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Cirrus Work - My experiences building an art installation for the Burning Man Festival

I’m pedaling a creaky bike through a cloud of swirling dust across the open flat plain of the Black Rock desert. I can see only about three feet ahead of me, and I’m looking upward hoping to see some landmarks poking out of the haze – hoping something will guide me to my little singing robot in the distance. I stop and pull my respirator aside to clear my sinuses and spit out a bloody globule that disappears immediately in the cloud. I think to myself, awful as this is, it will probably make a real neat opening to my final write-up of the project. I replace the respirator, adjust my goggles, put my feet back to the creaky bike pedal, and disappear into the dust.

The Denial

Roughly a year prior to my disappearance into the dust storm, I had read that the theme for this year’s Burning Man festival was to be “I, Robot.” Immediately, a long dormant art project sprung to mind – a robot that analyzes weather for a zip code, and translates the data found into musical components to compose and sing a song. As a sort of incredibly complicated wind chime, the robot would use variables that followed musical logic (wind speed for tempo, temperature for note range, etc.) I thought the robot would make a good fit with the art I’d seen previously at Burning Man.

I was already familiar with the festival, having attended five times previously with a themed camp named Shibumi. Together with Shibumi, I’d opened a bar year after year and helped host various events. I was also familiar with the Burning Man Organization’s Honorarium program, wherein art proposals are partially or fully funded through the org. I’d submitted a proposal in 2012 for a separate, structural project. Though I ultimately didn’t receive the grant for that proposal, I knew there was something about this little robot that had a better chance.

I wrote a Letter of Intent explaining the basics of the robot and its proposed construction, and submitted it to the organization. Shortly after, I was invited to submit a full grant proposal. I put together a full budget, a build schedule, and at this point, fleshed out many of the details of just how I was to put the thing together. Skip forward a few weeks of tense waiting, and one afternoon, while sitting on the couch with my girlfriend, the email arrived.

“In regard to the proposal for your project Cirrus - A musical robotic soloist who pulls inspiration from the weather which we assigned ID number ****, we are sorry to inform you that we have decided not to fund your project. It was a very competitive year, with the total funding request for playa art reaching $6.7 million dollars.”

I was crestfallen, but took the denial in stride. “It would have been a ton of work.” I told my girlfriend. “And to be honest, there were still a lot of details I hadn’t quite figured. It’s probably for the best… In fact, I’m a little relieved.” A few minutes later, I would eat these words, as a follow up e-mail arrived.

“ Hey - good news - we made a mistake with your proposal notification and accidentally sent the decline instead of the acceptance! I'm so sorry for the mistake, but we really want your awesome musical weather robot!! I'll send another email within the hour with the acceptance. I apologize. And I'm excited about your project.”

The “WHAA” that emerged from my lips startled both my girlfriend and her nearby sleeping dog. It was on. Now I just had to figure how it was actually going to come to fruition.

Brain Construction

I’ll let you in on a little secret that wasn’t in the grant application – I don’t know a damn thing about programming computers. I’d noodled around in BASIC a little in my youth, making little programs that printed words or played a little sound, but that’s it. So, I had to learn. I purchased a Raspberry Pi (a small, cheap computer circuit board. [I’d previously built one into a video game emulator following a very, very specific set of instructions that I found on the internet.]) After some research, I settled on the programming language Python – starting with Python2, but, after a week or two, switched over to Python3 as it suited the project’s needs better. I started basic and worked on the beginning steps for the code. Luckily, very early in the research process I found three resources that enabled the success of the entire project:

- Sonic Pi – Sonic Pi is a music program built by Sam Aaron and is included in the Raspberry Pi default NOOBS package. Described as “The Live Coding Music Synth for Everyone”, Sonic Pi takes lines of basic code and plays music from it. Think of typing “play C” and the computer doing so. Now think of expanding to “play C”, “play B”, “sleep 1’, “play Am” and you’ve got an idea of how one could script out a song.

- Wunderground API – Since 2010 the site Weather Underground has offered an application programming interface for queries to their weather database. This API feeds many projects ranging from personal weather stations people have built, to simple dashboards people program into homebuilt computers. Piggybacking on the resources people have put together to parse this API, I was able to make great leaps forward in retrieving and making sense of weather data. I’ve just recently learned that they are discontinuing this API, which is incredibly disappointing.

