Tim Hunkin adds tiny people to functioning electronic circuits and then HIDES them. Bogglery AND sneakery. Brilliant.
Thanks, Extreme Craft!
Monthly Archive for May, 2008
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It’s odd to be a sundial. He’s up with a camera on a roof in the railyard, inching around vents, additions, storerooms, gables—warts grown and not removed—trying to keep out of the sun, trying to set up for the shot, wondering whether the light is already too bright, too hot, too direct, wondering why the train is late. It’s never late, or it’s always late. Maybe it’s only late when he’s up here waiting. If he brought a toolbox up here and set it out on the tar, he could probably use it to bake a cake. And it’s not even noon.
I half-remembered this sound as I was driving home from the grocery yesterday, and it took a little digging to find it again. I heard about Pekko Käppi via Warren Ellis’ blog back in March. Käppi has my number. If I had even more ears, they’d be listening to him too.
He wakes where he always wakes. He has slept in his clothes, and he smells like a fermented towel.
His mother looks in and shakes her head. He blinks at her and pushes off the sheet as she turns away. These gray socks are what’s wrong. Maybe if he could just…
Sleepy. Crazy. Not yet with the world.
The water from the tap is cold. Colder than makes sense, from up there in the tower, exposed to this same summer air, pipes under the lawns warming in the sun, up through the walls…
He leans forward and places a palm on the plaster. The plaster is cool. He wonders why it doesn’t sweat. He wonders whether there’s any coffee, whether his mother will complain as he drinks it, as if it would stunt his growth, as if he were a child.
The headphones are getting uncomfortable, but something is going on.
He nudges the tuning knob and the hiss intensifies, pulsing, like the breath of a predator. Deep in the background there are tiny irregular clicks—faint, frightened: the prey? And the hum? The hum is constant over this whole portion of the spectrum, no matter which way he tunes: the night? The sea?
He pulls off the headphones and pushes back the chair. His ears feel like boxers’ ears: hot, flat and raw.
There is motion outside the window. Something in the sky.
He eases the door open, applying a lot of muscle for extra control. The hallway boards want to creak as he bobs silently along with deep knee bends. He’s all joints tonight. He’s all joints every night.
The stairs flex. The front entry holds its breath. The door lets it out. The porch paint peels.
Up above the northern lights are swarming and searing, although this is not the North and it’s the humid heart of summer. Up there must be far from here. Cool, dry and highly-charged. Ionized. Electrified.
The sidewalks lead to the streets. The streets lead to the roads. The roads lead out of town.
The soles of his shoes are vulcanized.
We ended up getting 140 groups to do readings of Boggle and Sneak, for a total of close to 300 people. I’ve been saying that the story of this Maker Faire for me will be that 300 people walked up and knowingly did me a personal favor (and this was on top of the giant-sized favor that my crew of Ed, Andrew, Will and Susan all pulled out.) My main reaction is basically stunned and bewildered gratitude. People can be pretty great!
Ed, Will, Andrew and I spent the day at Maker Faire asking fairegoers to read pages out of Boggle and Sneak in our time machine. Each person or group read a single page, and we’ll be editing all the the pages into chapter-length videos. The readers were great! We had individuals, couples, parents and kids, moms and babies, groups of friends, and a man with the devil on his back. We’re still hoping to get R2D2, but we haven’t been able to get his attention yet.
