2017 Archive
- ALIENS? - YES!
Four large inflatable figures of green aliens, from 4,5 m to 12 m tall will appear on the playa of Black Rock City. They will be brought by the OraculeTang team (that previously installed a gigantic robotic monkey). This time we are not only going to bring an installation but also planning a performance lineup “Aliens? – Yes!”
Four different inflatable alien sculptures would be the sacral objects for all the aliens and the Burners, who believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life, worship alien civilizations, their wisdom and power. Every day the “ALIENS? –YES!” members would march to the playa and perform a ceremonial act playing wind singer in order to pay their respect to the inflatable alien.
1:44 Turquoise Portal v.2
The 1:44 Turquoise Portal v.2 is a 17 foot diameter 15 foot high stellated dodecahedron with an interior space for groups of people to interact. It is painted a range of Turquoise colors to activate the higher heart chakra. It has a sound component: the Quasar Wave Transducer low frequency feedback device housed below the floor that produces soothing random vibrations. There is also a full range high fidelity sound system playing recordings of Tibetan bowls, tuning forks, vocal chanting and other sound healing journeys. The space is also available for live sound healing journeys to take place. As with all Portal installations, its location on the Playa is part of its significance, this one will be located at 1:44 near the perimeter fence.
A Wood Turner's Dream
A Wood Turner’s Dream was inspired by an actual dream. In the dream, love ruled the world, unhappiness didn’t exist, and war was only a word in the dictionary. Three of the suspended elements are a “heart”, a “happy face”, and a “peace sign.
Abuelo Fuego
Abuelo Fuego is a shrine composed of a human effigy and a sacred mask Relic. The depicted being is a vessel of the torch of wisdom and wealth of knowledge through time. The top form emerges and rests as a crown on the head which is encircled with designs in relief. Wisdom and power is conjured through offering, ritual cleansing and dance. As a vessel, this shrine will burn with the Man and reveal a second Relic sub form.
Acculturation Ascender
An interactive art piece that motivates people to learn and expand their cultural awareness of Burning Man and the 10 Principles.
Action Figure Family
Imagine walking across the playa and seeing a set of colorful shapes in the distance. As you are drawn closer, you see those shapes to be life-size statues, and the closer you get the more you begin to see that they are all covered in small toys. But not just any toys: hundreds of action-figures of all kinds of styles, backgrounds, comic books, and genres. They are so densely populated that these “heroes” seem to almost create the larger statue themselves by their simple convergence. Look closely – chests open to show the insides, heads have Jack-in-the-boxes that pop! Look into the little girl’s eyes and see visions of Burning Man Past. Compartments and wheels that turn and action figures at work – oh my!
Ahimsa Hamsa
Hands have power. The power to transform ideas into reality. The power to create, destroy, and alter the world around us. Ahimsa Hamsa is a shrine dedicated to peaceful and productive hands that encourages reflection and reverence to our most valuable tools. The hand in the sculpture takes the form of the Hamsa symbol, representing protection from the evil eye. It also closely resembles the Ahimsa symbol, representing non-violence. Made with repurposed wood from deconstructed missile crates, the sculpture transforms materials that once held weapons into art that encourages peace, inclusivity, and collaboration. A handmade ceramic relic will be placed within the hand following a ceremonial procession of high fives and handshakes during the week of Burning Man.
Altar de Carroñero/Scavenger Altar
Altar de Carroñero/Scavenger Altar, a shrine and manifestation of the deity who watches over all things living and non living. Our Lady de Guadalupe, risen from the ashes, to reveal her newest form. Originally derived from Aztec roots, she has returned to show her true colors to those who dare to look upon her face. Guardian of the scavengers, the All Mother invites those who feel her calling to spend some time reflecting on life from death/death from life, and the balance between. She encompasses all. Graced with a blend of gory and delicately beautiful features, reflecting upon the true grit and glory of the world today. Brass and bone are the heartbeat of her imagery. Surrounded by amulets found and collected, true treasures, the goddess desires to be adored with relics that possess the power of life and eternal love. She does not shy from any certain energy and accepts all. Be you strong, weak, bold, meek, loved, enlightened, or lost, visit this goddess for salvation.
Aluna
Aluna is a structure that sits on its own reflection and stands as a unified entity on the playa. Upon entering, two pairs of seesaw swings hang from the ceiling, inviting you to find counterweight in a partner, who will collaborate and engage with you in a game of balance and trust. Pre-hispanic melodies converge with experimental sounds and techniques to accompany the breath and silence of the Black Rock Desert. You will be sonically immersed in an ever-oscillating universe reaching for balance. As dusk approaches, Aluna will be illuminated by hundreds of LED lights that line its frame and body, reflecting and challenging the sounds of Aluna, creating a complete interactive experience for Participants.
Angel Queen
Angel Queen is half portal to another dimension and half particle accelerator for the human senses and energy. Over a hundred thousand tiny crystals, reflective glass beads, and hand silvered glass pieces work with a techno-organic jungle of vines and blown glass flowers to create an immersive environment that augments and alters visions of reality out through the glass control tower and interactions between Participants inside the cockpit or meandering through the sparkling galaxy below.
Angels' Wings
A triplet of angel’s fallen wings.
Designed by Ou Lin, this art represents our belief that goes beyond religions and legends; our hopes that reach further than just imaginations; our spirits that merge from dawn of civilization and go to the dusk of mankind. It is not only an echo of this year’s Burning Man “Radical Ritual” theme, but also a reflection of our desire, enthusiasm and understanding of the circle of life. It is about soar, failure, revival and reincarnation, and countless uncertainties and possibilities in existence.
Twelve feet long and spreading 36 ft wide, the wood triune wings will shed beautiful shadows on Playa in the morning, will post as a blurry spikes in the dust, and will be an eye candy after sunset with visible LED lit figure to warm home goers’ hearts at night.
