BioT - touch plates for AE modular

BioT is a collaboration between Wonkystuff & the label Hot Air. Instigated by myself with my own plate design on one side and 2 further designs by Namke on the reverse and in the internals. It was Namke that made this thing possible practically and he that came up with the genius idea of the spring connector to cut down on tricky soldering and allow the face plate to be flipped over at any time. Turns out it’s a difficult to source and quite expensive component... but definitely worth it.

So... not as cheap as it might be, but 42 times less expensive than a Verbos touchplate keyboard ... and we all know how important the number 42 is?
this is not in any way a capacitance touch plate of which there are many in modularland. It is more in line with Reed Ghazala’s anti-theory of circuit bending. Some of you on the forum have made diy versions of this. It also has precendents in Michel Waivisz Kraakdooz ( cracklebox ) and Tom Bugbrands postcard & board weevils. On the forum Xodes has manufactured something similar for Eurorack as one of you guessed.
The idea, basically, is to use short circuits creatively. the body (finger or...? ) makes a connection between two plates , but the finger will always have resistance and depending on the surface area covered that resistance can change acting like a bio-potentiometer. Long live ExistenZ & the new flesh! “our bodys are machines, our minds are full of screams” as Jane from Big In Japan howled! the added factor of the close proximity of all of the possible connections also makes it an arena to feel your way around randomly or instinctively to making many interesting permutations of connections just by slithering a finger or two around ( hello ipad/iphone users everywhere ) and hence, with a little bit of trial and error, surprising sounds will be found and can be morphed between as different strengths of touch and positions merge signals that wouldn’t obviously be patched and buzzes, crackles and fizzes from the electricity in your digits add to the shorted broken sounds from voltage and waveforms brutally forced to fight each other for the entertainment of Caesar’s thumb.
obviously this doesn’t have the full scope of laying yr hands on the inside of random circuits ( Major Morgan is my companion in this i have an army of 12 of them with their butch circuitboard chest hair exposed. ) BUT it does have the versatility of being able to pick and choose where you introduce circuit breaks/flesh resistance. Lusting after the new Make Noise Strega? Well why not save half a grand and get one ( or two? ) of these and see what you can come up with in AEland.

BioT will come in kit form but is a VERY simple soldering task. It will be simultaneously launched this Bandcamp Friday morning 7th May ( no fee’s for a day :] ) on the Hot Air bandcamp page hot-air.bandcamp.com & on the Wonkystuff website wonkystuff.net , limited numbers of approximately 15 to 20 on each site.. price will be £17.50 plus postage. there will be a demo album of noises on the bandcamp page which will be a name your price thing so buying from wonkystuff won’t mean you miss out on that.
I hope this deceptively simple module is to some of you peoples noisy taste.
here, finally, is some visuals:



the assembly instructions ( courtesy of Namke ) can be downloaded directly from here:

www.dropbox.com/s/btrfb5iak63t6vp/BioT%20Assembly.pdf