Piano Pinball and Mini Theatrical Facades at Sydney’s First Maker Faire

Meet Pinball Pianola, an interactive sound installation mashup of a piano and a pinball machine. Launch a pinball into the gutted body of an upright piano, letting the ball activate the strings. It’s one of a series of pieces by Sydney artist Lucas Abela called “Temple of Din.” You just have to watch to see how cool this is:

Other makers that are showing this weekend at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney as part of the inaugural Sydney Mini Maker Faire:

Cliff Simcox’s Mini Theatrical Facades

These models evolved from a large diorama artist Cliff Simcox first built about 36 years ago, duplicating a narrow gauge railway terminus in the township of Vririsetto, totally fictitious, but part of a story of a hillside railway to the monastic towns of Luano and Piori.

Cliff says about his work, “Classical Italian buildings are quite ornate and very difficult to model without computer and laser cutting of fine details – mine are a hand-crafted theatrical interpretation… Materials include: Foam Core and Matt Board offcuts (from local framer), skewers of different widths, pop sticks thick and thin, dowels, balsa wood oddments, toothpicks and matchsticks, florist wire, coat hanger wire and found and recycled objects such as beads, buttons, straws, toothpaste lids.”

Sydney Robot Workshop

The Sydney Robot Workshop is an enthusiastic robotics community group located in Gladesville, Sydney Australia. They have a fully equipped workshop where members meet regularly to discuss and help each other build robots and work on various other projects of interest. The group originally started as the local Australian chapter of the international R2-D2 Builders Group (http://www.astromech.net) but as many of the members are interested in more than just Star Wars movie robots, the workshop has branched out into other areas like UAVs, and plays host to several non-robotics related projects as well.

The Wheely Big Bin

Wheely Big Bin is a movable sound system built into a 440 litre sulo bin. It’s 12 volt battery powered and hand made from spare PA speakers, a car amplifier and a car stereo.

The Rizzeria

The Rizzeria is a collective of self publishers and print makers in Sydney, Australia. At the fair, The Rizzeria will help you make zines, comics and other paper projects like your own wrapping paper. They’ll be on hand to help you fold, draw and stamp!

More info and tickets at the Sydney Mini Maker Faire website. If you are lucky enough to go, don’t forget to Tweet & post and tag your pix #MakerFaire so we can all live vicariously!

Thanks to the Sydney Mini Maker Faire blog for much of this content.