Artifacts #2: This Becomes That

At the band's first rehearsal in February 2007, Matt Cordier, now an indispensable partner, announced he'd bought a drumset especially for the Mysteriam project. He'd decided it would be very Mysteriam to put lights inside the drums. They make equipment for this, but it's all very manufactured, shiny, symmetrical; the Mysteriam aesthetic requires a certain amount of encrusted organic messiness.

We realized we needed to meet an electronics designer with a passion for pushing limits. Enter Charles J. Aldous, practically the next day, with a vision and the skills to pull off an efficient installation of some custom pieces of delicate equipment inside our transparent acrylic drumset, where it will be rattled and jogged mercilessly during performance. They are elegant and tough as nails, and they worked brilliantly the first go round!

The LEDs are from Hong Kong, and they are huge- like the last joint of your pinky finger. The circuitry they run through, magically, started interacting with itself, against the plans of any of us. Now we have a new toy to collaborate with.