bewarendeavor

For my autopsy assignment, I took apart a strange noisemaker I found at Goodwill. It took me awhile to figure out what it was, but eventually I found the website for the company that makes it, Bird-X. The Transonic is meant to keep a variety of pests away so that you can enjoy your porch or backyard in peace. It’s hard to imagine someone actually using it, though, as the sound produced is completely intolerable.

Here’s the newest model, which has a diagram on the back explaining what ear-piercing noise to use for which pest:

The autopsy itself went pretty quickly. In fact I had the thing apart and back together again before the end of class last week. I couldn’t get it completely disassembled because two of the screws with rusted and stripped when I tried to remove them, but here’s the gutted Transonic IX:

I think it’s funny that someone would be willing to withstand such horrible noise just to dissuade a few pigeons from visiting their yard. People seem to have an infinite capacity for rationalization. Then again, it was in Goodwill.

I thought about quite a few ways to reuse the Transonic in both a design and fine art context. Of course, my first inclination was to hook the thing up to a much, much bigger speaker. I did this in the sound lab at the Museum school, and I’m pleased to say it was absolutely horrifying.

a few other ideas came out of disassembling the Transonic.  A Windchime that would set off the noise when a certain tube was struck.  Several Transonics hooked up to photo sensors in trees, going off at random.  A scarecrow that’s meant to scare people away instead of animals.