10 things to know about Goldfinger
Designed 2026
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- Goldfinger is a matrix mixer. It’s made of gold. You play it with your finger.
- It takes a little while to learn. The map is a grid of finger-sized regions containing all the possible combinations of signals. It’s easier to navigate by ear than by eye.
- The six sockets can be inputs or outputs. Five inputs and one output makes a mixer. Four inputs and two outputs makes a stereo mixer. One input and five outputs makes a signal distributor. Six inputs or outputs won’t do much, but any other combination should work.
- Expect a bit of noise, maybe distortion, definitely bleed. With high gain and feedback, it works as an antenna. It’s certainly not hifi, just passing electricity through skin. Audio signals work well. Pulses work well. CV signals can also work but don’t seem to travel through the finger so easily.
- My first patch: Two oscillators, tuned together, both sequenced. Square wave and sine waves from both oscillators into the first four channels. Channels five and six going to left and right mixer inputs. Start by moving one finger slowly across the panel. Listen to the sequences moving around, sometimes brighter, sometimes deeper. Often, silence. Move slowly, move fast. Push gently, push hard. Wiggle. Listen. Try moving between two fingers in different positions.
- Two people can work independently, the signal passes between them when they touch each other.
- I tried using coins and wires to make sharper connections, but it didn’t seem to work very well. The resistance in your skin is what makes it a mixer.
- Every panel seems to have unique imperfections in the surface gold. That gold is real pure gold, but only one hundred atoms thick.
- Goldfinger was inspired by a few other devices. Michel Waisvisz' kraakdoos / cracklebox was the first gold-surfaced musical instrument I owned, almost frighteningly loud and chaotic. Landscape's allflesh was the most direct inspiration in terms of thinking 'I want to make that, but Eric has already made it'. Mainfold Research Centre's the map is not the territoire, which evolved from Meng Qi's Magnet Matrix, is very close in concept.
- The last / first word goes to Guy Debord's Theory of the Dérive: "One or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there." Let yourself be drawn by the attractions!