June 21st 2006
present: – David and Kaffe & a little glimpse of Alex.
We review the Open Day. Overall a success.
A variety of people from 6 months to 57 years came through. All seemed delighted, intrigued, some even inspired. The Bed was running on 6 amplifers for the first time and even with our backup battery system installed, after 4 hours of continuous play, it overheated and would only provide power and therefore music every 5 minutes for a minute or so. Of course this had to happen just before the forum began, meaning that lots of people were visiting, but remarkably, noone seemed disappointed. To the contrary, they politely lay on the bed in 3’s awaiting when they might get a ride. Some completley unaware of what had happened quietly lay with it never slipping into life, and after 10 minutes or so got off smiling.
Kaffe had sourced the problem down to the excessive heat of the day, inadequate ventilation around the in and out fans of the power supply and the Bed often playing frequencies of between 5 and 20Hz from several woofers at once for some duration. (The lower the frequency, the greater the load on the power supply)
NEXT STAGE Physical interfaces to play the Bed. We need to build a simple and direct way of making music for the Bed. Kaffe’s ideal would be 2 joysticks, but she realises later that joysticks don’t send any motion data at all. Disappointing.
Questions: What would be the best way to be able to move and process a sound at the same time with one physical gesture? How can we get away from the mouse? Joysticks? Sliders? Motion detectors?