Our cast of characters includes:

It was brought to my attention a couple of weeks ago that I would be “performing” with project ruori at PURE. I wouldn’t say “brought to my attention.” More like “forced upon my sleepy eyes as I sat entrapped away from my own home.” I had only planned on seeing Phung before he left, but poor logistics and fate led me to PURE.

These past few days I have watched Robert and Steve hammering out the technical details, Tina nervously trying to keep the project focused, and Beth helping out all around. And then we have me.

Previously on the Radcliffe channel we find our hero working on treespin before it was treespin. The result being a set of recursive -based scripts that proved some of the parsing issues between the treespin core and plugins in that previous version. Other than my softpixel e-mail account steadily accumulating more unwanted e-mail I ascended into the bliss of middle age.

Back to Saturday. After several hours of looking at others we finally got to the nitty gritty: why I was there. Yes, even though I had been “selected” I had not yet known for what I had been selected. After much deliberation it was decided that I would represent “demand” or “the consumer.” “The controller,” yet “controlled.” Robert quickly chimed in about how the Man usually sticks it to the consumer. Fortunately this is a PG production and if it wasn’t you would be certain that I would explain how much the consumer screws the Man.

Sunday. I returned to the condo not knowing what to expect. In the evening everything was ready to go. Music was about to be made. Well not everyone was to make music. The Plinko Machine in its almighty wisdom had decided that Tina would not be allowed to play. It even taunted her. The machine activated the instrument and allowed her to play only for but one second before once again shrouding her in darkness.

The performance slated for next Saturday will hopefully reflect similar images and emotions. The uncontrollable nature of the machine constrains us to time limits, budgets, and even to creativity. I’ll just look forward to vodka and marshmellows.

Near indeed.

The fortune I discovered in my wallet yesterday — “We are here to create / not merely survive” — was inspiring. This one was just scary.

We have a little over a week before we’re performing in Boston. Cocoons are hanging precariously from the tracklighting in the studio, spotlights-on-relays have been flashing on and off for the last several hours, Steve has been editing soundclips and working on the Quartz Composer-based sequencer, Robert has been drilling clear acrylic glass, and I have been hacking out some text that may or may not be recorded at some point this weekend.

Writing text for this performance has been difficult. Normally, I write things that are fairly expressive and metaphorical. For this, given that we’re not really performing a story so much as an idea, it didn’t seem appropriate. Or PURE enough.

So using an online rhyme generator to play on the randomness-and-technology-as-an-integral-part-of-creation themes in our piece, I assembled a few lists of homophones and a few random phrases for good measure. These will be spoken as if they’re part of a psychology experiment or a language course, only with bizzare variations of intensity. And maybe a mock-British accent.

It’s hard to imagine if I’ll be pleased with the final product. Fortunately, reassurance is only one order of szechuan chicken away.

My Yom Kippur was very hectic — I compressed this year’s atonement into a few hours this morning. Then for the afternoon, I headed over to the softpixel/ruori megalab to convert snack foods into mental energy and mental energy into a set of chaotic probability-driven sonatas for three theremin-like light-sensing instruments we’re almost done building.

So I guess I sacrificed my sacrifice for my art.

bbinkovitz watches rvance paint the lawn:

smokris plays the lightflower:

a man with a copper beard shaves at our table:

ultra!

Our proposal included an acrylic glass plinko machine (a la The Price is Right) and three hanging fabric cocoons. There will be a performer in each cocoon and a fourth performer dropping ping pong balls into the plinko machine. As the balls come out the three holes in the bottom of the machine, they will trigger the performers to change an ongoing soundscape in some way. Eventually, the person dropping the ping pong balls will replace himself with an automated device, the automated device will run out of balls, and the performers in the cocoons will leave behind the soundscape controllers for the audience to play with.

Obviously, we have our work cut out for us, given that this requires sewing, cutting, sawing, gluing, soldering, purchasing of electronic components and programming patches for Quartz Composer (into which we are, of course, going to try shoehorning audio processing functionality). And that’s before we even get to the performance aspects, such as creating the soundscape and rehearsing everything.

Last weekend we planned two worksessions. I went to Walmart and bought 22 yards of fabric (much to the chagrin of a lady behind me who just wanted to make a throw pillow for her two-year-old son), a roll of slice-and-bake cookies, and a six pack of Pete’s Wicked Ale. This was the first time anyone had ever brought alcohol deliberately for a worksession, and I was immediately commended by Robert on my choice. (At least I learned something during six years of school in Wisconsin.) However, while the choice of beer might have been excellent, the choice to bring beer proved to be less wise, as the worksession quickly denegrated into a drinking party after dinner with the help of a 12-pack of Bud Light, a bottle of vodka, and a certain former highschool classmate who shall go unnamed.

To make up for this setback, Robert and I got together mid-week and cut acrylic tubes into 3 inch sections to make the “plinks” for the plinko machine. After much deliberation as to whether the positioning of the plinks should be on a grid or be random, we laid them out in a binary tree-like pattern and attached them to the acrylic glass sheet with Liquid Nails. I carefully dabbed off the excess Liquid Nails on the work blanket from time to time in an effort to keep things clean, only to insert my hand in it midway through gluing on the plinks.

This weekend has gone better so far. Between Steve, Beth and I, we finished the mailing list email, sewed two cocoons onto their hoops, planned out a performance for an MIT co-op (who, if the performance meets their standards, might provide weekend Boston housing for us), and organized sound samples for the soundscape. Steve is working on Quartz Composer patches, which will likely be described in detail on this blog once they are complete. However, true to ruori form, there is still much to be completed on a tight deadline. We’ll keep you updated.