We find ourselves in our final two weeks of our residency at iShed with an idea we are both very happy with, a prototype that is working well in the analogue realm, a plan for how the project will develop and a great space in which to do so (see picture above). Yet again though, the electronics are causing us some grief. Story of my life.

Our aim was to include a dynamo-driven mp3 player and amp to power the secondary sound. Given the pumping motion of the bellows we thought this was a very elegant power solution. Sadly, we found the power from the dynamo was rather lacking for the volume we want to generate and crucially, as a result of this motion, the dynamo we were using broke during testing. Whilst not the most scientific of processes, these issues have made us reconsider the approach to powering the secondary sound source. At the moment we are pondering lithium batteries and egg timers, which actually adds an extra element of playability. BUT the research continues for now.

This is all part of the process but I think it's fair to say that at this stage the deadline looms rather larger than we would have hoped. It was clear from our early discussions that we wanted to complete something physical in our time in residence. I am hopeful we still will, although I am not unfamiliar with failure ;) Our residency has been a little plagued by acts of God but we are so keen to get to a stage with this that we are happily working on this together to make up for lost days!

In any case, the next stage of this project is where things get really interesting. One, two, three units are cool but it is our ambition to see what happens when many more of these are released into the wild. Will people connect to form chords? Will someone try to collect them? How will people interact with them? What discussions will be sparked? We hope to monitor these things from afar. We will have a proof of concept following this residency, the next stage is to convince others of the beauty of this idea...