Here’s a photographic gem from the Cold War archives, plus some very notable strips of Sellotope (they were used to hold the original Concorde ‘drop models’ together).

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever been asked to make at work? Installing a new exhibit at London Zoo today, I met all-round troubleshooter Dave Hitchcock. He’s been asked to build everything from an electronic ejaculator for gazelles to a tiny tracking system, just like an Oyster Card, for Panamanian paper wasps.

I’ll be playing again at the Marlborough Theatre, Brighton, at their next Steampunk event on 21 February 2009. Details to be confirmed – but I expect to be appearing with  the robotic bells, theremin, saw and Good Companion – a rigged Imperial Typewriter. I may also bring along Uncanny Valerie – the ‘all-knowing’ robotic dolly [...]

Pay attention all you skeptics: This is a 100% genuine, independently verifiable, Christ picture, snapped during a monthly cleansing ritual with a Suzuki Wagon R.

Do you worry about your pet chicken getting lonely when you’re away? Well researchers at the Mixed Reality Lab in Singapore certainly do – and they’re tackling the problem with tactile computing.

This highly unusual, public experiment explored the strange psychological effects of infrasound – sensations that may explain why people feel a sense of awe during cathedral organ recitals or a sense of unease in seemingly haunted sites. Venue: Purcell Room, London, May 2002.

This is my Mk III robotic bell rig, designed to make it easier to take the bells to venues. I’ve already used the bells in my own compositions at the Gasworks Gallery, Vauxhall (a Resonance FM night, curated by Ed Baxter) and at the Freebutt, Brighton. Here, for Christmas 2008, they’re playing Troika (from Prokovief’s Lieutenant Kije).

In December 2006, Spacedog assembled a group of musicians in the reverb chamber of the UK National Physical Laboratory. This room has one of the longest reverberation times in Europe. Here are some videos of our extemporisations in this highly unusual musical space.

An arrangement of sounds from Croydon’s wonderful fruit and veg market. There has been a market in Surrey Street since the 13th century.

The theremin AV controller is a device I’ve created to scrub audio and video samples live, using the pitch and volume aerials of the theremin. Here’s a video of it in action, manipulating samples from the Hammer classic The Devil Rides Out.

Named in honour of the original theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore, Clara 2.0 is a robot doll who can play the theremin live. I call her the ‘polite robot thereminist’ as she listens to a line from another player and moves her dolly arm to bring her own theremin in perfect tune.

A mini, automatic puppet show in a shed, created on a shoestring budget for the South Bank Centre, summer 2007. The brief was to come up with something novel inside a garden shed that would celebrate the area and appeal to families.

Did you hear the one about the lady on the bus? Hear it on this soundtrack announcing the results of Laughlab – the scientific search for the ‘world’s funniest joke’.

A brief tutorial on how to play the saw, a European skiffle instrument with a haunting, ethereal sound.

Telepath: mind-reading magic on your iPhone.

Look into the radio mirror and put your hands on the founder’s tranquil balls to receive a personality reading with uncanny accuracy. This exhibit for the Cheltenham Science Festival (now on Southwold Pier) explored the tricks used by phoney psychics, recruitment consultants and other ‘cold readers’.