This continues the report from 9/6 of the construction of a storage shed for ceramic bell production. Construction crew leader Angus Gluck has headed this project from the beginning.

Angus installs additional shelving on the interior of the shed.

Workshop participant Tucker Zenski drills anchors for the shelving. Extra storage comes as a welcome addition to ceramics production. This report will continue on 10/30.

Tilework continues in the small bathroom of the Unit 9 Lightscoop apartment. Planning intern Wendy Wu teaches workshop participant Mario Nuzzolese.

Construction staff Melissa Soluski sets cut tiles into the cornes of the shower.

The upper walls and ceiling of the showerstall still needs tiles. Tilework in the rest of the bathroom is complete. This report will continue.

This continues the report of interior construction of the small bathroom in the Unit 9 Lightscoop apartment on the second floor of the East Crescent Complex. Planning interns Wendy Wu and Natalia Woldarsky start tilework on the showerpan.

A tileborder has been layed out and workshoppers Steve Furlong and Raheel Sadi start the installation of the border.

The showerpan was completed in a lightbrown tile with white tiles for the majority of the walls. The border brings an interesting effect. This report will continue on 9/22.

DIFFERENT SKIES 2006:
[from left, back]
Jeff Kunzelman, Nick Rothwell, David Tristram [video artist for Different Skies 2003-2005], Greg and Hong Waltzer. Dennis Moser [behind Hong], Jim Combs, John Duval, Tony Gerber, David Herpich and Darrel Burgan.
[middle] John Rossi III, Bill Fox, Brian Good, organizer Mike Metlay, Russel Foster and Otso Pakarinen.
[front] Dave Fulton and Giles Reaves.

The dining area is prepared. Chef Eleanor Gillis, once again, prepared a wonderful menu. The crowd and musicians enjoy a delicious meal.

Different Skies delivered an absolutely terrific performance accompanied by a stunning live video performance by Hong Waltzer. Congratulations to organizer Mike Metlay for bringing this wonderful event together. A pod cast of the show and a video of all the performers describing their instruments is available here

[from upper left]
JEFF KUNZELMAN was discovered by Different Skies while he was living at Arcosanti and provided the poster artwork for the first 3 years. After delving into using computers to produce music for a number of years, Jeff has switched to using analog instruments for more a more tactile experience. He often perfoms using electronic music and digital video under the name Alpha60.
DARRELL BURGAN’s musical projects include Palancar and Cluster Balm and he is the brains behind Spirit Canyon Audio, creators of the world's most sick and bent impulse responses for convolution reverbs.
BRIAN GOOD hails from northern Ohio and has been a quiet but pervasive force in the Internet electronic music community for over twenty years. An award-winning jazz woodwind player, he has performed at clubs and festivals across the US and Europe.
NICK ROTHWELL Nick is returning for his 2nd Different Skies, having attended in 2004. His music rig is based around custom computer software that translates simple control movements into complex and beautiful musical gestures, completely controlled by the artist but extrapolating his movements into ideas not playable by human hands.
JOHN ROSSI III became a regular in Mike’s band Team Metlay, and appears on each of their 3 CD releases. He now spends his creative time developing electronic music for the DTS 5.1 format in his CrystaLogic Productions studio in Florida.
RUSSELL FOSTER is a Phoenix native, a solo electronic artist who creates ambient music with a tribal edge under the name Una Voce. Rus has over twenty years' experience as a guitarist, drummer, and keyboardist, and brings an exceptional artistic sensibility to this, his third Different Skies. Rus will be performing on keyboards, guitars, and electronic percussion.
DENNIS MOSER is an electronic guitarist who records music under the name "/usr/sbin", and has been chatting with me about how he runs his guitar synthesizer through four Lexicon Vortex effects processors to achieve unique sounds.

