St. Valion's Gasworks Orchestra

St. Valion's Gasworks Orchestra is a unique musical stage automaton. Designed and commissioned by the Craterhold dieseltech engineer Robert St. Valion in 9996 AR, the Gasworks Orchestra is an entire artificial orchestra set powered by biodiesel and operated by staggeringly complex GasKIT instruction belts.

Mechanics & Inner Workings

St. Valion's Gasworks Orchestra consists of percussion, strings, woodwind, organ, and vocal sections, each of which consists of one or more humanoid automatons and their instruments isolated on a truck-portable stage module for assembly at a prospective show site. Each module can be partially disassembled for additional compactness, but generally at least two freight trucks are required to move all of the Orchestra's components. The modules include some basic staging to help provide audience members with a view of the Orchestra's workings as they play; the stage automaton is as much an art piece and visual spectacle in operation as it is an acoustic treat.
All of the various automated instruments are synched together via a limited autonet and are worked according to instructions found on the over two miles of programming gasket that spool through its mechanisms. Felted rollers and levers work strink instruments in the manner of a hurdy-gurdy, strikers crash down on cymbals and drums, and pressurized streams of exhaust or compressed air blast through the resonating cavities of the flutes, oboes, and organs. The humanoid mannequins either caper about in an immitation of playing or, sometimes, are integrated into the actual instruments such that they are actually involved in their functions. St. Valion and a few of his fellow artists participate in the show as the conductor and other actors in the 'drama' that forms part of the show's perfomance, interacting with automatons as though they were real (albeit sometimes whimsical) people.

Significance

Venues hoping to host a showing of the Gasworks Orchestra generally must either provide their own fuel and power hookups or, in more rural locations, must pay to have the requisite resources brought in from elsewhere. The whimsy of the Gasworks Orchestra show draws many fans in Craterhold, while the technical artistry behind it helps it raise attendance in the Commonwealth of C. The show is somewhat less popular in the more 'earthy' Free Faces League culture, and it seldom appears in regions beyond the reach of the Coalition of Breakaway Colonies because of the logistical strictures imposed by the ongoing War of Reunification.
The Gasworks Orchestra had a six month tenure at the Craterhold Innovation Expo Park, where it garnered rave reviews for its advancement of the art of stage automata. Even artists from Voxelia were forced to admit from afar that the show was an achievement, with Feumont Atsuhi remarking that it "raised the stakes" for professional showmen like himself.

Item type

Musical Instrument

Creation Date

9996 AR

Rarity

Though St. Valion is always working on new additions and components for it, only one complete Gasworks Orchestra is assembled at any one time.