- Python-Sonic – This was possibly the luckiest find of the entire project. Put together by Gerhard Völkl, Python-Sonic is a bridge between the programming language Python, and Sonic Pi, enabling commands in a Python script to be sent over to Sonic Pi. I’d lost sleep over this component as I was really unsure where to begin on sending commands from one program to another. Finding this was like finding the perfect Lego piece amidst a sea of blocks.

Using these resources, I put together a “bridge” program in Python3. The program took a zip code for input, inserted that zip code into a link, pulled up a text page of weather data for that location, parsed that data and grabbed bits of it, then converted those data pieces into a musical command, then sent that command to Sonic Pi and pressed play. The beginnings were very basic: Look up a zip code. If it’s the temperature is over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, play a high note. If the temperature is lower than 80 degrees, play a lower note.

I’ll admit that the first note I received, on March 19th, was my Dr. Frankenstein moment. I’d essentially proven my concept, and from there, was just going to make the idea more complex. The process forward went like this: Add some features to the program, try running it, receive an error (ie. “Unexpected EOF while parsing”), check my code to make sure I didn’t miss any commas or semi-colons, look up the error online and see how others have dealt with it, make the changes necessary, repeat. I’ll admit that it was slow going, but by June, I had a robot singing songs about the weather and responding with aplomb.

Housing the Soul

The body for Cirrus had always been an uncertainty when conceptualizing the piece, even prior to receiving the grant. In fact, its involvement with the Burning Man festival really dictated the outward appearance of the robot, as it had to withstand incredibly hostile elements, be visible at night, and overall be eye-catching to passersby. In my proposal, I had envisioned a robot comprised of metal panels in a hexagonal shape, topped by an acrylic dome with lights within. The panels, however, proved to be incredibly difficult to source. At one point, I was considering either learning, or reaching out to someone experienced, for spot welding the body together from heavy corrugated panels. Realizing that this was incredibly labor intensive, I stepped back. What was the shape I was trying to achieve? Essentially, it was just a bucket or half-barrel. I began researching barrels and discovered that Home Depot sold a large half-barrel planter. If I used this, I thought, I could construct a lid for it that opened just like a trash can, with the acrylic dome atop filled with lights that descend into the barrel body. I purchased the barrel and plywood, as well as some tools and spray paint and began the construction in earnest.

Cutting the lid without proper equipment proved difficult but achievable with some elbow grease. I also worked without a drill for a few weeks before realizing its necessity. Another challenge was sourcing a keypad that was durable enough for the desert, but one that also had USB connectivity. Most home security keypads use an alternate connector that was impractical for my purposes. I eventually had to special order both the keypad and acrylic dome from independent sellers. Luckily, they were both perfectly suited to the project in the end.

Another question mark, particularly in dealing with the desert wind conditions, was how to sufficiently anchor the piece to the playa ground. The Burning Man Organization provided large anchors for pieces, but these protruded from the ground with large metal rings. How would the bucket tie to those rings? I combined this problem with another one: the antennae. My internet solutions necessitated an elevated platform from both the robot (for both connectivity and protection from curious participants who might be tempted to fiddle with the satellite connection.) Taking these two issues in mind, I built a network of galvanized steel pipe beneath the robot that extended out the side and up into a 10-foot pipe antennae. The pipe structure looked like a big fork that had its tines bent to a 90-degree angle and attached underneath the bot. The wires could then be strung through the pipe and run up to the dish. Additionally, the pipe was narrow enough to be slipped through the circular anchor ports and keep the robot cemented down into.

Construction was hard labor and lasted me up until August… with only a few weeks to go before the event.

Killing My Darlings

A former screenwriting professor once spoke to me of “Killing your darlings.” She was speaking of the process of script revision wherein you go through and cut all those great characters and moments that you really love -- ones that don’t fit in with the overall story or drag it down to a crawl. I’ve found the phrase to be applicable to many types of projects since, and Cirrus proved no different.

One ambition from the beginning was for Cirrus to have an “idle process”, wherein, if no one interacted with it for a set period, Cirrus would look at the weather in the immediate vicinity and “hum” to itself a little tune. I worked on this process for weeks, with entire days in my planner scrawled with “Program Idle Process!!!” circled in red. Each day though, I would work on it for hours and hours with no success. The difficulty came in interrupting user input. If the program was waiting for input, it had difficulty interrupting the waiting process to do something else, then return to waiting. It was simple enough to set an event on a timer – say, ‘every 15 minutes, hum to yourself.’ The problem was that without interrupting the input and resetting that timer, that 15-minutes progressed regardless of input and had potential to sing over someone’s interaction with the bot if they were there at the wrong time.

