Last weekend we set up for our two day long "Fun Palace" at United Downs Raceway, historic site of the amazingly named "Ale and Cakes" Mine.
Fun Palaces events are nationally advertised, and designed so people can drop in our out as they like, so we had people arriving throughout the day. This time we had one family who had been to all the previous Organised Atoms workshops, along with a lot of new comers, one all the way from Taiwan. As normal, we started by going out collecting, then eating lunch while browsing our slowly expanding library on Cornish mining history, minerals and atomic patterns in the Raceway's VIP cabin, followed by settling in to the "Rock Lab" to look at what we'd all found.
Our new, second microscope has its own built in screen, but it's a bit small - so we added a bigger one (borrowed from the Raceway). This made it into more of a group activity, similarly to our other USB microscope. We'd 3D printed a custom platform on it to allow it to accommodate rocks as it was originally designed for slides only. It makes better images and has much higher magnification, making it especially suited to looking at our collection of smashed iPhones, exposed silicon chips and e-waste - but it's slightly more tricky to use. We also had the printer busily printing out microscope photos of people's rocks again for them to take home.
This workshop was an opportunity to try out the "crystal log synth" (working title) for the first time, which has been the focus of new developments this year. The idea was to make something easier to use and better sounding than the cardboard synths that we have left over from doing this previously (most have been given away to participants). The idea was to present this as a way to hear semiconducting minerals, alongside the microscopes, streak plates and scratch tests which are ways so see and examine their other properties. Being able to plug a crystal in to an existing circuit without having to build one yourself worked better with these workshops, and as we had it plugged into a slightly overpowered speaker - it turned into a bit of a crystal noise rave at times. Our intention was to make this activity more of a musical one, and it works alongside a Volca Modular synthesiser which provides some more reliable sound, as well as something looking slightly more like a conventional musical instrument.
With so much stuff to transport and get working, doing a weekend long event gave us the advantage of being able to leave everything set up over the Saturday night and have it ready for us again in the morning. There are some unique aspects of working in a site like this, firstly when we arrived we were met with a couple of empty abandoned caravans left at the entrance - they often race around the track towing caravans, so people think they can leave them here, which is not the case! The local council were informed, and there was enough space to get around them, so we spray painted them to tell people that we were open. The next thing we found were a couple of kids on motorbikes who looked very guilty and vanished pretty quickly when I opened the gate - it's not actually a problem for them to be here, as it's one of the few sites left where kids are allowed and can do this safely in the local area.
We have a few additional very exciting things going on with Organised Atoms this year, so watch this space for new developments!