Simone Giertz, engineer and inventor known for “useless” inventions and “s****y robots,” has a marvel of musical machinery. It’s a barrel organ that pops bubble wrap, and somehow it can actually play tunes.
For those of you who don’t know, Simon Giertz’s career is endlessly amazing, from popcorn-feeding helmets with Adam Savage to taking inspiration from Disney’s Gyro Gearloose to a background in mixed martial arts sports journalism to a brief appearance in the Chinese sitcom Huan Xi Long Xia Dang. Seriously, her Wikipedia page would be awesome as fiction, but it’s, like, real.
Her own background in engineering physics means she’s got some great insights to share on bubble wrap, but there’s also a deep team of folks to check out who worked on this, including engineer Stu McCConnel and machinist Sami Go. (Yay, collaboration!) See below.
But everything about this is just a joy for fans of mechanical engineering and music and musical instrument history. The resulting design is not entirely unprecedented, either – it’s a bit like they’ve made a barrel organ using bubble wrap.
And then we get a great music request from her fans.
More on the project – great to see that SImone takes the time to do detailed credits:
Stu McConnel did a lot of the engineering and has a helluva brain. Please don’t try to hire him because he now works full-time (!) with me.
AJ Lodge helped film the music video and wrote the song for its debut! https://www.instagram.com/aj.lodge/
Amanda Lodge did the story boarding and assisted on the shoot! She does character design and murals and you should hire her: https://www.instagram.com/amandajanelodge/
Sami Go is a machinist who helped install the rotary kit! And she’s also taught me pretty much everything I know about CNCelia. You can follow her here: https://www.instagram.com/gosamilee/
Victor Broadley lended me his fancy tapping arm and saved me ~so much time~. He makes a bunch of movie props and has a cute dog: https://www.instagram.com/veektohr/
Jorvon Moss lended me his 3D printer when I was in a pinch! He also makes hella cool robotics projects if you need inspo: https://www.instagram.com/odd_jayy/
Good stuff. And we know from Red Dwarf that bubble wrap is the ticket to success…