BlueLotusCamp has been an active contributor to our community with art and imagination. We truly believe that this “Fallen Wings” will, as always, be our gift to our fellow burners and to the BRC home.
Aperture11
Photomaton is a photographic experience where people connect and receive a trace of that connection.
Aqueous
Aqueous in an interactive landscape of meandering pathways of light. During the day Aqueous will shift in color and reflection, mirroring the sky within a walkable dichroic surface. At night, Aqueous will flow and glow in full illuminated interactivity, engaging large groups in collaborative play.
The highly versatile shape of Aqueous is created from three, modular curved platforms derived from arcs in the Golden Ratio. Placed together, these platforms create a giant landscape of meandering pathways within elegant geometric patterns. Each platform in Aqueous is created from a custom rotationally molded form, with a specialized, anti-scratch and anti-slip dichroic top surface. During the day this dichroic surface will reflect the sky and surrounding environment. At night, each platform will glow in full direct interactively.
Aqueous is based on Jen Lewin’s work The Pool and Super Pool, however unlike both of these works, Aqueous will have a daytime presence on the playa as well.
Art Car Bus Stops
Why chase after an art car like some crazed loon? Let them come to you. Our comfortable fully equipped Art Car Bus Stops are ideal places to pass the time, meet someone new and create glorious memories while waiting for your adventurous ride to arrive. What is your bus stop ritual? Hurry up and wait to find out!
As One
As One is an interactive flame installation in the form of a biofeedback-driven mindfulness game for two. When players’ heart rates synchronize – when their hearts beat as one – the effect goes off, pulsing their shared heartbeat into the sky in flame. Thus, the piece’s mission is to bring two people together, whether they’re out on a playa date, or new friends, or complete strangers from the crowd.
AS-IF SHRINE
A Confucianism inspired Shrine celebrating theories on the importance of rituals for cultivating humanness, the AS-IF Shrine is a small pocket of order offering quiet ritual space within the larger ritual space of Burning Man.It enshrines simple Confucian ideals educating through illustration, symbolism and quotations.Through ritual better relationships develop, enabling the cultivation of goodness and releasing haunting negative energies.The AS-IF Shrine represents reflecting on moments centered in our everyday messy world that over time go on to create new realities and new worlds. Our lives begin in the everyday and stay in the everyday. Only in the everyday can we begin to create truly great worlds.The AS-IF Shrine’s architecture is inspired by Chinese temples and is made entire of plywood, with intricate laser cut sides and roof, small steps lead to the shrine’s open gates, and within the shrine is a circular base and chandelier, representing the ritual space of Burning Man and Confucianism.
Ascension
In the Japanese culture the Crane is seen as a symbol of peace, luck, prosperity and health. It is believed that if you fold a thousand origami cranes, the universe will grant you a wish. We chose to build a giant crane (Coco) in the style and tradition of origami; so wherever it went it would bring with it the spirit and the energy of peace and wellness.
Ascension (Coco), is a 150 ft wide and 45 ft tall giant white origami crane made of aluminum truss, white fabric, and tension wire. The aluminum structure is modular, making the crane a temporary installation, but completely mobile. The 100+ components and over 7000 sf of 80% mesh texilene sunshade material, that make up the crane, can be dismantled and shipped in one 40 ft shipping container.
ASURA Bike
Psychedelic ASURA (Buddhism) is enshrined. When Participants are biking, the generator powers psychedelic light and sounds working in conjunction with ASURA movement. Participants riding bicycles with ASURA masks look like psychedelic ASURA. The ASURA Bike will operate each evening from 7-9pm.
Aural Fixation
Aural Fixation uses an 8-foot by 8-foot wall of lights to create a visual representation of sound. Participants create ephemeral patterns in the grid of 840 LEDs by talking, laughter, singing, playing music; different noises cause colorful light to be created and destroyed in unique ways.
Ayni Despacho-Planting the Seeds of Man's Becoming
Planting the Seeds of Man’s Becoming – In this ritual it is our role to dream the world into being. In a belief that thought begets matter, this ceremony gives us an opportunity to imagine an amelioration of the “Man” of the future. What is his greatest potential? What would his leadership be like? How will he be? -This shrine is built in honor of ancient wisdom teachings of the Andes in the form of a Ayni Despacho – a sacred care package is created for Mother Earth in gratitude for sacred reciprocity to all that exist. Symbolic organic offerings are part of the sculpture and consist of mountains for places of power/wisdom, Ouroboros spiral for the perpetual cyclic renewal of life and infinity, sweets for Love, bark for plant relatives, raisins for ancestors, anise for celebration/sensuality and various raw material. A ritual feeding in the form of seed replicas will be placed on the shrine for citizens of Black Rock City to imbue their intention of Man’s Becoming . . .
Barry the Disco Goat
Barry will be approximately goat sized, and he will stand proudly clad with small glass mirrors. He will be estimated to weigh about 150 lbs, and he’ll be more or less 40″ high x 30″ long x15″ wide.
Gigsville, at the very least, will interact through a series of rampages during the event. Barry will also accept gifts from his adoring public. His LEDs may also offer a pretty show depending on his mood.
Barterdog
You are exploring out on the open Playa, Amazing Art and Sculpture are found at every stop! Then you catch the aroma of Grilling Hot Dogs, you follow your senses and it appears. You’re given a Bun and a Sizzling Hot Dog, now load on the Condiments!
Every Hot Dog from the BarterDog Cart is a work of Art made by the Lucky Burners to find it! Fuel to Burn Bright )'(
Beatboxer
A pyramid of beats. A four foot tall wooden pyramid that produces beats at will. Night time only.
Beyond The Surface
Beyond the Surface will be a communal space for Burning Man.
This project will be an immersive pavilion with a canopy of infinity mirrors that will pulse light patterns based on the activity within the space. More specifically, these light patterns will be activated when people touch certain parts of the pavilion. At night, the pulsing will be prominent, while during the day, the canopy will provide shade and shelter. Infinity mirrors are being used as a way for people to explore one’s self and to discover the vastness of human collaboration.
