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LIGHT_OF_RA


                                             September 5, 2007

My project this year:

Dangerbaby and I made an
attempt at doing a night-time
cafe dedicated to Sun Ra
music, with an accompanying
light show of sorts.


Before going I put a fair
amount of work into             Much more so than some
programming the music.          people with enormous
                                sound systems: in one        There's no way
  I re-listened to around       mix I heard a UK Squeeze     a human DJ would've
  fifty Sun Ra releases,        cut then a few tracks        done that:
  considering each track        later, another UK Squeeze
  through the lens of           cut, off of the same           Ah, the joys
  an imagined Burning Man       album.                         of the iPod
  audience.  What would                                        shuffle.
  grab a beginner's ear,
  what would be too far                                          Now we can
  outside, what might                                            claim acoustic
  work at different times                                        territory
  in different atmospheres.                                      without *any*
                                                                 thought...
                                                                 just money
                                                                 for a sound
                                                                 system.


This all grew out off
these observations:

o  Our camp's dome was largely
   unused at night.

o  The music at Burning man often seems weak and narrow
   (techno-house and, now, top-40 and very little else),

   plus

   Burner's seem strangely ignorant of the ways of Sun Ra.

                                                             an exaggerated
                                                             perception?

                                                                I found 3 in
                                                                our camp who
                                                                were, shall
                                                                we say, "hep",
                                                                unbeknowst to
                                                                me.

   So, Dangerbaby and I decided we'd try to do
   a night time cafe "chill space", focusing
   on the music of Sun Ra, with chai available      Amateur bars
   to drink.                                        are common at
                                                    Burning Man,
                                                    coffee houses less
                                                    so.

                                                    There are a few
                                                    who do coffee/tea,
                                                    but typically only
                                                    in the morning.



   To go with that, we also decided to
   break out our old light show act,
   using the old-fashioned tricks of         "Mister Inbetween's light show
   oil-water-dye blobs on an overhead        apparatus: a revival of
   projector.                                old-fashioned technologies:
                                             the oil and water light show,
       As is typical with me,                with an electro-mechanical
       I looked for a way to automate        color wheel made from bicycle
       part of the schtick, pressing         parts and a fan motor."
       into service some machinery
       I've used for noise-making
       purposes:  a fan motor
       driving bicycle wheels with
       strips of inner-tube as belt
       material.  I had a bike wheel
       already tricked out to use as
       26 to 1 speed reduction,
       and added some strips of
       colored gels to another, which
       I setup to spin by in front            There were a number
       of the overhead projector.             of other tricks I had
                                              in mind, but those
                                              are the ones I got
                                              working...

                                                There were a number
                                                of little hassles:

                                                The gels were darker
                                                than I thought, so I
                                                re-designed to use
                                                thin strips that would
                                                interrupt the beam
                                                only intermittently.

                                                The belt drives worked
                                                better with lighter
                                                weight and more tension.

                                                I had misalignment
                                                problems with the bike
                                                wheel belt-drives, until
                                                I invented a gadget to
                                                put an adjustable twist
                                                to the frame.

                                                The small fan I bought
                                                at the last minute to
       Something I found out the                cool the motor had a
       hard way: floor fans are                 broken base, and I
       typically designed to use                needed to improvise
       the air-flow they generate               a substitute.
       to cool the motor.  If you
       remove the fan blades, you
       remove the air-cooling, and
       they overheat fairly
       quickly.  Duh.

          So: I was driving the
          apparatus with a floor
          fan with a pulley wheel
          in place of the fan blades;
          and I needed to add yet       Obviously, it would be
          another fan to cool the       better to have a pulley
          motor.                        integrated with fan blades.

                                           But even more obviously,
                                           it would be better if I
                                           got some better motors,
                                           e.g. ones that can be
                                           run at a slower speed
                                           without using bicycle
                                           parts to gear them down.

                                              But then, everyone does
                                              like looking at the spinning
                                              bike-wheels: people love
                                              *visible* mechanical
                                              apparatus.

In any case, this "light show" business
turned out to be harder than I remembered
it... a lot of it was probably the setting:         (In a theater setting,
there was so much light pollution from              with eyes accoustomed
different sources (and our "screen" was             to the dark, this
less than perfect: the white plastic side           over head projector
of the dome), the old transparency projector        was actually *too bright*...
just wasn't bright enough to let me get             When I flipped it on
away with more than around two layers of            we all winced, and I
filtering.                                          wished I'd had a dimmer
                                                    for it.)
  That immediately cramped my style
  a lot... then on top of that, it                              Over a year
  took a lot of work for me to get                              later I opened
  the hang of manipulating oil/water   (I suspect I was         up this
  blobs with the tools at hand.         missing a simple        projector to
                                        trick -- e.g.           clean it, and
     (And as luck would have it,        adding glycerine        discovered the
     for my first "performance"         to the mess.)           *real* problem:
     I had an expert who was in                                 the bulb was
     the light show business --                                 *caked* with
     though he didn't know anything                             plya dust,
     directly about "doing oil"                                 baked onto
     to give me any hints...)                                   it: ceramic
                                                                dust on it's
                                                                way to becoming
                                                                enamel.

                                                                    Argh.
              This project was enough to earn
              me a reputation in our camp for
              "competence".  This says a lot
              about our camp.



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