Robodock Starts

Robodock started tonight. La Machine was playing, interesting music but very typical of this sort of event. The kind of arty, house music inspired, alternate instrument playing thing.

One of our neighbors and new friends is an Australian guy with a flying ring. Apparently he makes a living going to events like this and flying around. He knew more about the history of SRL, who is in it and when, and what machines they had worked on than any of us did. And he knew it all from Australia and watching the movies over and over.

We spent some time just sitting around talking about the jet engine I’m working on bringing up while I was working on bringing up the 5th of these little ignitor boards to light various pulse jets and flame throwers.

Turns out our land lord from Cambridge is at the show. He’s helping a guy I met in Berlin more than 10 years ago build a giant explosive pipe organ. They’re doing an original composition for 7 tubas and tuned explosive pipe organ. It’s a bit like the tuned mice sketch on Monty Python except instead of mice and mallets there are gas filled pipes that produce variable amplitude, tuned, musically timed explosions.

So far I’ve spent time here on various details on the hovercraft, the shockwave canon, the jet engine, and the pulse jets. I still have to test the pulse jets, get the jet engine back together with it’s newly rebuilt ignition system and new flame thrower, and then build a recoil absorbing shoulder mount so I can shoulder fire the 3″ air canon without breaking bones.
The whole thing is the SF expats show – we constitute between 15-25% of the entire artist roster, and that’s bringing people from all over Europe and as far as Australia.