Village Savant // your guide to a creative existence

06/21/2003 Entry: "Shipyard Metal mic"

Shipyard DUKW sand-off and metal mic

What do you do when you acquire a 1942 WWII DUKW amphibious landing craft that needs a little sprucin' up? Invite a few hundred of your closest friends to throw on some work clothes, pick up an angle grinder and become a musician as local sound artists attach mics to the ginormous resonating instrument so they can feed the sound back to you. Click details for more info.

Saturday, June 21st, noon til dark, free

About 6 months ago, The Shipyard acquired a 1942 WWII DUKW amphibious
landing craft. It is a real behemoth form the old world: 31' long,
14,000lbs, 6 wheel drive, 20,000 lb winch, on-the-move tire inflation
system and more transfer cases and drive shafts than any reasonable
vehicle should ever have. We are going to rebuild it, put you in it
someday, and hopefully not drive it to the bottom of the bay . . .

This weekend, Sat June 21st, for the Summer Solstice and all, we are
having a day of sanding to remove all the junk paint and random debris
to prepare for a new paint job (olive drab, of course). The notion is
to gather as many people willing to wield angle grinders with wire
wheels and sand blasters to prep the body and fix some minor rust
through, in hopes of one day being able to actually use this thing. We
will provide as many grinders and respirators as we can find. Bringing
your own is even better.

During the grind-off, we have several local sound art types that will
be putting mics and mischief to metal in order to manifest the
molecular reaction to our work. Expect contact mics, strain gauges, RF
pick up, lots of processing and overlaid samples, coming back at you
through a PA system aimed inward at the work area. Kinda like a chill
space, except not quite so chill . . .

The DUKW body is a gigantic shell of sheet metal that will likely
produce much of resonant interest. But in actuality, we have no idea
how this is going to work. Or if it will simply be a sonic disaster.
So we're just going to try it and see what hapens. If it gets too
ugly, there is always Led Zeppelin . . .

What to bring:

- earplugs
- angle grinders (we supply consumables)
- respirators
- work clothes
- grillables in case you don't like what we have
- clean clothes to go home in after the hot tub.
- or sound stuff if you want to join the sound part

We start at noon. We end at dark. The event is obviously free.

For more than you ever wanted to know about DUKWs, including pictures
from back in the day, see: http://epoch.longnow.org:8000/Shipyard/10

Hope to see you on Saturday.

Jim Mason