Area Inventors Create Millennial Symphony which Genuinely Welcomes the Y2K Bug

Instead of ringing in the New Year with champagne, Will Trembaly and Rob Gonsalves have a slightly different plan: they'll be testing an invention that has been more than six months in the making.

Their Y2K Pops, which stands for The Year 2000 Presumed Obsolete Performing Symphony, will showcase computers at the Hynes Convention Center that play classical, popular and science fiction theme music with synchronized graphics.

There's even a "Semi-Conductor" to lead the symphony of computers.

"Most likely [the Semi-Conductor] will just wave a little stick. Maybe it will be a chopstick," Trembaly muses.

Aware of the potential for some Y2K-related computer problems, though, Gonsalves and Trembaly plan to keep a running scorecard of each system's performance.

As the millennium dawns, any computer failures, should they

occur, will be recorded, date and time, on a large scoreboard above the

demonstration floor.

Millenial Face-Off

Their idea, Gonsalves and Trembaly say, was to create an unprecedented challenge to fears about the millennium computer bug.

"About a year ago I started hearing about how computers around the world were going to crash," Gonsalves says. "Now, with my computer science background, I thought, that is just plain wrong."

"Most personal computers will be just fine...Nothing is going to crash," he adds.

Gonsalves and Trembaly had met during the summer of 1986 when Gonsalves, a college student, was dating one of Trembaly's female roommates.

"Rob was about the only person who would indulge in conversation about computers with me. He's made me a computer-aware person now,"

Trembaly says.

The two got a chance to work together in November 1998. Trembaly was talking to a friend who worked for First Night Boston, the city's annual New Year's celebration. The friend remarked that the organization was looking for First Night project submissions.

The duo was intrigued.

"At first we did a lot of brainstorming," Gonsalves says. "At one point we threw out an idea with a steam engine and all kinds of other stuff."

They finally settled on the computerized symphony submission, which was accepted in March 1999.

It's been a time-consuming project--Trembaly estimates he worked two to three days per week on it since April, and in December, he's been working full weeks on it.

Studio Line

The project requires a lot of attention, as their fourth-floor studio in an Allston industrial office complex proved.

A mess of outdated computers covers about half of the room. One of the first things that the duo did was locate presumed obsolete computers. All of the machines used for the exhibition run on Windows 3.1 operating system or earlier.

Finding the computers was easier than expected, thanks to a quirk in Massachusetts law that prevents companies from throwing away used computers in garbage dumpsters.

The two men hope to have 101 computers up and running for the symphony.

Currently they're at about 95.

"We'll get there," Trembaly says.

Since the first computers began arriving from companies and schools months ago, the men have been locating and assembling mechanical components, sculptural elements and electro-mechanical components.

Gonsalves is in charge of finding the music and choreographing the performance. Since college, Gonsalves has dabbled in songwriting. The selected accompaniment will include Pink Floyd's "Time," Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour," Prince's "1999," and a Gonsalves original, "Time Masters."

"I wanted all of the songs to refer in some way to time or the passing of time or the millennium," Gonsalves explains.

With the music selected, a more difficult task was to create graphics to accompany the music.

Gonsalves corresponded each note with a color: middle Cs were red, the E above middle C was green, the G above middle C was blue.

Mr. Roboto

On the mechanical side of things, Trembaly is taking on the difficult project of building the robotic Semi-Conductor.

"Disney has been doing animatronics since the 1950s, so what I'm doing isn't new at all, but its taking a long time," Trembaly says.

He refers to the Semi-Conductor as a "special-purpose gesturing device," a robot that will look like the upper half of a human body.

Right now Trembaly is making final improvements to the arms, shoulders, wrists and musculature.

Though it is 25 percent less

mobile than a human, the Semi-Conductor can withstand more force.

So although it may move a little hesitantly, it can carry its own weight many times over.

Trembaly learned about robots through Web and independent research.

"I come from an art background," he says, "but I've had experience doing mechanical types of things before."

The toughest part of Trembaly's work is attaching the 'muscles' to the mechanical skeleton.

Trembaly's toughest job will be attaching the 'muscles' to

the mechanical skeleton. For the most part the Semi-Conductors

musculature responds like a humans does.

"Our muscles are really works of art; the Semi-Conductor is a

little more crude, like any model would be," Trembaly says.

"Its quite intricate," he adds.

Following New Years Gonsalves and Trembaly plan to donate their

reconditioned equipment to either the Salvation Army, Goodwill or developing countries.

"We just need to recoup costs," said Gonsalves. "The rest, we're donating."

First Night Boston 2000 begins at 1 p.m. on December 31. Adults can purchase three-day passes to all events for $20. Children under 10 are admitted free of charge to all Hynes Convention Center events

before 7:00 p.m. First Night Boston 2000 ends at 7:00 p.m. on January 2.