The Printer Orchestra by Grey London

To celebrate the launch of Print 3.0, Brother’s new range of state-of-the-art next generation printers, Grey London has created ‘The Printer Orchestra’.

 

‘The Printer Orchestra’ is a full-scale orchestra made entirely out of old, battered, reengineered machines. Printers, scanners, copiers, fax machines, hard drives, modems, and even huge dot-matrix printers – 97 dated, dusty machines, hardwired and programmed to perform an Orchestral version of Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’.

 

View the spot below:

 

 

Nick Rowland, Creative Director at Grey London said: “Take a hundred old office machines. Turn them into musical instruments with the liberal use of a soldering iron. Get them to play a classic Bob Dylan tune. Sounds simple? Yeah, right. But what better way to usher in the new generation of Brother printers than with a distinctly 21st century homage to the machines and music of the past.”

 

Hacking so many devices robustly in such a short period of time was a challenge but you can sleep when you're dead, which is particularly relevant if you die of sleep-deprivation. What did we learn? Don't hot glue microswitches onto stuff unless you love really horrible noises,” added director Chris Cairns.

 

Antony Peart, European Marketing & Communications Manager, Brother Europe highlights evolution of technology: “Without the need for words or commentary, we simply wanted to combine image and sound to reflect that times are changing for Brother and printing in general . The Printer Orchestra draws a significant line-in-the-sand and highlights the dramatic evolution of our printer technology.”

 

Spot in figures:

97 machines used in the final Orchestra.

Countless hours in production. Round the clock for a month to reengineer the machines into MIDI instruments before the shoot.

Innumerable breakdowns.

Thousands of metres of cable used for the entire shoot.

4 people – the core technology team; plus

4 assistants for the build; plus

2 people prepping the shoot;

And a 25-person crew on the day.