Ultimately, this space will be created for people to come together and have a shared experience. The goal for this environment is that it will allow everyone person within it to truly see beyond the surface of each other and discover the infinite depths of our being.
Bhudda Bank
Our piece looks like a laughing Buddha statue but it will have the head and arms of the man. It will have a clear belly so you can see the precious schwag building up in the bank.
Black Rock Blind Tiger
The Black Rock Blind Tiger is a rustic, vintage speakeasy & brothel deep within the playa, containing many oddities, gadgets & alluring objects. Participate, explore & immerse yourself to experience the magic of the Black Rock Blind Tiger. On the outside of these mysterious structures, there are gears at work—rumbling away, while producing delicate gifts. Enjoy the view from the widow’s walk, crowned with a charming cupola. Invent your own experience by touching, exploring & playing with all of the intriguing objects. Try gazing into the windows to see the playa past. Explore each of the objects, some will help keep you warm on those magical, chilly nights. Figure out the clues to determine the password which will allow you inside, but keep in mind—all the clues of yesterday will rapidly change to keep the Blind Tiger and its mysteries concealed. Once you’ve unlocked the pathway to the inside, enjoy the swanky speakeasy, dance to jazz, and receive your own personalized prescription.
Black Rock City Cemetery
Come pay your respect at Black Rock City’s oldest cemetery.
DO NOT COME AT NIGHT.
Black Rock Observatory
The Black Rock Observatory opens the door for people to a new or renewed love of science. From the simplest observations of the skies man’s curiosity was piqued, and modern science and all its discoveries were born. It intends to inspire that same emotion in those who visit. From dust, we give people the stars. Here at the Observatory we seek to expand both mind and soul. Here we show off the stars, tell stories from ages past that give the constellations their names. Here we teach of meteorites and pass them from hand to hand. Here we discuss science in all its forms and weave a tapestry of how and where and why that enlightens and inspires. And what is that, if not the very core of art?
Our main telescope is a Dobsonian with a 20″ mirror, larger than many permanent public observatories. The smaller scopes are only smaller by comparison; they, too are possessed of relatively large mirrors. Nothing can prepare the soul for the endless beauty of the universe.
Bloom
Peter Hazel and a team of highly skilled professional artists from multiple realms is creating a forty foot tall sculpture of a “Bloom” of jellyfish. From a distance, this piece will look like a single large creature, but upon arriving one will realize it is comprised of thousands of smaller jellyfish, swimming in a sea of tentacles and lights.
This piece is interactive and climbable with a large viewing platform in the “belly of the jelly,” thirty feet in the air, where one can look out on the playa, viewing art and Burning Man from a bird’s eye view. The sculpture seeks to challenge the visitor’s sense of perception, and how things are not always what they seem.
Books of Dust
One element of our Art Project last year was wildly successful. We made an “Illustration Station” for people to draw on. We had intended it to be a helpful part of the Mask Making process inside the Guild Workshops. While it worked very well in it’s intended purpose, we were also overwhelmed by people who just wanted to DRAW. At all hours of the day and night people were drawing like crazy on this 4 ft. by 8 ft. blank canvas. We are trying to make a way for that same energy to be expressed in 12 to 14 different locations around Black Rock City this year. We hope that by making beautiful hand crafted, large books (with artfully decorated pages) that people will have blank space to be creative with their time and this year’s theme.
BORING Sign
Inspired by vintage Las Vegas casino signs and a healthy sense of irony, the BORING sign is a 18-foot tall, 20-foot long reminder to never take one’s self – or one’s life work – too seriously. The sign itself is made out of reclaimed sheet metal and discarded letters from dismantled corporate signs, hand painted, lit by 300 ten-watt incandescent bulbs and securely attached to a welded base with wheels (and sometimes, pedal-power) so the piece is fully mobile across the playa. You can usually find the BORING sign accompanying burns, alongside popular art projects, and framing the silhouette of the Man at sunset. With four 500-watt speakers and a playlist of danceables from the 60s, 70s and 80s, the mobile, rolling sign often attracts an entourage of sunset or late night boogie revelers.
https://www.facebook.com/campboring
BRC Historic Landmark Plaques
The plaques look like any historic marker. They are mounted on a steel pole in most instances.
BRC Wheels On Meals
BRC Wheels On Meals. This is our 6th year delivering hot meals to art installation build crews. We do this pre-event during what is known as build week. We have a selection of over 20 meal choices including vegetarian. We offer a shaded place to eat and we also give out sporks! And back rubs when needed!
Burning Tits!
This is a nighttime flaming carnival style game; throw the darts, pop the balloons, and win a prize. Fire, sharp objects, and prizes, what else do you need?
C-FIVE (Crawlrus Chrysalis Cranial Connectivity Crevice)
Crawlrus Chrysalis Cranial Connectivity Crevice or the C-FIVE offers an opportunity for humans to connect, assimilate, and experience by sticking their heads into the tender underside crevice where they will listen and be influenced by sounds and messages from within.
Last year after Crawlrus made many journeys across the Playa soaking up and recording the many sights and sounds of the playa (with help form their external sensory array), this year it enters a metamorphosis stage. Excitingly in this mode they can except and receive stimuli directly from the brains of other organisms to continue their developmental journey unto their ultimate future self.
Will you give or receive? Change or be changed? This psychic artistic conceptual spit swap on an Alpha wave level will surely be a unique and memorable experience.
Calix
Evoking a spiritual gathering spot during the day. The patterns on the chalices will be based on classical spiritual motifs (mosques, cathedrals ancient chalice designs.) At night, light shows through colored jewels of glass throwing out multi colored geometric shadows while Participants engage in a collaborative interactive light game.
Carousel Candeo
Ride a kaleidoscoping carousel and cast rainbow shadows all around!