[from upper left]
GILES REAVES has been producing solo albums for almost two decades, starting with Wunjo in 1986. His album Sea Of Glass reached #11 on the Billboard Magazine New Age Charts when it was released in 1992. Giles lives and works between Nashville, TN, and Salt Lake City, UT, where he is a well-respected audio engineer as well as a first-call keyboardist and percussionist.
JOHN DUVAL is returning to Different Skies in 2006, having been at the 2003 and 2005 events, but missing 2004. John lives in Portland, Oregon, and will be playing guitar at this year's show.
TONY GERBER is returns to Different Skies this year after his wonderful contributions in Different Skies 2005. Gerber has been a driving force in the art and space music arena during his 25 year stay in Nashville, TN.
DAVE FULTON is returning to Different Skies in 2006, having also been at the 2003 and 2005 events, but missing 2004. Dave is is best known as part of the group Dweller at the Threshold, which has released two albums: No Boundary Condition (1996) and Generation/Transmission/Illumination(1998) and their third album Ouroborus was released on Hypnos/Binary in 2001.
DAVID HERPICH new to Different Skies this year, is a composer and electronic musician balancing dual interests in classical and new age music genres. He holds degrees in music theory and composition from the University of Kansas, and is currently pursuing his master's degree as a recipient of the University Graduate Fellowship Award at the University of South Florida.
This years video artist HONG WALTZER and GREG WALTZER, who participates in a number of musical projects in and around Philadelphia and southern New Jersey: Mutation Vector, Xeroid Entity, Holosphere, and Fringe Element.
BILL FOX is one of the most influential people in the world electronic community. A tireless promoter of the genre in the Northeastern United States, he runs three radio broadcasts of electronic and modern progressive music on two radio stations, which can be heard on streaming Internet radio at WMUH and WDIY.

[from upper left]
DAVID HERPICH
JEFF KUNZELMAN
OTSO PAKARINEN is the owner of Visual Power, a music label in Helsinki, Finland. Otso has been releasing music of one form or another since the 1980s, as a soloist and with the Finnish electropop group Tapa Paha Tapa. Otso will be creating electronic sounds entirely from software running on a laptop computer. This system allows an entire music studio to be compacted to the size of one small box, requiring only a keyboard to play the virtual instruments. Otso will also, despite dire threats from the other performers, do the Happy Finn Dance at random points in the performance.
NICK ROTHWELL
MIKE METLAY, Founder and Coordinator of Different Skies, returns for the fourth year of the event he birthed (after incredible labor pains) in 2003. Mike's first experiments in collaborative space music resulted the trilogy of CDs by Team Metlay; his efforts now are concentrated both at Different Skies and in his small-group collaborations under the mindSpiral banner. At this year's show, Mike may be playing a keyboard or two, but plans a heavy emphasis on the aebea, a baritone electric string instrument witha deliberately obscure tuning.
RUSSELL FOSTER
JOHN ROSSI III
For more information and a lot more photos please consult the Different Skies website. For concert information please check Today@Arcosanti report 9/13.

Welcome and welcome back to Different Skies participants. Different Skies is an international electronic music collaboration. This weeklong workshop is attended by artists in these and related experimental music genres, a working vacation in an intensive and rewarding creative environment.

The workshop culminates in a public concert on Saturday, 9/16.
The event starts with a complimentary tour at 5pm followed by dinner at 6pm.
The concert is scheduled to begin at 7:30pm.
Dinner Menu: Pea and Carrot Soup, Mixed Green Salad with Pecan and Pears, Roasted Butternut Squash and Cranberries, Spicy Greens and Garlic, Crispy Beets with Goat Cheese and Walnuts, Pork with Fruit Chutney and for dessert Chocolate Peanut Butter Tarts.
Reservations are required if you plan on attending the dinner.
For more information please contact the Arcosanti Gallery at (928) 632-6217 or (602) 254-5309.

New York Ground Zero

Theological Terrorism

An old, old story

From vol. 7, pg. 112 of Storia D’Italia by Montanelli
On the first crusade, year 1099

There were no more than 12000 crusaders that, in July 1099, after a three-year campaign, got to camp under the walls of Jerusalem. Their emotion in sighting the sacred city changed into surprise when the presiding Muslim garrison declared to be ready for an armistice. That garrison wasn’t Turkish but Arab, because the previous year Jerusalem had been retaken from the Selgiuchi by the Fatimidi, who had never confronted the Franchi. But they didn’t accept the offer, perhaps because they thought a non-violent negotiation would have ruined their triumph. Therefore they demanded unconditional surrender. The defenders, about 1000 men, resisted for 40 days. Then they surrendered. “Then,” a witness present, Raimondo de Agiles, famous for his zeal and his piety said, “one saw marvelous (meravigliose) things. The Muslims were beheaded or killed by harrow or thrown from the towers. Others were tortured for days and days and then torched. The streets were strewn with heads, chopped hands and feet.” Those “marvelous” things lasted until the total consummation of the 70,000 citizens of Jerusalem, including the Jews. They were crowded and burned inside the synagogues. Then the crusaders gathered in the grotto of the Santa Sepolcro that had hosted the remains of Christ, who had come into the world to preach misericordia and there they cried joyfully, finally feeling worthy of him.

