Theremin Descriptions:

Treeborne - This tag plays the song of the sun with is photoresisitor, replacing AM chatter with the rise set and sway of a summer's day, translated into transitions between electrical states of varying velocity.

Flaneur - A traditional theremin that sends a radio shriek when a person or car nears. By evoking the mode of a prostitute, we comment on the whorish nature of modern radio.

Earthen - This thermaphone reads temperature rather than light via a heat-driven resistor. We buried it in a field down by the aqueduct, where slow temperature changes will create a long scale drone, changing with the days and nights and seasons and months. This is the song of the earth, unchanged by the fickle attention spans that drive musical compisition to lengths meaningless in cosmic terms. This is a song that moves at the speed of the turning earth, and would last nearly as long, were its power source to hold out.

El Talko - El talko resides in a forlorn place, where the fear of employees and partons alike will prevent the disturbance of this tag. When an object looks to belong to an established purpose beyond our understanding, one will not risk interfering. Every bathroom break-borne solo will taunt the world's fear of establishment, as this traditional theremin sits undisturbed.

Construction and Setup:

Update 6-16-05: Daily Broadcast Logs

Each day for 2 weeks after we posted these theramins 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 theramins singing. Treeborne is the most active and lyrical of the theramins, 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 noone 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.