Catmandu: Deep Playa Dumplings
Deep Playa Dumplings is a larger than life Chinese food takeout box. A simple icon of something that brings joy and comfort to so many. If you’re lucky, stumbling past this art piece at the right time, you may find it serving actual Chinese food!
Celestial Field
A sea of swaying rods form an undulating field rising high above your head and falling like the plasma pulled in all directions by the phenomenal magnetic forces found on the surface of our sun.
By day a field of mirrors reflect and intensify the sun’s natural beauty and power creating a maze of ever-changing light to explore, push through and play within. At sunset everything transforms. The field morphs, bursting into a sea of light reacting to movement and mimicking the fluid almost pulsing nature of the sun’s corona.
Like in the chromosphere, a magnetic sunspot has informed the pattern of rods, creating patches of pure brightness and areas as mysterious as the inner working of this great star. Zones of tranquillity where the world outside has been blocked out, enable you to lie in a sea of energy, life and light.
Swirling lights blur the line between playa and art breaking down the boundaries of this once unfathomable celestial being.
Charon
A gigantic 30′ spinning wheel with posed human skeletons mounted on its inner edge, Charon is fully powered by a minimum of 12 people working in unison. Participants are invited to pull a series of 6 ropes which cause the wheel to rotate progressively faster. When the rope pullers are coordinated enough to get the wheel spinning at the correct speed, a strobe is activated, revealing the skeletons’ animation. The animation tells the story of Charon, the mythological gondolier and ferryman of Hades who carried the souls of the recently departed across the river Styx, the last right of passage on the way to the afterlife. This piece debuted at Burning Man, 2011.
Cheese Maze 2.0
The Cheese Maze from 2016 is back! Now even cheesier and more mazier!
A giant maze that is completely see-through with 30 bridges.
Chia
Chia- O’otham word for Little Girl
The Next wave of humanity standing in defiance of her parents and the world, unsure what her present life will be like tomorrow. In a wave of technology, a million acquaintances and the absence of connection. The embodiment of a playground jungle. Fine lines and simple structure. To be climbed with love and care.
This piece is a 16 foot tall metal tubing model of a young girl in middle childhood. It represents a developmental stage in childhood when a young girl begins to discover her independence and sets goals.
Chroma Crystal
Chroma Crystal is a mystical experience. Three crystal formations grow out of the playa – forming a joyful composition . Its center space engages the Participant with sounds of the crystal’s origin and sacred whisperings of the Chroma Crystal Oracle.
Chronophasia
Due to a serious miscalculation, the time machine is on an unpredictable path through time and space. The crew suffers from Chronophasia, a form of dissociative amnesia, onset by continuous time travel. Their unique memory loss allows them to see the present without reference to the past or future; eliminating the influence that the concept of linear time would otherwise have on their interactions. These unsuspecting chrononauts are going wherever and whenever the time machine takes them next. Their collections and stashes of pseudoscientific clutter contain clues to solving a sci-fi mystery representative of the anti-ritual, the unfounded, and unexplainable. The time machine, its creation, and current state speak not of new beginnings or rebirth, but a blank slate where freedom from tradition can allow the individual to discover, authentically, the profound and enlightening experiences from which rite and ritual are born.
Claude The Dragon
Claude is made from recycled items used by humans to create a live like energy. Shovel Heads make up his chest plate. Plow parts give him his neck shape. His face is solid piece of fungus from a 400 year old tree. The rest of the 7,000 body is too many antique items to list, but those items create his interesting armor. The family of Black Bart ( The famous Wells Fargo stage coach robber) gave the gun handle to add to Claude. He also has the ashes of the late Great Buck Dan Jones welded into a oil fitting. There is a oven door on his right side to access the inside where we become the Wizard of Oz. There is a steering wheel and nematic levels so his head turns and goes up and down. His mouth opens and he breathes fire. The operator can look out of the scales to communicate with participants. We are looking forward to seeing everyone at home.
Clock Brothers
A digital face stares down at you and asks “Do you have the time?”
Come Hither
A lotus flower grows from the playa. It beckons us with beauty.
Come, enter into the center of the lotus. Contemplate our place in the universe and our interactions with it.
Come Hither reminds us to take nourishment where we can, and create beauty as we are able.
Cosmic Connection
Science is the new religion in our lives and this work will provide an immediacy of science play which releases a vision of the universe as a complex machine. Scientists must envision and study unimaginable forces, distances, and time spans. Thus a leap of faith through rationality extends experience beyond the realm of our normal senses. We will show citizens that interstellar radiation has been continually bombarding their own body though beyond their awareness. The goal of this effort is to engage the Playa explorer with the playful interaction of “catching” a cosmic ray; seeing its path through their body. Our desire is to move beyond experiential-based rationality into a more fundamental contemplation of vast scales of time and space and thereby surrender to a realization of our own insignificance. And if we are insignificant what is the role of our uniqueness and our belief in sacred things? ? Isn’t it absurd to be simultaneously unique and yet totally insignificant?
Cosmic Space Worm
The Cosmic Space Worm is a pedal-powered art installation that consists of five adult tricycles linked together with a segmented aluminum worm on top. It will have an industrial and robotic look, yet will also be very organic with the way it moves. It will be illuminated through holes cut into the aluminum skin, as well as a row of spikes along its back. Its eyes will glow brightly and its jaw will be articulated.
The idea behind this installation is to create a giant, strange looking creature that needs the power of the people in order to come to life.
Cosmic Space Worm
The Cosmic Space Worm is a pedal-powered art installation that consists of five adult tricycles linked together with a segmented aluminum worm on top. It will have an industrial and robotic look, yet will also be very organic with the way it moves. It will be illuminated through holes cut into the aluminum skin, as well as a row of spikes along its back. Its eyes will glow brightly and its jaw will be articulated.
The idea behind this installation is to create a giant, strange looking creature that needs the power of the people in order to come to life.
