Pi vs pd

Our studio for the week is in The Auxiliary Project Space, next to the station on the edge of the industrial area. This is where our glorious pd compositions, developed over the last week on our laptops, meet our Enviro Bike raspberry Pis. We find to our dismay that the pi’s processing capacity is not up to all of this … CPU overload results in distorted sound and endless clicking. Pi vs pd surgery commences … we spend a hard week pulling compositions apart to rebuild them piece by piece, understanding what the system can and cannot handle. We even make Module ‘menu’ with CPU values. Slowly-by-slowly we remake our patches, trying new light weight audio processing parameters. Gradually we build a draft of our Mama pd patch that includes our ‘peacock beeper’ and our angles choir and most importantly, the bikes can handle.

We are staying in a little house on the other side of town in the residential streets of central Middlesbrough. Our garden wall is fitted with original Coop glass milk bottles and is the backdrop for our gin cocktail hour. Other evening jobs include lightbox poetry – reconfiguring the ‘welcome home’ message into a new thought for the day.