Long before Joe Paradiso would epitomize the Media Lab professor — with expertise in sensor networks, ubiquitous computing, energy harvesting, interactive media, high-energy physics, and spacecraft control — he decided to build a synthesizer from scratch.The result is now the world’s largest modular analog synthesizer, a giant blinkenlights super synth that has just been installed in the MIT museum, and been documented by Lucy Lindsey and Melanie Gonick in this neat little video tour.As an undergraduate engineering student at Tufts in 1973, Paradiso was operating in unknown territory. Synths were relatively new, information about DIY projects was scarce, and digital music was on the rise. But with information from manufacturers' data sheets and hobbyist magazines he taught himself electronics, found parts in surplus stores, and spent the next fifteen years building the modules and hacking consumer keyboards, like the Mini Moog, Casio VL-Tone, SK-1, and the CasioTone 101. With 125 modules, it is now likely the world’s largest.Now that it’s installed at the museum, every two weeks Paradiso tweaks the tangle of wires connecting the synthesizer's modules, or patches, to create new trippy sonic environments. Users can listen to the machine making weird music live online at its website, and can even change its patches via this web controller.
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