Crystal Cat Thedral
The unusually high water levels reclaiming Ancient Lake Lahontan this year have resulted in a rare occurrence. Turquoise vines bearing quartz crystals are sprouting upwards from the once dry desert floor. Alien cat-like forms are emerging from this primordial soup. These fantastic felines appear to be praying for (or perhaps preying on) their flat-faced human participants…
Cymantix
Cymantix is a sensory experience contained in an equilateral structure that showcases the experimental play of frequency and light through sound, LED’s and lasers.Three enclosed outer pods house control panels that can manipulate the frequency of sound. The sound waves influence color changing LED’s that line the interior of the structure as well as lasers that project spirograph patterns onto a heavy-duty cloth that skins the framework. When in the center pod, onlookers can experience Participants’ tactile interactions at the controls visibly and audibly. The light and sound show can also be observable from a fair distance away and can draw onlookers in. The installation also houses plenty of seating that can allow for a more passive and resting experience of the installation.
Dance For The Dawn
Dance For The Dawn is a ritual in an eye of harmonically dancing hands, that symbolize unity and invite to join the upcoming.
Daruma
The Daruma is a Japanese doll used for intention and goal setting. The Daruma is designed to be impossible to knock over, and is modeled after the founder of Zen Buddhism, Bodhidharma. This art installation will consist of a 6′ tall, bright red Daruma doll. Most of the Daruma will be painted bright red, with the exception of its “eye section” and “belly.” On its “belly,” the Chinese/Japanese Kanji words “福入” (“enter good fortune”) will be painted in gold as a tribute to traditional Japanese Daruma dolls.
Black Rock City citizens will be given the chance to dot in one of the Daruma’s eyes during intention setting ritual ceremonies. Those who learn of the Daruma’s true purpose will be moved to think through goals they would like to achieve. They are reminded, through the ritual of painting one of the Daruma’s eyes, of their commitment to work towards the goals they have set.
Death Stalks Life: A Wall of Kitten Tarot Cards
27 larger than life kitten tarot card paintings on plywood within 3 walls on a platform. Some of the cards will be close to the original source (the devil, death, 4 of swords, etc.) while others will be invented and pointed more to my questions of life, loss, identity, and inspiration in the form of cute cartoon noodle arm cats. The kittens will act out scenes and images of life, traditional tarot cards, while other cards will be more abstract and may not involve kittens directly. A bright color pallet and standard grid format will provide some consistency within the groupings of paintings as it changes throughout the day. The installation will be in honor of my older brother.
Deep Playa Hangout
Swing and hammocks in the deep playa. It’s needed.
Deep Playa Lifehouse
At night, the Lifehouse is identifiable by its rotating green beacon on top with green and blue LED lights/EL wire along the sides and at the base. The Lighthouse now sits atop the Beehive, the color scheme is changed for continuity between the two pieces, and the structure once again serves as a loving, sheltering, communal relay station for citizens venturing out into or returning from deep playa.
Delicates Cycle Altar
The Delicates’ Cycle Altar takes the form of the washing machine that houses the skull of the artist. Flickering LED candles surround the skull, faintly illuminating it and making it visible through the washing machine’s front, round window. There is a replica of a curled-up cat, sleeping on top of the washing machine.
The altar is framed by a square portal, made out of galvanized pipes. A battery-powered strobe is attached to the frame right above the altar, flashing once every minute, illuminating the altar and whoever else happens to be interacting with it.
The skull is surrounded by thick, convoluted layers of impenetrable metal, symbolizing our reality tunnels, often as thick, convoluted and impenetrable. The altar is a contemplation on the artist’s reality tunnel; albeit not a gloomy one – after all, the skull is looking out onto the open playa and Black Rock City citizens, who happen to be interacting with the altar.
Desert Eyes
The project consists of a dome of imposing scale with protruding pipes, enabling viewers to view their entire surroundings in separate frames at a distance and focus on a single frame at close proximity. The whole structure has a reflective, metallic surface that absorbs its surroundings and allows the structure to partially dissolve into the landscape. The curves of the dome and pipes however, distort the reflections that bounce off the structure giving the user an augmented view of the surrounding environment.
An interactive LED system brings the project to life and turns the structure into a hub of celebration during night hours. The lighting together with a specifically designed soundscape allow the user to emerge into a vivid sensory experience of emotion and technology.
Deus Ex Machina
When you approach this dilapidated factory, you’ll see a wooden structure that looks long abandoned — graffiti on the outside, and ghosts of industry at the entry way. As you make your way around fallen trusses towards a mysterious altar in the middle of the structure, you’ll see threatening clouds and an offering to the gods of industry, along with the handle to a mysterious crank that could have something to do with a kinetic automaton. What happens when you turn the crank? Why has industry sucked all color and sound out of this place?
Once the clouds part and a giant finger has accepted or rejected the offering, faint music starts to play and lights start to shine out of the slats in a garage at the back of the structure. Drawn to the light, you walk towards it and notice that things start to have color and substance. Entering the garage, you will find a replica of the original oscillator used in the soundtrack to Fantasia, and learn about the founding of Silicon Valley.
Devoted
Devoted explores our modern need for social interaction and affirmation over contemplation. While the roofline appears to be that of a temple, as one approaches, a communication dish is seen at the highest point of the structure. The roof is tiled with recycled campaign signs. Whiteboards and markers invite sharing of thought. Hanging Chad voting booths retired from the 2000 Florida election host computer terminals allowing for participants to either write fake news about Burning Man, or real emails that will be delivered to thier future selves before the 2018 midterm elections.
Devoted explores the relation between citizenship, intention, and the responsibility of technological leadership in a world of instant communication.
Do the Cleu!
Do the Cleu! seeks to provide a moment to fully experience what it means to be a conscious being on planet Earth. Walking the circles of the labyrinth can be an individual or shared radical ritual providing a kinesthetic experience of At-Onement through the Fibonacci sequence of 1, 2, 3, 5. The labyrinth provides a contemplative experience on the playa, a special place where participants can take as long as they like on the intertwining circular paths representing the miraculous synchronicities of Consciousness, Life, Earth, Universe.
