the pianocktail on film

here is the Pianocktail scene from the 1968 Charles Belmot film adaptation of “L’ecume des Jours”:

science and the city podcast

The New York Academy of Sciences has featured a podcast of the ITP Winter Show including an interview with Oscar and I about the Pianocktail. You can listen to it here:

http://www.nyas.org/snc/podcasts.asp#1963

the cutest thing…

my friend paula made me a mini pianocktail!!

the piano-tuning bar

my friend cut out this funny little cartoon from the New Yorker for me because it reminded him of the pianocktail…very sweet!

more from the itp show

itp show

here are just a few photos from the itp show. a lot of people came and all of a sudden we had hundreds of users testing out the piano! we used juice mixes for the itp show as we had a lot of children playing the piano – we heard a ton of chopsticks and heart and soul! it was terrific to see the sense of excitement and awe around it. when an experienced piano player came along crowds would gather for the spontenous performance and everyone was curious to see the resulting cocktail.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/itp_winter_show_2008_best_of_show_p.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

http://gizmodo.com/photogallery/itpwinter2008/1005384172

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=grad-school-for-gadgeteer

more from the nime show

oscar playing the pianocktail for the  nime performance

the  crazy  circuit

blue curacao

playing for a drink

sake  with creme de menthe?

cleaning up

nime show

we moved the piano in the morning to get it to the venue for the nime show (new interfaces for musical technology) at Exit Art Gallery in Chelsea. we brought wine – red and white, liquer mixers and fruit juices and set everything up in the nick of time – each bottle had to be inserted at the top of the piano and hooked up to a solenoid valve – all of the wiring had to be re-done because everything was broken down for the move. at the show people seemed to love it – especially getting really crazy concoctions like white wine and sake and blue curacao or carrot juice. it was wild and so many people came up to play a drink.

here are some pictures from the show & thank you to lemia who took them:

experiments

the day before the nime show was chaotic – full of mishaps as we tested the system for the first time with water to see if the algorithm works and if the liquid dispenses. we had many experiments in failure. surprisingly the whole mechanism works, somewhat. but it is erratic and crazy – it has a mysterious quality which i love, you don’t really know what is happening or what drink is going to pour out – in a lot of ways it is really close to the onject that is described in the book that inspired it – L’ecume des Jours – because in the book even Colin had some kinks with his pinaocktail, like if he played a jazzy number that was too hot he would get an omelette in his cocktail instead of eggflip!

things done and undone

we have made a lot of important adjustments to the pianocktail:

we have attached new wheels for the piano to make moving it to the nime show easier (it weighs 400 pounds!).

we unsoldered all of the wires we had attached to the solenoid valves to attach female-in DC connectors instead, this to make problem solving easier should we ever need to replace one of the valves.

we attached hooks to the top of the piano to make organizing the wires easier.

we installed lights in the back of the piano to illuminate the piano action and circuit.

we labeled more wires…

we made a drain mechanism so that excess liquid does not fall on the piano action or circuit and we finished mounting the dispensing mechanism for the liquor.

we tested the liquid dispensing set up to see if it working properly and so far so good, now we just need to set everything up and test the whole mechanism with the algorithm.

[vimeo=vimeo.com/2524507]