For his latest delightfully retro project, Swedish designer Love Hultén has collaborated with digital artist Lirona for an interactive synthesizer called the synth#boi that's not only limited to just 10 units, but is being offered for sale as a physical NFT.
The heady mix of retro styles, arty design and technology is a kind of trademark of Love Hultén, and we've featured quite a bit of his work in the past – from gorgeous gaming creations to wood-encased computers and nightmarish oddities to smooth-sounding synths. As its name suggests, the synth#boi falls into the lattermost category of creations.
The project is a collaborative effort between Hultén and New York-based artist Liron Eldar-Ashkenazi, and unlike much of Hultén's work this one is actually being offered for sale as a physical Non-Fungible Token (NFT) on dissrup.com from today. Only 10 synth#boi phygitals are being made and each will be individually numbered.
The interactive sculpture is made up of three stone gray modules. There's a human-like outline in the center of the circular screen of the 15-inch monitor module mounted to the blocky base, which is home to a S-Engine MkII sound module and NUC i5 computer with TouchDesigner. Synth parameters are controlled using red, green and purple knobs, and a 25-key MIDI keyboard unit plugs into the base via USB.
As synth/percussion/piano sounds are produced out of speakers to the rear of the monitor, colored patterns are triggered inside a special version of Lirona's vaguely humanoid #boiz collection.
As you can see from the demo video below, the audiovisual result has a first generation Star Trek kind of vibe to it and looks to include a good variety of sonic possibilities.
Source: Love Hultén