Just beyond the colorful pinwheels and flags of the labyrinth, the participant can view the fascinating panoply of creativity on the playa. In the center of the labyrinth, participants can create their own radical rituals and transformative moments of At-Onement. In a magical box at the base of a large Cleu, participants may find a clue to their own lives or even be led to CleuCamp where they can get a polyphonic Cleu brainwashing & copper Cleu pendant.
DO-ality Pillars
Easily identify the duality of FREE WILL of individuality, represented as symbolic truth world wide, The Black&White Pillars. Behind every Burning sun there is the surrounding of darkness. Where do you STAND?
Efflorescence
Efflorescence built by the Blazin’ Lily Gals is an other worldly space garden. The project will feature 13 foot tall metal flowers that shoot balls of fire high into the sky.
El Diabla
On the first Monday of the event, Crimson Rose extracts a flame from the sun to light a fire in El Diabla, a special cauldron located in Center Camp. For the flame to continue burning it must be stoked, disturbed and kept alive throughout the entire week. We encourage all those that encounter El Diabla to help keep this flame alive.
Electric Dandelions
Electric Dandelions will consist of 3 giant dandelions (27 ft tall) that double as fireworks at night. Each dandelion bulb is 8-16ft in diameter. The project also has 3 leaf-shaped seats around each dandelion base that act as benches. So the art project is also functional in that it can provide public seating.
Each Dandelion will have controls built into the base of the project that people will be able to manipulate the LED lighting effects. Essentially, a Participant will be able to control their own firework.
Emotional Journeys
Shrine of Arches depicting our Emotional Journeys. Emotions from pure joy to the most traumatic difficulty are depicted in words, imagery, colors, stories and offerings. Come share your impressions, tell your story, and help the healing of others.
Escape Key
Like an ancient ziggurat, the Escape Key juts out of the landscape. It’s black and featureless. There are strange sounds coming from inside…
At night, a doorway shall appear. Curious participants will step inside and be transported out of this world.
The Escape Key beckons….
Everything You Need Is Inside You
Everything You Need Is Inside You, 2017 is a large scale neon light installation by Olivia Steele. The artwork is a meditative piece on inner truth and awareness. All of us are searching for something in life. People will go around the world and back again without realizing that what they want is actually already quite close to them. Whether it’s happiness, health, wealth, or wisdom, this installation aims to challenge your perception on self empowerment. I invite you to look in the mirror and reflect.
This installation encourages us to stop looking to the world to give you whatever it is we’re looking for. The beauty of life is that your destiny lies always in your hands, and the answers are within. Look no further, Everything you need is inside you .
Feelings
“Feelings” is a large 3-D triangle, each side representing critical emotions of our well being. What emotion is represented by climbing an attached ladder that leads to nowhere? There are multiple doors that cannot be opened, why? Is something trapped inside or is someone merely shutting something out? Knobs and valves can be turned and opened, light switches can be turned on and off; all similar to our key emotion of arousal and sexuality.
There is a dark void within the pyramid; it will feel empty and look dark just like many of our natural emotions of loneliness. A large mirror is placed at the correct height to reflect a persons beauty; or does it only show ugliness? Ideas and thoughts are fleeting ideas, just like a touch light represents by tapping to illuminate. Every square inch of the pyramid is covered with something tactile or covered with bright colors.
Field of Fairies
Field of Fairies will have 30 Fairies on the playa covering an area of about 120’x160.’ Each Fairy is unique with a different voice and face. She will be 14″ high on a 78″ pole. She is powered with a solar panel, and contains a Raspberry Pi Zero, LED’s, a small speaker, and motion and light sensors. The Fairies may be a bit demanding at times.
Obedience builds a structure that ritual occupies. Ritual forms an inner framework to empower the individual. Obey our Fairies and they will help make one’s wishes come true.
Fire Ancestor
Fire Ancestor is a sculpture of metal and fire constructed of short horizontal pipes that twist up like a dust devil captured in a moment of steel.
13′ tall and sitting atop a rotating base, it awaits the participant. A radical ritual will bring it to life, spinning, echoing the sounds of our ancestors and ultimately erupting in a torrent of flame.
Fire Spinner
Fire Spinner is a steel mechanical wheel 13′ tall, it has 2 steel baskets that hold wood.
Those baskets are set on fire, the wheel is then set in motion via a 20′ long drive shaft and a hand crank mechanism. Fire Spinner is inspired from watching people spinning Poi, it is an interpretation of that art form. Black Rock City Participants will have the opportunity to spin the wheel via the crank mechanism.
Firmament
A canopy of LEDs is suspended from a 42′ tall aluminum tower. At the top of the tower is a 21″ diameter ball of LEDs – the beacon.
The canopy is a 6-pointed star, 52′ in diameter. It is composed of 48 equilateral triangular panels, each made of bird netting, 1/8″ wire rope, special triangular shackles, and 450 LED modules. It hovers 10′ high at the edges, 15′ high in the middle – a curved dome. Each of the 21,600 full-color LED modules is individually controlled by an iPad app, creating a very large, low-resolution video display.
Surrounding the tower are 6 smaller aluminum towers called pylons. Each of these is attached to one point of the star-shaped canopy. New for 2017 are aluminum plates on each side of each pylon, which reflect the light from the canopy in pleasing ways.
Flight of Illumination
Flight of Illumination has a footprint of 50′ in length and 50′ in width with a central sculpture of an opened blacksmithed jar, lifted towards the sky by a few Acolytes. Bursting forth from the jar are dragonflies, increasing in size and swooping up to a giant dragonfly perched upon a tall reed. Surrounding the central sculpture is a communal gathering space filled with smaller pieces from previous years’ projects to provide a more community driven ambiance.