The Secular Cathedral
A transnational structure aiming at a (distant) more equitable consumerism.
A habitat for remembering, living, working, learning and divertimento. Part of the divertimento is the battery of slides evacuating the cathedral in 20 minutes or so (20,000 people?). The mantle generated by the 40 or so slides defines an umbrella-parasol of about 400 meters diameter covering a multi-story urban life that the citizens of New York would think about and the designer-builder would try to satisfy (the analogy with the Piero della Francesca generous mantle of mother sheltering the flock of her children). The circular pond is the speed breaker for the people evacuating the cathedral from most of its stories. The evacuation is pure gravity effect descent, with no mechanical equipment, no energy use, in fact no need of leg use. It is a very large combination of children’s playground and swimming pool slide, of roller coaster rides and of emergency slides in air passenger planes.

Time: for instance from floor 30 one can reach a restaurant or a shop on Barclay St., West St., Liberty St., etc. in less than one minute. This is part of the appeal to visitors and employees offered by the multi-level grounds of the cathedral. Magnetic levitation propulsion is suggested for the power driven ascent conveyances. Besides escalators and elevators, gondolas could be propelled on wider slides Functions: the first 4-5 floors are of the “N.Y., N.Y.” format. The typical busybody going about of the Manhattan people. Those floors ring the area and also serve as entrance to the inner-urban celebratory spaces where business, cultural gatherings, concerts, theater let the visitors commingle, enjoy and learn. This is a multi-story inner space under the cover of the slides umbrella-parasol. A simulacra made of some of the structural segments of the towers might be afloat where the two centers of the towers used to be. The remaining floors, 40 to 50, are for the transnational activities in financial, economic, environmental, social equity fields of endeavor.

[From upper left] The water distribution system was near failing when the 3 inch line, that feeds everything west of the ceramcis facility, fractured at a fitting. The water distribution system is housed in a junction box nestled in a concrete casement.
The main line connecting to the junction box has to be excavated.
Maintenance manager Randall Schultz teaches young apprentice Charlie. A new hole has to be broken into the concrete wall for a new alignment of the 3 inch main line.
Schedule 80 fittings have arrived for the new manifold.
The location of the junction box is under the walkway, east of the Ceramics Apse and north of West Housing.
Additional digging is required to lay bare some 2 inch waterline that feed Crafts III and West-housing.

[From upper left] Pipe has to be cut to size for manifold assembly.
Before glue-up, pipe is sanded and dry-fitted. After the pipe is primed, both pipe and fitting receive ample PVC glue.
Maintenance staff David De Gomez holds pipe to fitting for 30 seconds as the glue sets.
Randall is making a final connection between the valve and the old line.
The new manifold has been assembled and Randall proudly displays this beautiful piece of work.
The main valve contains a 3 inch quarter turn ball valve, which is very costly but durable.

[From upper left] The old manifold has been removed and the new system is connected, waterline by waterline.
The main line has been diverted about 10 inches over and 12 inches lower, so that it now connects in the center of the box.
Utilities manager Scott Riley tests the newly completed manifold system.
David and Scott.
A small wall, made of recycled cinderblock, is placed around the main valve to extend the casement and protect the valve. More to come.

This continues the report from 8/21 and 8/23 about construction of a new shed for ceramic bell storage. This shed is located right next to the kiln on the west side of the ceramics apse.
The steel roof structure is completed and fire-proof side panels have been installed to close the sides of the roof structure.

from left: On the inside of the shed the crew fastened struts to the walls for a shelving system.
The doors have been hung and some shelving has been installed. More to come.

Harvest time is best during the early morning hours, before the heat gets too intense. The Agriculture crew starts their day at first light. T.J. Young, Laura Horton and Ryan Holandes pick a delicious selection of vegetables ...

... for daily meals and the salad bar, and for a weekly farmers market in the Arcosanti cafe. Several varieties of tomatos, squash, eggplant, hot and sweet peppers, garlic and fresh herbs, super delicious peaches and ...

... freshly layed eggs from a large clutch of chickens which help the garden crew with bug control. Peacocks have been part of camp and gardens since the early 1980's. New peacock babies have arrived.

This continues the report from 8/16 of interior finishing of a previous dormatory space on the third floor of the East Crescent Complex Unit 5.
[from upper left] The kitchen is almost complete, the stove still has to be installed. Meanwhile the walls and floorboards are painted.

[from upper left] The kitchen is complete and moved in. The space infront of the kitchen has become a comfortable dining and TV room.

[from upper left] A few stairs lead to the upper part of the apartment, a large studio with bedroom on one side, divided by book shelves and a lovely living area. The ceiling slopes up, giving a light and airy feeling to this space.