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Silent G - The Logic

"The existence of the sea means the existence of pirates"
-Malayan Proverb

"He that communicates his secret to another makes himself that other's slave. "
-Baltasar Gracian

Radio Graffiti

Everyday the sun rises. The trees coexist with us. Our bodies recycle fuel. Everyday the earth warms and cools again. Events swirl around us regularly that are so sublime, so ego annihilating in their cosmic grandeur, that one has to wonder...why all the fuss about the run-away bride? Why is "holy faces in food" on the cover of the newspaper? Why is the American Idol scandal the top story on the news? Its time we give voice to these miraculous events at the expense of those who seek to distract us from them. Its time we take back the ether.

Radio Graffiti pits four varied theremins against the central band of local AM radio. These theremins respond to events like the wind of sunrise and the heat of the coming summer with fairly wide-field broadcasts of pirate frequency songs. Next generation designs of the PRT, these little devices have fairly small power consumption and radius, but their broadcast-jamming effect is almost total within their mile-wide umbra. We are keeping a daily log of the activity of each location which will be posted after a couple weeks of monitoring, and we should get some sound files up representing the all encompassing shadow of our anarchic drones. Yea...we're going to make you wait. Update: Logs posted below.

Map:


Tree
Street __
__ Earth_
El Taco


Preliminary testing has shown us that each transmits for a radius of about a mile, as shown on the map, though this increases at night when AM stations decrease their broadcasting power to account for changes in the ionosphere. We will be logging the progress of these theremins via daily drive-bys, keeping tabs on their continued transmission via car radio. We will update this page with our logs as soon as possible.

Theremin Descriptions:

Treeborne - The idea of a shade-driven phototheremin was the first child of the radio graffiti brain storming. This tree looked perfect with a south facing, sturdy limb, breezy surrounds, and an out-of-the-way location. There appeared to be an evolved treehouse culture in this tree, but I dared to climb higher than any child should, so hopefully kids won't mess with it. Perhaps the most elegant conversion of natural events to square wave output, this blocky little device supplants homophobic talk radio with the dance of the wind and the sun.

Flaneur - By constructing these from common electrical housings we are banking on the average citizen's blindness to infrastructure. We hooked this run-of-the-mill pirate radio theremin up to a corner telephone pole and aligned the EM field to the limit line of the stop sign via a next-gen flex conduit capacitance rod. Consider this a tease for our upcoming public happening in which we play traffic in a completely unrelated way. Email me if you want in, and I'll give you the time and place.

Earthen - When using natural events as inputs for musical compositions, the expectation for tempo and meter should probably default to that of geologic time. With our first thermophone we pollute the airwaves with a radio signal biased by soil-temperature. This is an important song, and even though it will take several hundred years to play out you should listen closely. It ends with the destruction of mankind and the era of the reptile. Hug your permafrost and tell it you're sorry.

El Talko - Dude, even if you thought this thing didn't belong where it was, are you going to remove it? This is the foulest shitbox in all the land. Another classic PRT plays those weak enough in character to fall victim to the Tacos de Gato or the Horchata Rosa. It smelled worse than you can imagine in this room.

Construction and Setup:

 Our tricked-out phototheremin. Due to the power consumption of the different models this design likely has the largest broadcast range. Listen for some shady tunes in your neck of the woods.
The ease with which these went together was slightly unsettling. It was either the whiskey or the hubris that killed my shakes.

  
A new 555 oscillator spin off, the thermaphone's frequency is driven by a temperature sensing resister.

I think I look like a penguin here.
The logic posting the largest invisible billboard ever. If only people knew how to read.

Update 6-16-05: Daily Broadcast Logs

Each day for 2 weeks after we posted these theremins we took a quick drive past them all (conveniently on the logic's way to work, though G was involved in some checks). Below is an exact transcript of the log we kept chronicling the sounds made and instruments lost:

Day 0: Initial drive-by, all systems go, 4 theremins singing. Treeborne is the most active and lyrical of the theremins, we are pleased with our choice of tree and masterful placement. It appears that there is a good mix of light and shade for an intricate performance. Earthen is a monotonous, rigid sound. Seems to have a longer range than the others, based on the where we started picking it up. Our route takes us right alongside Flaneur, who squealed like a hooker as we stopped. El Talko was a low hum. Guess no one was shitting.

Day 1: All four still operational. Treeborne especially active, playing the clear skies and heavy breeze. Earthen might be slightly higher pitch, but I can't tell for sure. Flaneur's shrieks could be heard from some distance away as other car's activated her. My car's squeak is the loudest. El Talko is still humming a low tune.

Day 2: Flaneur is no more. Simply gone. Poor thing. All others same as yesterday. Still no action in the El Taco beyond its usual lonely song.

Day 3: I think El Talko might be dead. Bad losing streak. Treeborne sounds spotty, but it might just be the cloud cover. Earthen remains indomitable.

Day 4: Peeked in on El Talko, and indeed it is gone as its missing song would suggest. Nature tags play on.

Day 7: Made an experimental night run. Tree fairly quiet, but audible. Earthen is definately sounding different.

Day 10: Loss of Treeborne's song. Earthen rocks on.

Day 11: Went and checked the tree, found remains of the tag. Looks like curiosity got the best of the treehouse kids.

Day 14: Earthen still going strong every single day. Short of battery death, it will likely drone forever. We'll update if it ever goes dead.

© The Shiteasters 2005.

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