Then, after conversation with a collaborator, we thought, why not reverse it? Have the idle process be the “main idle loop”, and a key press interrupt that idle loop and cause the robot to stop and ask a user for input. The problem there: what if someone interrupts the input but doesn’t complete a zip code? The bot would never return to the main idle loop. This also resulted in problems with users continuing to interrupt the process and the entire program closing. In the end, I just didn’t have the knowledge. I was forced to abandon the idle process and simply have the robot remain quiet until interacted with. This was the most difficult feature to let go of, as I genuinely felt the idle process would have made the bot feel more “alive.”

Another feature that never came together was purely cosmetic in nature. I had intended Cirrus to have a set of robotic wheels at its base that, while nonfunctional, would give it the appearance of a NASA rover. I had intended the wheels to suggest the idea that the robot could be mobile, could wander the world looking at weather all around. The issue that prevented this: the wheels I sourced were far too small to really generate that effect (let that be a lesson: never trust the scale of things as presented on the internet.) After trying multiple other wheel solutions, I decided that it wasn’t worth the effort expended for something so purely cosmetic and slight.

Lastly, (and less of a darling) one question mark that really remained for the project was how to instruct participants to engage with the robot. With only a keypad for input, how would I let participants know not only that they needed to put in a zip code, but also inform them as to what was happening when they heard the music? Part of the answer came in the form using a Python module called SimpleAudio and programming the * key to play a brief introductory sound file stating:

“Hello! My name is Cirrus and I like to sing about the weather. If you give me a five digit U.S. zip code, I will analyze the weather in that area and create a song using the data that I find. You may also press 0, then #, to hear a brief explanation about myself and my music.”

Pressing 0, then # resulted in the following explanation:

“I analyze weather using a connection to the Wunderground API. I then translate that data to music using wind speed for tempo, temperature for note range, precipitation for sound augmentation, and so on. I then sing the brief constructed piece using a combination of my software and hardware. The theory behind this creation is that our processes of imagination are finite in that they are always limited by the sum of our experience. When we create art, we do not do so from nothing. We use a summation of our senses, our memories, and the natural phenomena around us to influence and design a new idea. So too I use a natural dataset to create music. Though this music follows a set structure, one could argue that all music does so, and that we all operate in preprogrammed criteria – even when improvising. I hope that you walk away from this piece examining your own processes of creation, and how and where they originate. If you’d like to hear a new song, you may give me a zip code and press # now.”

There was still the problem of how to get users to press the * key. I planned to buy acrylic lettering and place “Press * to Start” on the “lip” of the robot – the flange space surrounding the acrylic dome. As I was about to put this plan in motion, however, inspiration struck, and I placed the acrylic letters on the dome face itself, ensuring their visibility at night as they would be backlight by the twinkling LEDs in the dome. It gave the robot a modern, Wes Anderson-esque feel which I was ultimately very pleased with. With all that done, Cirrus was ready… and with little time to spare.

Liftoff

The Burning Man event runs for roughly 9 days, with gates opening to attendees Sunday, and suggested departure the following week’s Monday. I had worked with the Burning Man Art organization (the “Artery”) to negotiate the terms of my installation of the piece. They had requested that I arrive Thursday before the event, and stay until Tuesday post the event… a full 12 days. I had never been out there for that duration of time. The most I’d ever done was 10… and that was long. I’ll admit to being fairly nervous at the time.

With Cirrus crammed into the back of my car, I made my way to Reno, Nevada. After a brief argument with a U-Haul representative there (Representative: “We don’t rent trailers for Burning Man, so I can only give you a smaller, 4 x 8 trailer.” Me: “That sentence does not make sense.”) we were in business. With my campmates, I was finally able to get the trailer filled with camp items, bicycles, and other necessary Cirrus hardware. Loading and miscellaneous shopping took about 7 hours, and finally I was off to the event. I was joined in my car by my friend and right-hand man, R, who had proven to be an incredibly valuable asset in the loading and securing of everything.

The two-and-a-half-hour drive to the Black Rock Desert is very beautiful, particularly as we drove it at sunset. With the sky fully darkening, we turned off paved roads and entered the dusty gate line. We creeped forward alongside the other art projects and early arrivals. Whiteout dust storms slowed our entry as they stopped the car entry line at times when the visibility was low to nil. After about three and a half hours, we passed into Black Rock City, made our way into the event, set up some temporary tents, and got some sleep.

