Tone Poem
By Nullsleep on January 13, 2026 8:39 am
In 2018 I had a residency at the UC Boulder Media Archaeology Lab where I reimagined an alternative history of electronic music using hardware from their collection. It was an exploration of the media theory idea that the tools we use shape the art that we create.
What if the Sega Genesis had been more influential on the development of house music than the Korg M1? Or if the progenitors of jungle and drum & bass had reached for Nintendo consoles instead of Akai samplers?
“Tone Poem” is a more personal version of this same question. More than 20 years ago I wrote a song called “Her Lazer Light Eyes” on the Game Boy not long after I began using LSDJ. Here I’ve taken the song and condensed it into a single channel for the PC speaker. I chose to do this using QBasic, the first programming language that I learned – and one of the first ways that I ever made sounds using electronics as a teenager.
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