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After conceiving and developing the project, the CSM team was in charge of supervising the production
and making sure everything was up and running for the 18th August - 20 days of intense work and trouble shooting.
Production is always hardwork, stressing, tiring, and in the end extremely rewarding, as you see your ideas gaining shape and the public enjoying it.
30 Jul: Stage arrives.
Terrain irregularities solved.
This is the Doepfer, central piece of the installation, an interface module that connects all the seats to the main computer. A lot of wiring there.
And a lot of wiring here as well, in a total of 2000meters. Will it be enough?
2 Aug: Looming starts in the morning for Arlete, Rakhi, Emma and Edd. All cables need to go neatly underneath the stage.
Properly labeled to avoid confusion.
Meanwhile at the Nerve Centre, there is still a lot of work to do. Here is Charlie tweaking the graphics.
3 Aug: Beware, you are entering high electricity area.
Inside the shed, time to connect the audio cables to the amps.
4 Aug: Inside the shed again, connecting the midi cables to the Doepfer.
5 Aug: Rakhi and Dan soldering the switches on a total of 42 42s, 7 7s, 5 5s and 1 1 seats. Do i have to explain again? Hurry up.
Thanks Richard! Good that someone is worried with informing the public of what's going on.
7 Aug: Are we sure this is were the first seat is supposed to go? Of course.
Still some doubts in the calibration, Rakhi? Of course not, your original plan is perfectly accurate. Well done.
The seats 'mechanism'. All material bought and ready to be installed. Total of 240 full threaded bolts, 240 nylon lock nuts, uncountable rubber washers and much more.
Debbie giving a hand with covering the seats for the night. You know how British weather's like.
8 Aug: Another day of precise calibration.
Charlie's first tests on the stencilling.
9 Aug: Arlete marking the rest on the seats.
All stage in place.
Good mood at the hoardings.
All lights on.
After being lost in mid-atlantic, the speakers finally arrived.
In 58 seats, 2 swapped audio cables, 1 defective speaker, 1 defective cable. Not a bad result at all.
11 Aug: Rakhi and Andy wiring the conductor's switch, which allows the conductor to reset the composition back to the beginning during the weekend events.
Rakhi and Andy again, now fixing a troublesome speaker hole.
Backstage view of sound check.
All speakers in place and working. The two ones on the wall stand behind the wheelchair user's hotspots.
All speakers go! Time for a break now, to gather strengths for next week - the last week of production, graphics and midi still to go.
14 Aug: First stencils done.
15 Aug: Martin, Rakhi and Andy still struggling with that darn speaker hole!
Dan working on a non-responsive switch.
Meanwhile, stencilling continues throughout the day.
Charlie, Rakhi and Arlete preparing the big bold titles to be stenciled.
John on the instruments graphics.
Go CSM. GO!
It's certainly starting to look like something!
16 Aug: The morning starts with the stencilling at full speed.
Tropical rain? Nah... that won't stop us.
Looking good.
Rakhi, Arlete, Robin and Atalia recovering from the spray fume, during their lunch break.
Bluetooth working and relay boards installed.
On site meeting, plotting the press strategy.
Can you see at all what you are doing?
Oh, gorgeous. The seats will light up each night at 8pm, giving the installation a great intimist feeling.
17 Aug: Last day of production.
Each seat has its correspondent instrument on top.
Big french horn hotspot for wheelchair users.
Tchaikovsky's score will be playing during the first few days.
People go home pleeease and have some rest. We'll be tomorrow at 8am on BBC Radio 4.
The remains of the day.