Tag Archives: xylovan

Burning Man 2018, Instruments

Percussion cruise to Sonic Runway and beyond

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A percussion cruise is a pretty simple pleasure: Invite people onto the roof to play the drums and gongs, and drive across the Black Rock Desert.

As I drive, happy sounds drift down – people lazily striking the gongs, and chatting passionately about their burns.

The first part of this clip is the sound of a cruise we did on Tuesday afternoon, and the latter part is part of XyloVan’s set at Sonic Runway – friends from Liminal Labs joined random Burners on the roof and around the xylophones to play.

Unfortunately, the mixer crapped out so the roof percussion drowned out the xylophones, but the sound was enough to trigger some beautiful patterns on the Runway.

Indiegogo!

Support XyloVan on Indiegogo!

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indiegogohero_smThat’s right, friends, we’re campaigning on Indiegogo right now!

Please jump in, check out our video and give as much as you can to help XyloVan get back on the road and all gussied up with new lights, sound and instruments.

Please share this link with your friends and help us bring more music to the people. What’s in it for you? Aside from keeping one of the world’s weirdest, most interactive art cars in action?

Well, handsome schwag, ruggedly beautiful handcrafted aluminum amulets, gorgeous musical instruments, personal appearances by XyloVan and a helluva lot more. Please come check it out and give us a hand!

Vehicle, Workspace

The Big Picture is all in your head

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By now you’ve probably gathered I’m not an engineer. None of the XyloVan team is, price really.

As a result, patient this build blog is more a chaotic pile of raw coverage than a fetishistically neat, information pills step-by-step how-to.

This rolling concert instrument (I do dream of a fleet of instrumental art cars – DrumVan, or PianoBoat, anyone?) is taking shape in a raw, organic form in our minds .

I’m not computing engineering challenges ahead of time. I’m figgerin’ ’em out as soon as I get my hands on the materials.

This means I use sketches as a sort of problem-solving tool rather than a full-on architectural spec.

So this one (above) is one of the earliest, showing a three-quarter view and all the gross components we’re planning to build and attach – xylophones, gongs, lights, sun-shelters, speakers, etc.

I’m posting these largely because tonight’s the deadline for Maker Faire entries and we’re hoping to have the van in some kind of playable shape by then.

So on the one hand, you have crudely-detailed sketches like these:

And on the other hand … Continue reading The Big Picture is all in your head →