The next morning, I woke early and untied a bike from our absurdly overloaded trailer (Did you ever see Grapes of Wrath? Recall the families with their loaded and piled cars stacked high with all their worldly possessions? Sort of like that.) I rode out to the Artery to check-in my piece. People in Burning Man are huggers, I should explain. When greeting anyone there, the typical opening salvo is a long, warm hug. Here, I was a bit unmoored by the professional setting. Handshakes, real names instead of “playa names”, walkie talkies, a giant board showing the placement of the art. The organization was impressive while still being dusty, and the infrastructure staggering while still standing in a structure that felt so temporary. The Artery team informed me that Cirrus’s location had been placed along the radial between The Man and Temple, about halfway between the two. This was a shock! I had expected Cirrus to be in so-called “Deep Playa”, well out beyond the Temple where pieces live in quiet, awaiting wanderers out that far. This location was right in the smack of it. Immediately, I began two worries: noise level, and number of participants. The closer location meant more activity, which meant more noise, which meant Cirrus would be more difficult to hear. Additionally, given how many people would be interacting with the piece with its prime location, the battery was going to drain much faster.

Regardless of worry, I was eventually taken out to the location – an Artery representative putted along in a golf cart, and I pedaled my bike behind. They noted the location with GPS on an iPad app, and marked it with a CD (presumably for reflectivity) and small pink pom-pom. This set me to waiting for them to install an anchor. It took a great deal of time, but eventually, a crew arrived from A.S.S. (Art Support Services.) They consulted with me, deciding I only needed one anchor, then called in a heavy drilling machine that screwed in a giant six-foot long anchor into the ground. The A.S.S. reps wished me luck and left me to work. I had been given a driving pass to take my car out onto playa, so, after a brief ride back to my campmates (to find them steadily working on our camp setup), I hydrated up and took my car and Cirrus out to the location.

Installation took several hours, with the anchoring proving the most troublesome as it was difficult to slip the pipe through the anchor and screw it in to the opposite end. While I was struggling with this, I was approached by a group of persons on bikes. Saying they were involved with the Artery, they informed me they were so-called “Art Angels”, taking care of artists across the playa. They gave me an ice-cold beer, asked questions about my piece, and gave me encouragement and support. I was very appreciative and the beer did the job.

Eventually, I completed the install with only a few things left to tidy up (completed the following day.) Cirrus was up and running. I returned to my camp to find it nearly fully set up. R, my campmates, and I cracked open a bottle of whiskey, and breathed a collective sigh of relief for the work done. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize the work that awaited us…

Twelve Days of Problem Solving

Early arriving participants began interacting with Cirrus by midday Saturday. By Sunday morning it was already clear: participation was way, way more than anticipated and battery draw was extremely accelerated. Cirrus was singing thousands upon thousands of songs. In half a day early on, it’d handled 1700+ interactions. By late in the week, Cirrus was handling, at minimum, 4,000 songs a day… some days upwards of 5,000. This, combined with dust storms that were taking up hours of the day, caused the solar panel to be insufficient to charge the battery. I rode over to the Artery and consulted with A.S.S. hoping that they somehow had a spare generator lying around to charge Cirrus. Their response was a sympathetic “Have you tried sourcing your community?” which… to me… translated as “tough luck, pal.” They said that they could source me fuel, but for the power, it was clear I was on my own.

On Sunday, R and I pulled the battery and, by the grace of a friendly camp with a generator, charged it for a few hours and gave it enough juice to last into Monday. (Since I could no longer drive out to the art piece as the event had started, we had to put the heavy battery on a skateboard attached to a rope and towed it behind us as we walked the couple miles back.) This was not going to be a permanent solution, however, as the full charge took about four to five hours, and all that time Cirrus was offline. Moreover, the skateboard transportation was impractical and painstaking. I had a meeting with my collaborators and the answer became clear: We’d have to leave the event to pick up a generator and return. Heading back to Artery, I consulted with my project manager, Katie Hazard, who was kind enough to give me a “golden ticket” that allowed me to enter and exit through the service gate for the event, thus skipping the line of cars still trying to get into the event. R volunteered to join me on the exodus. On Monday morning, he and I made a last-minute check of Cirrus, took a few orders from campmates for supplies they were missing, and headed out of the event to Fernley, Nevada (about 2 hours outside of Burning Man.)

