Some time ago we visited the Minnesota Museum of American Art to look at the work of artists working with sound "Sound in Art Art in Sound"
http://www.mmaa.org/Sound_in_Art_Art_in_Sound.html
Margaret wrote about the exhibit here: http://ltc.smm.org/pie/node/163

I was very very interested in the work by Leif Brush, a sound artist from Minnesota who collaborating with his wife created "recordings" of the sound of frost forming on a window pane.

Leif adapted a window frame with circuitry to generate the frost on the panes of glass, and he built a pick-up that he could use to record the sound the frost was making as it formed.

There wasn't a lot of explanation about his 'printer' in the show. I wrote to Leif to ask if he could describe how it works and ways to build a simplified version.