Meet the team

Dave

I'm Dave. I like playing with fire.

Jeff

Figure 1

Figure 2

Jeff's main Asylum project at this time is building a small practice pipe organ for a neighbor, who has provided all the pipes for the instrument. Pictured in Figure 1 is the first prototype "voicing jack", which is used to test and adjust organ pipes for pitch and tone quality. A jack comprises a centrifugal blower, a reservoir with wind regulator, and wind chest which holds the pipes. The electro-pneumatic wind chest here is surplus from a decommissioned organ. The blower contained a 23-inch diameter vaned wheel, Figure 2, that was fabricated on the ShopBot. It was a very noisy affair, but more or less served its purpose. The second prototype jack is seen in Figure 3; it does not yet have a windchest, and hence no pipes. This one has an improved wind regulator and smaller blower wheel of 11.5-inch diameter, shown Figure 4, that spins at 2775 RPM - not bad for a wheel made entirely of wood! Also made on the ShopBot, it is well balanced, robust, and much quieter than the first wheel. Making a voicing jack is only the beginning. The final product will have a regulated wind source as created for the jack, a new all-mechanical wind chest, keyboard, and case.

Figure 3

Figure 4

Ash

Ash is a skilled innovator/agitator who loves to work their design magick in support of all things artists and local. Crossing paths with Dave at the asylum, they lead the logo design for grant carpet roll-outs. & They thoroughly get good kicks from the glimmer in littler eyes while experiencing the instrumental powers of pyronica at their fingertips, core memories. <3 www.therobinshood.com

F'Art

A group of makers (F’Art) at Framingham Makerspace work on a fire art project each year for one of the regional Burning Man events. For our 2023 project we decided on making a fire organ with dragon motif (we have a thing with fire breathing dragons). During our research on the physics of organs and fire organs in particular we found Dave Anderson and Pyronica. Below are pictures of our organ, IGNIS. Of course our organ doesn’t sound as good as Pyronica. Since then F’Art and Pyronica have shared space at Burner events.

Michael Gutierrez

Michael Gutierrez is a builder, tinkerer, and aspiring wizard. (Technology is literally magic in real life!) After helping out with an early Pyronica prototype in Somerville in 2021, he obtained a B.S. in Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology, and currently works as an electronics technician for Caltech Optical Observatories.

antha

Sam(antha) is an artist, builder, and website maker. Her hobbies include making music and lighting things on fire.