Quay St pavement drawing. This was the second location we tried. Not so much participation here. Only one small child was willing to help. I like the way that the fire hydrant in incorporated into the design.

Some examples of my own chalk drawings on concrete (with some help from Luna). Tomorrow i’m going to go into town and ask members of the public to help me make some of these constraints based drawings. The rules will be:

• You can’t cross lines
• You must close the line to create a loop

Beyond that people can choose the colour of the chalk, can make a the loop with any number of strokes, can use sharp angles or curves, can make mistakes. We’ll see what comes from it.

Performance setup. I still need to secure the pots for the fan speed control.

I’ve just installed a tap into the BLASTIT game to let me take the game audio into the mixer. Inside it’s driving a small piezo speaker. I made a circuit from the two solder pads and connected it to a standard RCA audio cable.

I thought the signal might be too weak, and suitable only for a phono input, but it’s at about line level and sounds good!

Mixer setup

I’m not sure how I will use the mixer during the live performance. I will need some way of controlling the levels of the various sound devices so that everything can be heard, but I would prefer not to have to change the mixer levels after initial setup. Some devices will have to be mic’ed also, as they include speakers which are part of what makes their sound interesting. 

A tape loop made by modifying a cassette to play forever, giving about 5 seconds recording time. The recording is from “Footsteps On The Moon - The Epic Flight of Apollo 11”. The 1201 alarm represents an Apollo Guidance Computer error condition.

1201 alarm by vdu23

BLASTIT game disassembly

The objective was to take a tap from the sound output of the game to allow it to be used in the live situation to generate sounds. The clips are feeding into a mixer to check the level of output. It works well when sent into a phono input. 

How to make an endless cassette loop tape

1. Rewind the tape to the beginning
2. Undo the four or five screws securing the two halves of the cassette
3. Remove the two spindles and detach the tape from them - cut with a blade after pressing out of the spool of tape
4. Select a short length of tape - don’t use leader tape unless you want blank, unrecordable parts
5. Form a loop with this tape passing through the cassette tape path
6. Make sure the tape is not inside out - only one side of the tape is magnetic and if you put in the inside out you won’t get any recording or playback
7. Get some nail polish and brush onto the end of the tape - about 5mm. 
8. Loop the other end and press together on a flat surface - you should be able to move the tape slightly to get it lined up if you do it in the first few seconds
9. Check the tape path is set up correctly - it does not need to be under tension as it is the capstan and roller that pulls the tape through - the spindles do nothing at all
10. Insert into your walkman/recorder and test it out - you should get about 5-6 seconds of recording time