Returning to the regular world was a bit disorienting. We were dirty. We’d been eating camping food for the past four days. It was not without some boons, however. Stopping at a casino restaurant, while bright and disorienting, garnered R and I some chicken fried steaks, some ice water and cold beer, and a bathroom to wash our hands and face. It was glorious. From there we stopped at Lowe’s… only to find their shelves of generators empty. The next closest place was Reno, but that was another hour drive from Fernley. A tense moment ensued… before I spotted a box high up in their inventory. “What about that one?” I asked. The Lowe’s staff fetched a forklift and pulled a midrange generator off the shelf. It wasn’t even in their system. They sold it to me for $450. We also grabbed some Styrofoam walling and a cutting knife and, on the ground out in the parking lot, made panels for a protective box for the generator. After grabbing our camp mates a feast of tacos to bring back, we were back on the road and returning to playa. We got in as evening drew, (we were greeted as heroes for the tacos) and agreed that the generator would have to wait until the next morning. Cirrus would die sometime in the night.

On Tuesday morning, I headed to the Artery again. They gave me a driving pass to take my car out on the playa for the day, and I drove the generator out to Cirrus. While this happened, R single-handedly coordinated with A.S.S. and hand-dug a 25-foot long, six-inch trench with them to run a cord from the generator to Cirrus (so as to keep a distance for noise.) Many of my campmates joined us, we finished the generator box, installed the cable, refilled the trench, and started the generator. We were successful… until the generator box didn’t allow enough airflow in (regardless of the holes we’d carefully cut) and choked out. Valuable lesson learned: When making a generator box, make it larger than the dimensions of the generator to provide full airflow. The solution we came to on this: We’d keep the box in place while the generator was off, and I’d have to come out to Cirrus at some point daily to run the generator for a few hours, keeping the box on its side next to the generator to block sand and wind. I dubbed these events “Generator Parties” and brought out snacks and drinks to sit with my robot… typically watching the sunset. They were not unenjoyable.

Another problem presented itself at this point: the first of two internet solutions I’d brought (BurningFi, a company that was independently providing internet access to the festival) was not working. This was causing Cirrus to lag and eventually crash. Around the time of the generator fix, I brought my keyboard out and spent an hour researching and implementing a bug fix for the crashes. This worked to stabilize Cirrus, but did not solve the connectivity issue. Luckily, I’d come with a backup plan. I switched out the antennae and piggy-backed off the Burning Man infrastructure Wi-Fi that I had arranged to have access to. Also, I’d built in a backup protocol – when Cirrus is unable to connect to the internet, it effectively just “made-up” a song, pretending that it had a valid zip code. For the end user, this was relatively seamless, as there was no real way, unless you were very familiar with the sounds Cirrus made, to ascertain whether the music was legitimate or random (more on this later.) The combination of the Burning Man infrastructure Wi-Fi, the reprogrammed fix, and the backup protocol enabled Cirrus to work for the rest of the week… with some monitoring of connectivity.

Thursday morning brought a set of completely unexpected challenges. First, Cirrus was tipped over by a participant. It’s unknown whether someone ran into it, or if an art vehicle bumped it, or if someone tried to stand on it, but by the time I reached it early in the morning, it was laying on its side with the antennae skewed at an off-angle. I placed it back on its stand and returned to camp to get a drill and rebar to re-anchor Cirrus. There, I found R sitting quietly. He informed me that was going to leave the event early. The work, the environment, the project’s challenges, personal stresses had mounted for him and he was going to hitch a ride with some friends and exit on Friday… a full five days early. For me, this revelation brought a lot of emotions with it – frustration, worry about the project, worry about my friend’s condition. His leaving also came as a heavy blow to morale.He had been a champion on the project -- a workhorse. Moreover, out there, an acclimation tool the mind undertakes is to understand that you are here for a set time… end of story. The introduction of possibly leaving early suddenly brought everyone to feeling like they could leave early. They were thinking of the shower that awaits them… the prepared food… and suddenly, leaving now didn’t seem like the worst plan. I did my best to rally the team, conducting my annual Storytime – reading odd and unintentionally funny children’s books aloud… Others did the same, making cocktails and food to brighten spirits… but Thursday was definitely the most difficult day.

