The low-tech version omits the bill acceptor. Instead, Jay stands poised on a milk crate with bowler hat in hand, extended downward. After receiving a donation, he hands the "user" a business card, places hat on head, and silently begins to juggle.

Once a viewer makes a selection, the "Jukebox" springs into action. Jay begins a two-minute choreographed ball-juggling routine that includes original tricks to delight jugglers and non-jugglers alike. His favorite trick, (simply because it's completely original) is the one in the juggling song called "Liberty" in which he balances a ball on the back of his hand and knocks it off with a throw from below. As he catches a ball in his palm thrown from below, the ball balanced on top flies up and off. Then as he catches the ball to a balance on the top of his hand again, the ball held in his palm falls out. Jay joked, "I'm trying to 'sell' this trick - forget that - I'm trying to get a good name for this trick so I can become as famous as Steve Mills or Rick Rubenstein! My tentative name for it is 'Jay's Knock-off'.''

 

Jay's juggling style is at once fluid and mechanical, as flowing human movement combines with the stiff staccato rhythms of an imagined machine. His routines are generously peppered with site swaps, multiplexes and bounce tricks. Even his one ball and two ball routines are fun to watch. Combinations of mechanically styled movements form building blocks for juggling tricks the way musical phrases combine to form songs, literally and figuratively.

 

The show has a "cyborgian" aural component as well. Mechanical sensors attached to Jay's palms and elbows relay electrical signals to a custom-engineered PAVO MIDl tools box- a small processor that relays MIDI data to a Macintosh computer. The Macintosh in turn orchestrates two digital synthesizers that generate musical accompaniment such as rippling scales, arpeggios and other repeating melodic fragments. A Macintosh program determines the exact choice and sequence of musical patterns based on the song the viewer selects and the juggler's movements.

 

Jay explained, "As an example of the computer sensing new phrases, when I go from the Boston Mess to fake columns (the standard trick where you carry the third ball in the pattern as a joke), the computer notices that I'm only catching with one hand, and so it responds with a musical pattern that underscores that little joke. This is probably the simplest example of how it works.  It gets more complex! There are all sorts of other electronic communications going on between the various pieces of equipment, too, but the juggling data is the most interesting part of the picture. "

 

Jay's home page on the World Wide Web includes documentation of the jukebox with detailed descriptions of the act, photographs, a complete list of the tricks he performs, technical information, video clips, performance vignettes, and booking information.

 

The Jukebox stands traditional street performing on its head: instead of performing first and asking for contributions afterward, the jukebox implicitly asks viewers to pay first, not knowing what they'll get. Why do they pay? Partly out of curiosity, partly to exert control, partly to resolve the tension of inaction, and partly to see some juggling. One wonders who (or what) is really in control: the human (or is it mechanical) juggler, the computer, or the viewer who sets the whole contraption in motion by inserting money and selecting a song?