- it's the MusicMachine 3, a state-of-the-art music box from designer Maximilian Busser, largely inspired by the TIE Fighter from Star Wars. It doesn't hook up to your iPhone, it can't stream Spotify and it doesn't have a USB input anywhere along its bulbous, spider-like chrome body. It does, however, play music. The MusicMachine 3 plays six songs via a roller lined with metal pins that catch on the teeth of a comb as they rotate. With these pins, Busser's latest music box plays the themes from Star Wars, Mission: Impossible, James Bond, The Godfather, The Persuaders and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. The MusicMachine 3 has 72 musical teeth in total and the entire piece is designed to amplify and enrich the sound of each note. Hear for yourself below.
Left Field Labs can make you a custom, 3D-printed music box
We've seen 3D printing enable a nostalgic twist on music before, but there are few things quite so clever (or tiny) as Left Field Labs' Music Drop. The company's latest New Year's project lets you design a unique music box through a simple web interface; you just have to create a catchy song loop and Left Field will print out a finger-powered, tear-shaped machine that plays your tune. We're not sure how long Left Field Labs will be offering the Music Drop when each one is hand-made, so you may want to swing by its website before all the fun comes to an end.
Ford USB Music Box adds mass storage playback, smartphone charging to AUX-enabled receivers
Sure, you've probably been leading a compact disc-less life in the living room and on the go for quite a few years now, but there's one place where optical media often remains the only option for on-demand tunes: your car. Now select Ford owners in Europe have an option accessing and controlling their smartphones, flash drives or other USB mass storage devices from an in-dash audio system. The USB Music Box connects to compatible audio and nav systems with an AUX input, and lives in the glovebox, center console or armrest, pumping tunes through your car's speakers with "great sound quality very similar to that of the radio." Last time we checked, FM radio has an equivalent bitrate quite a bit lower than your typical digital music file, so that's not exactly a glowing testimonial. Still, if you're desperate for a way to carry thousands of tracks in your car without filling the trunk with an array of sizable silver saucers, it might be time to toss aside the gloves and open up the Music Box -- assuming, of course, that you own one of ten recent models outlined in the PR just past the break.
SoniColumn interactive sound installation
The SoniColumn -- an interactive sound installation that's one part sci-fi and one part Victoriana-- is the latest work from multimedia artist Jin-You Mok. Part of his MusicBox Project, the piece, as you can no doubt guess, consists of elements designed to mimic a music box in one form or another. The SoniColumn itself works through an array of touch-sensitive LEDs that each emit a unique tone when touched -- the budding musician can then turn a crank to rotate the column and play back his/her composition in its entirety. If you want let loose your inner Thomas Dolby, you can currently check out the SoniColumn at Bitforms gallery in Seoul, South Korea, or catch it's next appearance at Wired's NextFest in NYC come October.[Via Engadget Japanese]
