Wired Lab Open Day 31st October 2009

[Robin Fox]

Well, the wired lab open day was a great success and credit must go to Sarah Last and Dave Burraston for their tireless commitment to fostering a sense of community around the wired lab project. Well done guys. Thanks also to all who made the trek. I’m sure everyone had a rewarding experience. It was great to have Alan back on board. His performances with Garry Bradbury and Dave Noyze were inspirational as always. It was also a treat to hear Oren Ambarchi working with the wires again. His sensitivity to tone and tonal development is extraordinary.

Of course, I heard all of this from down at the dam, spread out on my tarpaulin amidst my gear and a plague of freshly spawned mosquitoes. The frogs joined the beautiful sounds floating down the hill and the landscape lent its vastness to the rich soundscape coming from the PA. Very enjoyable (apart from the mosquitoes of course). What was I doing down by the dam? I hear you think! Well, it’s quite a story. The plan for my performance at the open day was to project lasers through a mist of water generated by pumping water from the dam into the air to create a turbulent three dimensional ‘screen’ of sorts. The tests conducted late Friday night revealed that, from the distance that the audience was from the spectacle, it simply didn’t translate well. This was a shame, as, from where I was at the waters edge (manipulating the fire hose nozzle) the effect was so captivating I lost track of things and coated my priceless equipment with water!! In any case, it was impossible at such late notice to organize a trail down to the dam for the audience to come and appreciate what I was seeing, so, at Sarah’s behest, we turned the lasers onto the landscape to see what would happen. This turned out to be a solution and an interesting one for me, as I’ve never worked in that way before. It through up a lot of interesting ideas for future development and certainly provided some sort of spectacle for the audience. In future I think more high-powered lasers would be in order (cue the evil laugh!) and perhaps a showing on a night that isn’t bathed in beautiful ambient moonlight!!

All told a great night!!