Burning Man Projects - 2004 to 2008
Developing a concept was usually an iterative process, a first effort later modified according to visitors’ response, and perhaps later modified again. It was a model dependent on artists being able to anticipate an annual return to Black Rock City.
2004
Homie Paradise
My campmates were developing welding skills. I decided that I would first study working with wood and later graduate to steel. In the company of people with spectacular skills at designing bicycle drive chains, I experimented with one gear. I enjoyed clockwork mechanical cosmologies that were popular in Europe during the Middle Ages. Homie Paradise was a variation on Dante’s ascending circles of the blessed.
See also close-up: Homie Paradise.
2005
Tactile Compass 02, & The Iron Curtain
At its second appearance on the playa, the Tactile Compass had its gears reconfigured so that nothing broke despite heavy usage.
After experimenting for year after year with people’s response to dozens of varieties of tactile elements, I recognized that there was no material better suited to the purpose of tactile immersion than old fashioned ball chain. I started using ball chain in 1998 but it still took this much time to fully appreciate its value.
I wondered if I could copyright the phrase, “The Iron Curtain,” if I specified that my usage of the term was specific to a children’s toy. With that limitation I was awarded a patent on the phrase, “The Iron Curtain”.
See also close-up: Tactile Compass
and close-up: Iron Curtain
2006
Human Carwash 04,
& the Kiddie Carwash
I began contracting with fabricators to make a Human Car Wash that would be as durable as necessary for a piece of playground equipment. In this context The Kiddee Car Wash was the first of the corridors specifically configured for children. I felt like I had achieved a notable range of success for a piece of art, when pre-verbal children enjoyed the tunnels. For such as them, the original questions about how to describe the experience were moot.
2007
Kill the Earth
I had not experimented with art snark. Toy air cannons were mounted on the exterior and aimed at a plastic globe hanging by a string inside the structure. If people coordinated their air cannon pops the globe would swing higher than when a single cannon was aimed at it. It will take cooperation to destroy the earth. The air cannons wore out after a single day's use. They were a badly designed product.
The name was a too-dry bit of humor. Its exterior visual profile was boring and opaque. It gave no clue about what might occur if a visitor walked up and looked inside. As a result, few people took that step. As a playa project it was a failure.
In later years the strands of snakes and lizards produced for Kill the Earth found a succession of uses in photo projects.
2008
Merry Go Down 01
My intent was a continuation of experiments with the visual amplification of motion. More important was that I knew nothing about how to engineer a portable base for a merry-go-round. My guess failed. All that was positive about the experience was that no one was maimed by my incompetence. Though it was obviously broken, I could not stop people from trying to play on it. I asked the Burning Man Department of Public Works to use a backhoe to tip it over.
Anyone who builds large or small projects in Black Rock City is likely in time to have such an experience as this, a project that collapses on the first day and cannot be repaired.
Chad Brown was of vital assistance in producing the piece.
