Rattlebrained

The museum was packed with folks when we got there at around 17h00 to finish setting up and all and by 18h30 there was a line of people waiting for the workshops to begin.

At 18h45 we were swamped in the crowd…

I had inherited the Tonatem table, being a “specialist” of this instrument since I’ve made quite a few of them helping Bill on various projects these last years. He had surprised me earlier by telling us that he thought two participants at a time was enough, I had imagined more like 4 to 6 but it’s a fact that after considering the workspace and tools at disposition it seemed that three was probably a good number of instrument builders to begin with.
How it worked out for my colleagues at the other tables is anyone’s guess, the first ten minutes were shear pandemonium, crowded by the mass of folks trying to see the different going ons, it was almost impossible to move and so the next two hours just went by step by step, drill two holes, screw this piece there, choose a piece of styrofoam, watchout! that wire can be pretty nasty…

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In preparation for the “Night of the museums”, a yearly event when many European museums stay open on a specific Saturday evening until the early hours of dawn, I spent last Friday afternoon at the Musée d'Ethnologie de Neuchâtel with friends Bill, Thomas & Jacques preparing a make your own "La Sonorie" instrument workshop that was to take place the following day.
For this event the different museums rival in offering entertainment of all kinds, in our case we where sharing a space with a “make your own electronic instrument” workshop organized by the diy makaway group from Zurich.

Three instruments were to be proposed: Bongoboites, Pailleasax (see picture) & Tonatems

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So what about “Back To Borneo”?

After building our little theremines, we set up in an large industrial space across the street from the main festival area. This was because originally our concert was supposed to take place outside but the weather was just too chilly and windy for that.

We (Bill, Jacques and I) quickly went through the program to clear any lingering hitches…

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Once again I’ll be joining Bill Holden next Saturday. He was asked to participate in tskz, a small festival for “sonic creations + art & science multimedia” organized by tskz.

One of the reasons I have not had time to blog lately is that I was helping him out in building the necessary home made musical instruments. In this case a few skid’fonias…

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Thursday’s concert was a mixed bag and a bit frustrating, but that’s nothing new. Basically the crowd had a few speeches to listen to before making there way into the concert hall, the plan was that we start playing once the speeches ended… Whoever among the organizers thought that the speeches would only take 1/2 an hour was pretty naif, especially in this area where folks take their speeches very seriously.

We were ready and all hypered up on scheduled at 18h30. At 18h45 it became clear that the speeches would last another 45min at least. Not wanting to stay in the over hot and stuffy theater, this week’s heatwave had made its way inside so off we went to have a beer…

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To present the 2009 – 2010 program, the Heure Bleue, one of the city’s theater and music organisms has organises an “open market” presentation tomorrow at 18h00. For around 45 min. the public is invited to browse among the theaters chairs where all 36 projects will have their own information display spread out on the ground floor.

Meanwhile on the balcony, yours truly…

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