Flora Resplendica
Flora Resplendica consists of a fifteen foot tall wireframe teapot made of metal tubing, hung with all manner of garlands and covered in LED strips. Additionally, a pair of ten foot tall mushrooms stands on either side of the teapot, one with an off-white cap dotted with orange, pink and red, the other with a blue cap spotted with purple. Six shade-giving flowers surround the entire setup. The flowers include an African daisy, a blue dahlia, a yellow rose, a pink rose, a multi-colored rose, and a rainbow lotus. Everything, including the flowers and mushrooms, is lit up at night to create an island of light. The center of the teapot is a climbable tower, allowing Burners to climb to the viewing platform on top to see the mushrooms and flowers from above. Glow in the dark messages will be painted on the tops of the mushrooms and flowers to be viewed from atop the teapot at night.
Fly with me
“Fly with me” is an 8-9 Ft tall floating balloons installation. It recalls what people usually rave about most. The most desirable wishes of Love, Happiness, Money, and Health. We added our Planet as it keeps and carries us all present here.
If you could keep just one balloon – what would you choose?
We want all Burning Man Participants to take photos trying to catch them. Each balloon’s ribbon will have a name “love”, “happiness”, “money”, “health”, “planet” – it would be nice to see the choice people make
Free Range Animal Automata Menagerie
We are bringing a menagerie of large animal automata to the Playa. Powered by humans, these colorful animals represent over 2,000 years of human fascination with animated mechanisms. Automatons (or automata if there are more than one) have been around for centuries. The art of animating human or animal form has fascinated mankind since before the birth of Christ.
There is a personal catalyst in bringing our animal automata to the Playa. One of our artist’s brothers died young when he was overcome with cancer related to AIDS. He was a fantastic person and brought so much joy the lives of so many others. One of his most prized possessions included a collection of wooden automata animals.
It is in his memory, and with great joy that we bring these pieces to life in Black Rock City. The automata will be large interactive sculptures that poke fun at and bring life to the radical rituals of animal playfulness and pleasure. Five or six free range animals will round out the menagerie.
Freedom
This project started as a result of moments and dreams I experienced in the past few years.
My vision for this place is to create an interactive space, where everyone is invited to open up and talk about anything they wish. I will invite people to talk about what stops us from being the beautiful human beings we all are and to talk about what problems seem to hold us back or what situations can stop us from succeeding on our own lives.
I know small moments can make a difference in someone’s life. Some of these moments happened to me at Burning Man the last few years.
My vision for this art piece and the world is to help and empower people, by creating love and freedom, so we can be and express ourselves from the beautiful inner child we all are.
Freedom Door
This piece offers you a chance to let go of some part of yourself you no longer need. You can say “thanks I no longer need you”, and step though the Freedom Door into the new you. On the other hand, sometimes letting go of something may require a little more energy than a simple thank you, so something a little more energetic may be an option. You can always come back later and pick up the old you if you don’t like the new you.
Gamelatron
Inside the Base of the Man, on the north and south wall respectively, there are 2 Gamelatron Sculptures featuring 34 hand forged Bronze Gongs, playing site specific compositions that ebb and flow with the rise and fall of the sun and moon. The artwork is an offering to the Man and the community. It is a sonic forcefield and a talisman in the center of our city.
Gamelatrons are the world’s first fully robotic gamelan orchestra. A Gamelatron is a sound producing kinetic sculpture presented as site-specific installations, and stand alone art works by Aaron Taylor Kuffner. Gamelatrons are made from traditional bronze, brass and iron instruments from Indonesia’s gamelan tradition, retrofitted with mechanical mallets on sculptural mounting systems. The pieces are connected to a network that transcribes digital compositions into an array of electrical pulsations that results in a ghostly musical automaton.
Gatto della Veritá
Gatto della Verità invites you to test your superstitious nature. Carefully follow a ritual before placing your hand into the cat’s mouth or be cursed with bad luck.
Gauchito Gil and the Pagan Gang
Gauchito Gil had a taste of the dust and wanted more. He gathered other Pagan Saints to offer Black Rock City a traditional altar you can find along most every road in Argentina. This is an ever changing altar, simple and heartfelt. All around the center piece you can see typical (and not so typical…) objects offered by passers and devotees.
It is said that Gauchito Gil deserted a war he did not believe in. For this he was beheaded, but before passing, he instructed his executioner to pray in his name. The executioner got home to find his son very ill and prayed to Gauchito for help. You can imagine the rest… Yes! it´s a miracle! The boy regained good health and Gauchito slowly and steadily became a Rockstar level miracle performer
What you are seeing is a tribute to popular belief, the outlaws and the power of faith, in whatever form or shape it may come.
Giant Takeout Box
Jackleg jackpot presents giant Chinese food takeout box. From a distance, box is intended to be a fun visual play on scale on the playa where one’s sense of scale can be easily altered. Up close, box wants to give any daring citizen a fortune (cookie).
Gummy Bear Pyramid
This is a 12ft tall, 4-sided pyramid made out of over 100,000 hand-cast gummy bears, acrylic, and metal.
This gummy bear pyramid began as an idea for a light installation using found objects. In time it has transformed into a kind of time machine. A place that invites you back into an illuminated fort of nostalgia.
Heardt
HEARDT is a highly interactive customized piano encompassed by a 3D heart structure which connects music and light. Participants create light pulses within the heart depending on what they play on the piano keyboard.
HEARDT is bringing a piano to Black Rock City. A piano that can play beautiful music, that can stir emotions circulating inside Participants and viewers alike and bring visual light to the room and beyond.
Through this interaction, the art piece will become what it should be – a bridge between reality and emotional storms happening somewhere deep inside a person, which can’t be described as tangible or bound. It can be as simple as touching a few keys or as complex as composing a song or playing an étude. The melodies and light that come from HEARDT engage both the player and the audience, bringing about a shared art experience. Through this unique platform, audio and visual emotions allow for a collective experience – showcasing the light in all hearts.
