Here is the second weekly blog post detailing our progress creating Amplification.

Overview

Week commencing 4th May
We made significant progress this week. Many things started to fall into place and many of those things you can only really assess once you put stuff together were tweaked accordingly. Gradually we are reaching the tipping point where it goes from rushing around trying to source stuff and work stuff out to just bolting it all together. That’s not to say that it will all work when we bolt it together and there is still a background chance of total failure but that’s always a feature of making ambitious new work. Sometimes making art is scary; not only in terms of getting it finished – for example, this week we drilled through a very expensive chair. EEK!

In addition to the development of the piece itself, we also had – at last – some positive discussions with someone who might video document it. Yay.

Day by Day

4th May

• Researched and ordered: hearing defenders, p bone mouthpieces, pipes and fittings

 
5th May

• Researched: bearing options, pipe milling, machine shops

 
6th May

• Received steering wheels
• Drilled into expensive chair
• Desoldered and reconstructed custom sousaphone pipework for routing audio via stands
• Bought more tools
• Received various items in the post – a now daily occurrence
• Sent pillars to be machined
• Discussed ideas for linking rotation of stands – David Morton as technical consultant

 
7th May

• Made base for chair
• Made headset
• Made base pivots / bump stops
• Tested headset via pipework through chair

 


 
 
8th May

• Pillars returned, fitted, and tweaked (to eradicate wobble)
• Found a new supplier (Acorn) for bearings and other parts – they actually took us seriously and want to feature the finished piece in their promotional materials!

Each day we actually did a lot more than that, including head scratching, coffee drinking and other actual work but sometimes we are too busy doing it to write it down ;)

To follow: Creating Amplification 3…