So the race is on to create an efficient environment for fusion. One of the ideas of a fuse is to discharge a group of large capacitors together, thus starting a reaction. That's why, in our show, there were all those big guys in the back of the audience. (You also see big cap formations in other fusion startups like Helion.) The goal of Fuse, as Jesse describes it, is to be the SpaceX of fusion, enabling “big tech” accomplishments with all kinds of partners. .
Back to our story. Jesse contacted Serene and said we were opening a second facility (the first was in Canada) and it would be nice to have a grand opening celebration. Serene, being a startup founder who is also naturally working on musical robots, applies obsessive logistics efforts. Charlotte, being a director, does the same. Those of you who have any experience with life may be asking yourself, “This sounds like an alien planet with two queens. Was this, um, a procedure?” I won't give you a direct answer other than to appreciate your finely crafted intelligence.
Now you know the basics. I'm a scientist and don't enjoy a superstitious view on reality, but so many coincidences had to happen at just the right time for this show to come together in just a few weeks. At the last minute, we needed a high-performance robot; Ken Goldberg, robotics professor at UC Berkeley, discovered them for us. Why is reality sometimes so out of sync?
In the 1980s and '90s I often conducted high-effort, high-tech music shows in VR. I got burnt. It was extremely expensive, stressful and exhausting. I looked forward to a future when VR would become affordable and many people would know how to work with it. But when that time came, instead of relief I felt that VR had become Very Easy. There was a sense of high stakes. You had to count every triangle in the scene, because there couldn't be too many, even though computers producing real-time graphics cost a million dollars. There's a tangible sense of care in those early works.
If I wanted trouble and expense as guarantors of the stakes, I found them again in this show. The week leading up to the demo reminded me of those early days of VR. Late, late nights, which don't come as easily to me in rehearsals as before; Seren would be trapped there in cables and a mathematical suit designed by Threesfour, but there is a time problem with the robot's speed. With assistance she frees herself, comes to the screen and does 10 minutes of high-speed programming. The robots glide again.