We persevered, however. R left early Friday with warm wishes from everyone to feel better, Cirrus was re-anchored and made sturdy as an ox, and the event progressed on. For the weekend onward, Cirrus performed beautifully, needing only his daily “generator party”, and some reconnections to internet signal here and there. My campmates stepped up to fill the void R left. My friend Plums, in particular, really rose to action.

Response to the robot was ecstatic. People would crowd around it, putting in zip codes for their homes, hometowns, lovers’ and ex-lovers’ homes. Once, when I was out there powering the generator, a participant looked up at me excitedly and asked “Can I put in my parent’s zip code?!” “Sure.” I said. People especially seemed drawn to entering zip codes that neighbored each other and comparing the differences in tones. “Must be more windy there” they’d comment. “That sounds shitty… which is probably right” said another. I also ran into a surprising number of children with their families interacting with Cirrus. For kids, the task of remembering their zip code and entering it correctly drew smiles of accomplishment that, I’ll admit, warmed my heart.

The best interaction I witnessed by far, however, was a large group of about 10 people, who had clearly set Cirrus as their meeting spot earlier in the week, rushing to it, surrounding it. “How are you today, Cirrus?” they asked before pushing the * button. They put in some zip codes and laughed at the sounds. “That’s better than yesterday!” they exclaimed, and all patted the robot’s dome and congratulated it. Once fully grouped they got on their bikes and went off to their next destination, but the connection they’d made to Cirrus was palpable and lovely to see.

On Monday, I drove my car out to Cirrus to de-anchor it. Cirrus sang a couple last songs about the weather at Burning Man, the weather in Highland Park in Los Angeles, and then was unplugged. The night prior, I’d watched the Temple burn while sitting next to Cirrus, and it was one of the most beautiful burns I have witnessed. The way the structure was built, a giant column of fire emitted from its middle and stayed there, roaring as the temple collapsed and burnt away. It felt like a wonderful capstone and goodbye to the hardship of the event. De-anchoring the bot Monday morning, sweeping the site clean, and leaving no trace felt cathartic too in its finality and completion. We packed up our camp and loaded the trailer overfull again. At dawn the next day, we left for The Peppermill Casino and Resort in Reno, Nevada, where I had the absolute best shower(s) and all-you-can-eat sushi dinner of my life…. but had trouble sleeping due to the beds being too comfortable.

Unexpected Findings

I’ve tried to establish here that Cirrus was both incredibly challenging and incredibly rewarding. The feedback from participants was amazing. There are so many things I would have done differently, were I to do it over again. The audio introduction to Cirrus could have been a bit shorter. The internet connection could have been more robust. In the end, however, I feel a sense of personal triumph having completed this ambitious project. Additionally, I have a whole newfound respect for the projects I’ve seen. As I walked/biked around the large-scale art at the event this year, I marveled at how they must have planned for this and that. “What were they using for power?” I wondered. “What was their budget and how large was their staff?” The work-hours poured into the event out there are astronomical, and I certainly have a newfound respect for the work that has been done. I’m unsure what my relationship will be with Burning Man in the future. This being my sixth time and having successfully done an art project, I do feel a sense of completion with the event. Time will tell, however, if, as the exhaustion fades, as the nostalgia takes over, I’ll be pulled back in again.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my experiences with this piece. I’d like to end this recap of Cirrus on a bit of an ominous note. One finding, wholly unexpected as I worked on this project, relates to our understanding of the language of technology. As the week went on, as Cirrus sang, I thought on how I’d taught Cirrus a language that only it and I understand… and one that only it speaks. As travelers interacted with the piece, Cirrus told them that if they gave it a zip code, it would analyze the weather in that area and translate that data into its language and system of song. Most of the time, this happened, but as I said earlier, sometimes it did not. Sometimes Cirrus faked this action, and spoke random notes. The fact that to the user, this made no difference, triggers some thought in me on the way technology can deceive us – the deception made possible by our lack of understanding as to the language inherent in the brain of the machine. As we’ve made more and more complex systems, it seems an inherent impulse in us to trust technology, to trust that it is working as it says it should. This trust has vast potential to be misused, however. Whether the true use is for data collection, for inadvertent participation, for the handing over of personal data meant to enable targeted advertising, there is a gullibility there that I’ve seen and now cannot deny. As the language of our technology grows, we must be mindful that many of us have a lack of comprehension of that language, and to the true intentions of that language’s creator. The songs we hear trace back to systems, and the true nature and purpose of those systems is often unknown.