Le Boogie Fuck Extraordinaire, a 1/8 violin from the garbage mounted with a photocell theremin and accessorized with a pattern-changing LED bow, now belongs to @triheart, A THREAD HISTORY. https://twitter.com/triheart/status/1286800859880464386

The story begins in December of 2018, when my friend Louis brings me this child's violin he found in the garbage. It had no bridge, no bow, no strings, but a sturdy case, and thankfully, the sound post was still in position. I gave it a first paint.

Back in those days, I was still very much in the cephalopod mindset, being a walking head and reaching out from all parts. This was an incredible learning phase in my emerging artist life.

I was also very inspired by craftwork and traditional arts from Mexico, and this was my clumsy attempt at using beads for texture. You can still see the nice crack in the violin, see further tweets as it gets covered in epoxy and glitter.

By then, I knew this wasn't gonna look like a distinguished work of art as per institutional standards, so the violin took the ramp drifting at high speeds onto the kawaii dollar store plastic vernacular highway. Poem in French about a squid in my head for scale.

Finally, I was adding electronics to it, and it started to squeal in a way that was more familiar to me. I didn't want to cut into the violin to put electronics inside, so I glued the circuits on with epoxy. In retrospect, it was the worst idea ever, but it did look cyberpunk.

I didn't quite mix the epoxy right, so it took me several coats for the finish to be semi-satisfactory. It stayed sticky for a long time, and when they swiped it for explosives on my first flight with it leaving Montreal, the alarm rang.

The case was nice and hard, and it definitely needed some personality, so lemme take care of that BRB.

First sound tests on the light theremin. On the first version, there was a circuit wired to the speaker and a different one wired to the jack. The way I wired it all off the same 9v battery may be one of the reasons something started burning one bright sunshiny day.

The bow took me a lot of patience to make. I had to carefully wind the LED strip around it and it kept cracking. Then came the layers and layers of epoxy to make sure nothing moved when vibration gets invited to the party. And of course, all this without damaging the hair.

Ok, so by then, the case was looking nice and presentable, ready to start touring. First destination? Chiapas, México, for Festival Metadatos.

Finally arrived at the Mexico City airport, waiting for my connection flight. This was February 2019.

It was Valentine's day, so we had a Michelada together.

I did play the Boogie Fuck on almost all my shows on that tour, this is me at DLonngi art gallery in Mexico City

I had lots of fun playing it, but the thing is I do not play the smol violin.

So I sometimes used the bow as an LED strip to play with other machines with photocell sensors. Here, I'm fiddling (pardon the pun) with a @bastlinstrument Bit Ranger.

So the bow is equipped with this bulky module, which powers the LEDs and receives the pattern information from the remote control.

By the time I got back from touring, all the circuits had burned and it took some serious surgery to remove all the hardware I epoxied on there like a n00b. But there was no giving up on this boogie fuck, oh no.

It stayed in its case for way too long, but when I saw other people in #chiptune playing the #violin, like @bifflecup from @triheart and @aethernautisded I decided to dust it off and give it a new life.

My partner @MaximeRobin3 was telling me that since new instruments were coming in, some should also be going, and so it became clear to me that the Boogie Fuck had to go to a new home. And I knew just the place.

Since it was going to @triheart I put in some signature artwork on the back. You can never have enough glitter.

Since the back and sides were getting glitter, the top had to get some as well.

This violin has glitter up to the neck.

Sorry, up to the head!

I mean, it does look flamboyantly fabulous, no redundancy there.

It still lights up a room, that's for sure.

I treated myself to one last Boogie Fuck session before I sent it off. I recorded it, felt cute, might delete later.

Last checkups! Is everything inside? You can see the light theremin module is now in a plastic case with velcro straps, stowed just by the head of the violin. Which is great, because it can be strapped onto any other violin. Try pizzicato with LEDs on your fingers.

BYE BYE, BOOGIE FUCK! It was a wild ride, but you are off to a better place. Long live instrument disasters, garbage oscillators, epoxy necromancers, and rescue fiddlers. Vernacular music for ever. And remember, «you had me at @triheart ». END THREAD