Burning Man Projects - 2009 to 2018
2009
Merry Go Down 02
With a new base designed by a trained engineer, people played on it day and night all week long. It required the traditional tolerance for danger in Black Rock City to welcome a now forbidden toy that was a fixture in children’s playgrounds for many generations. Here, children and people under forty were playing on a merry-go-round for the first time. Unlike most of my earlier BRC projects this one was photogenic, drawing the welcome attention of highly skilled photographers. Paul Kearny, Boris Kostov, Eric Rebollo, Diane Mateer, and Chad Brown assisted with design and installation.
photo by Scott Kentrose
photo by Scott Kentrose
photo by Keri Oberly
photo by Scott Kentros
Merry Go Down 2 with The Illumination Village Light House in background
photo by Andrew Wyatt
photo by Scott Kentros
photo by Scott Kentros
photo by Mathew Tuttle
photo by Mathew Tuttle
photo by Mathew Tuttle
The crew: Paul Kearney, Boris Kostov, Eric Rebollo, Diane Mateer, Anthony Bondi, Chad Brown
2009
The Jigglator
The Jigglator was another experiment in the visual amplification of motion. It was another experiment with a tactile interface. Instead of offering a tickle, the Jigglator interface rewarded the application of full-body force. The best I could do was make a vague estimate about what might happen. By the end of the week, it was destroyed. A second Jigglator would need to be much stronger than the first one.
2018
Iron Curtain
It had been ten years since I brought a tactile immersion structure to Burning Man. Always a few people had tried to ride bicycles into it. It was a continuing mystery why they thought this might be safe. This year hundreds of people tried riding bicycles through it. As ever before they all failed. However, due to another of the wonderful properties of ball chain the bike riders were none the worse for it. The ball chain strands gently absorb the force of a bicycle’s impact instead of bouncing it back onto a rider. The bike riders could not have anticipated that this would happen. Their persistence felt like a generational signifier.
See also close-up: Iron Curtain
