This Magical Instrument Uses Electromagnetic Fields To Reveal Hidden Music

The Demon Box is a groundbreaking instrument that transforms everyday electromagnetic fields into a symphony of sound, turning the chaos of modern life into a harmonious experience. With its innovative analog technology, The Demon Box reveals the hidden melodies in everyday objects, from hairdryers to cell phones. By harnessing and amplifying ambient electromagnetic interference, it unlocks the musical potential in the world around you. Embrace the future of sound and discover how The Demon Box can transform your surroundings into an extraordinary concert hall. Say ‘hello’ to a new era of musical exploration! ABOUT Music is everywhere, inhabiting inanimate objects just waiting to burst into being. The noisiest devices can possess a hidden elegance in the patterns of electro-magnetic waves their operation induces. Eternal Research, a startup dedicated to new instruments, unlocks the existing music hidden in everyday things and experiences by harnessing electro-magnetic fields (EMF). Using a proprietary system of inductors to translate EMF into sound, Eternal Research’s first commercial product, the Demon Box, can play anything from a cell phone to a hairdryer, process this signal, and make it musical. It promises to open up a vast new dimension of music making for new creators as well as experienced electronic and experimental musicians. “The idea that new instruments have to be digital isn’t correct,” argues Alexandra Fierra, inventor and musician. “The analog world is not maxed out, even if the music is digital the experience of it, in the end, is analog. The pace of technological advance is always greater than the utilization of any one technology.” Fierra came to music relatively late in life-- “I was a musician without an instrument” – yet who found music and musical invention a sanctuary when times were tough before she came out to family and friends. “I wouldn’t say the world got better after coming out. It made me realize music was family.” Other experiences, including a frightening encounter with electricity, contributed to what would later become her first instrument. “Once when I was a child, I vacuumed up an ice cube and was shocked by at least 110 volts. I didn’t know how electricity worked; I felt the residual shock and thought electricity was like a venom that killed you. Eventually, after nearly an hour, I realized I would live,” but the force’s awe-inspiring power would continue to fascinate her in years to come. Much later, inspired by the scientific concept of demons as mysterious physical phenomena that are yet to be explained, the Demon Box emerged from a decade of experimentation and creativity by Fierra. She found herself in an extremely difficult season of life, and to cope, she began to tinker with various electrical and carpentry projects to build a new kind of instrument, her “Hardware Store” period, when she used simple materials and store-scavenged parts to build a new kind of instrument in her Brooklyn apartment. She performed with her inductor-based instruments and learned more and more about what they could do, the music of the natural and human world they could unfurl. As her work evolved, Fierra was joined by fellow musician and engineer Bryn Nieboer. Nieboer’s extensive and varied music background was paired with a strong curiosity and autodidact approach to synths and electronics. Nieboer and Fierra collaborated to develop the inductor instrument idea, striving to make it more robust and complex and that would allow people to use techniques that otherwise would take a great deal of equipment and time to achieve. After years of wooden prototypes and conceptual meditations, Fierra and Nieboer honed the ultimate configuration of the Demon Box in the throes of the pandemic. “There was a part of me that felt like Newton holed away in a room for six months during the plague and devising a brand-new theory of light,” states Fierra. “All of a sudden, we had to delay everything indefinitely, but instead of endlessly panicking, we decided to take the instrument to a new level” “We had no assumptions to start,” states Nieboer, “which was the hardest part of the design process. Usually, there are some basic decisions already made, mechanical and certification restraints. But this was totally wide open,” Nieboer explains. “Paring it down to what it needed to become and focusing on what it should actually do was the biggest challenge.” Once they landed on a design that worked technically, conceptually and aesthetically, they teamed up with industrial designers at Harvard (Spatial Dynamics) to create the folded aluminum model soon to be publicly available. In addition, they collaborated with programmer and music/video artist Jordan Bortner to create software to enhance what the inductors did on their own. Fierra comes from her fascination with the creative possibilities of electricity and natural phenomena honestly. She hails from a long line of inventors, seekers, and wild dreamers: the Rodales who reignited American interest in traditional sustainable farming methods to launch the organic food movement. Her forebears also worked as electrical engineers, inventing dimmers and other electrical elements we all use every day in our homes. Fierra herself has a lifelong history of experiencing electricity’s sound and feeling in a personal, artistic way. “I love learning about the deepest physical properties of things and in things, as a way to embrace the true nature of the world. EMF is all around us. It fluctuates based on temperature. It’s a living thing as well, everything is connected with it,” Fierra muses. “The music is already there, and you can hear it when you put a Demon Box next to fluorescent lighting or a TV or even a traditional synth. This instrument lets us listen in to the inherent music of the universe in new ways and expand our understanding of what is natural.” Fierra’s fresh, yet deeply grounded perspective on the music in everything electric promises to shake up the way we create with sounds. The Demon Box can immediately respond to the efforts of someone new to music making, but it is fully featured enough for professionals to engage with it to spark new creativity. The Demon Box uses a proprietary configuration of 33 inductors in a triangular field that translates the electro-magnetic resonances of innumerable objects and devices into three channels. “The three channels allow you to sculpt with panning, phasing and effects layering. Stereo is limited, but we can expand on stereo with more than two channels, making a more synaesthetic triphonic feeling-sound,” Brynn explains. “Each of the three channels can be modified with one dedicated aux in, with controls that allow the music maker to mix aux in and inductors independently for each channel.” The instrument is completely compatible with existing audio setups. It has 3 mono-audio outs and a fourth MIDI out, as well as a USB-C port that can be used as an output or for charging. It also has a stereo output jack that can be used for headphones. These outputs allow the instrument to run through any mixer or directly into a computer. At its heart, however, the Demon Box creates a new interface to play what has been around us all along but never heard. “Our instruments are for people trying to experience new things,” Fierra says. “The Demon Box is an open palette, and I didn’t want my design decisions to limit people’s view. I wanted to keep the complexity and noise in plain view, so that they can experience these phenomena and realize that the noise can be a good thing. The chaos is the music, or the seed of all new music.” A new music starts with you. Coming Autumn 2024 © 2024 Eternal Research. All rights reserved. FAQ

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