We were busy at the shop again this weekend, cracking open the Serpent Mother container and taking stock of all her guts. The Serpent will be at the Electric Daisy Carnival next month, and we have some system testing to do and some minor improvements to make.

The view from Lorah's second story container... cloudless skies over the Bay. The Serpent's egg is in the left foreground, next to WAVE.

Anthony forks while Margaret wrestles a vertebra section off its rack.

Sooz takes stock of various serpentine items.

On Saturday we pulled out the racks of snake-parts and snake-accessories and gave them a visual check. There is at least one suspicious weld we’ll redo. Minor primping includes scrubbing the stainless steel vertebrae with Simple Green, but that we will do on-site.

Before we leave, however, we’ll be adapting the hydraulic system that recently ran Charlie Gadeken’s WAVE, and using it to drive the Serpent. WAVE made its debut at Coachella last month, featuring mechanical design by engineers Mike Prados and Ray Sykes. They’ll be refitting our snakey with the same system.

Tad forklifts the disembodied head of the Serpent out of the container. You can see her right eye socket and nostrils from this angle. Creepy.

WAVE, waving, at Coachella 2012. Photo by Mike Prados, who photographed the sculpture and took some lovely video capturing its motion.

Meanwhile, in electronics, we’ll be rebuilding two control boxes that steer the Serpent’s jaw and neck motion. Heated, technical discussions are underway about building a schmancy analog joystick controller for the head to go with the schmancy analog valves. Thrilling photos from the Geek Suite to come…