Hero's Journey
Three sheets of 1/2″ steel plate plasma cut, rolled and welded into a circle. The rough holes represent the journey of life that is not always smooth but always leads us back to the beginning a Hero.
High Tea
A tea cup that appears to float above the playa that you can relax in or take for a spin alone or with a friend!
Hispatext
According to Census, every year more and more Burners come from an Hispanic background, and Spanish is the second most spoken language on the playa. Hispatext celebrates Hispanic involvement in the Burning Man community by lighting up the desert sky with the lyrics of the most representative songs from the most populated countries in Latin America: Brasil, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. The playlist has been selected online by Latin American Burners themselves.
Honey Bear
“Honey Bear” is a 14′ tall sculpture of a honey bear. It is intended to provide surprise and delight to Burning Man attendees, invoking positive feelings of nostalgia.
House of doG
House of doG is a chapel honoring the animal companions who have become an integral part of our lives, both past and present. Styled in the manner of a chapel one can find on the side of the street in the Chihuahuan Desert with Dia de los Muertos design, House of doG is a space to remember, pray, and give thanks for our beloved animal friends. Here, much like the Temple, people can participate by posting or writing about their animal relationship, confer and share stories with other travelers to this sacred site, or sip on some tequila in remembrance. Mexican culture is heavily laden with honoring and celebrating the lives of the past that came before to create what the present. It is also heavily Catholic, and to add an absurd twist the saints that will watch over this space will have the bodies of humans, but the heads of animals, as if St. Francis of Assisi became so in tune with them he became one.
House of Enlightenment
House of Enlightenment is a hexagonal structure with a sculpted wooden frame beckons, half pagoda, half lenticular cloud supported by curved columns rising 20-feet above the Playa. It goes dark, pulses & glows again.
A central, pew-like hexagon with devotional texts is an invitation to kneel. The open texts contain series of colored dots in rows, corresponding to colored buttons. Pressed in sequence, lights darken, then begin to rise up the columns.
Turning pages, pressing buttons, each page a ritual of motion necessary to light the shrine. For each ‘ritual’ the lights respond differently. Participants each control 1/6 of the lights. Working together, the intricacy of pattern increases. Combining sequences unlocks more colors & patterns.
While not intended to represent any one form of worship, it contains elements of many. Faith, religion & spirituality are all related, a veneration of the source of the light that allows us to see the Universe around us.
House of the Golden Raven
House of the Golden Raven is a spirit house, protecting Man Pavilion and the Black Rock City – all of its participants. The spirit of the Raven asks nothing more than is written on the four sides of its Shrine: “Know Thyself”, “Leave no Trace” and “Leave a better Place”. Or when offering, then: “Offer ideas, not MOOP”
Hug Deli
Mikey’s Hug Deli is an yellow delicatessen that serves different flavors of hugs on the playa since 2005. It is located on the 9:00 path halfway between Esplanade & the Man.
Any person can purchase a hug from the menu for the affordable price of 2 compliments. Any person can work behind the counter and serve hugs. Important note: The compliments are to be given before the hug is rendered (If not, the customer loses out on participation). Thanks!
Hurry Up Slowly
Hurry Up Slowly is a wooden snail, big enough for participants to enter through the snail body into the snail space inside the shell. It consists of two main forms joined together; the snail body and the snail shell. The whole structure is open and lets daylight and wind through while offering a shifting pattern of partly shade.
The snail is a universal form, that to us, symbolizes the slowness of consensus democracy. In our community, Freetown Christiania, decisions are made in consensus. From our experience, in order to make consensus work in a community, you need to slow down, be flexible and open.
The inner snail space is meant as a room for contemplation and cooperation. It is meant to initiate and inspire a sense of community feeling. A hands on experience of consensus, on a mental, physical, and spiritual level through workshops.
Identity Awareness - Family
Identity Awareness is bringing our latest installation to the playa focusing on the family aspect of Burning Man and back in our communities. A 10’x10′ 3D metal heart will be held up by four family members signifying strength and working together to support the whole unit. One side will be held up by the father and daughter while the other side will be a mother and son. All family members will have LED hearts that will beat in unison. The heart will have 1.5″ tubing with places to climb and hang from in order to pose for pictures or simply explore.
Illumicone
Illumicone is light art driven by participation and interaction. A softly glowing presence draws Participants inside, where they encounter strange mechanical widgets. As they play with the widgets, patterns of light appear on the cone, surrounding the Participants with a dazzling color spectacle of their own creation and rewarding their curiosity.
Illumicone is 19 feet tall at its center and 38 feet across at its base. Cables descending from the top of the cone carry 3600 individually controlled LEDs. Inside the cone are interactive widgets constructed mostly out of repurposed objects. Manipulating the widgets causes patterns of light to appear and move across the LEDs. Spinning wooden wheels causes stripes to move around the cone and collide to create seemingly random combinations of color. Other widgets create sparkles, stain the cone with blotches that expand and disappear, or twist and turn the whole display.
ILUMINA
ILUMINA is the experience where a group of people connect to a giant interactive sculpture creating a communal coherence vibration where all participants vibrate in the same frequency along with mother earth. As members reach personal and communal coherence, it will be reflected on the sculpture, sounds and lights will follow through the whole process rising harmoniously as their frequency does. Delighted visually by mystical sounds, musical chords and magical lights.
This experience will not only influence you personally, it will also contribute to the entire atmosphere and energy of playa.
IN CASE: A UKE
What if our public infrastructure was built to respond to the emotional needs and inner crises of its citizens? Distributed throughout the playa are a few highly visible red cabinets modeled and finished in the style of pre-war, cast-iron emergency call boxes that provide immediate ukulele access.
Incinerator for Obsolete Resentments
The philosophy of this piece is to offer an opportunity to dismiss currently held resentments as well as obsolete resentments. Old resentments can consume large amounts of life force just in the act of holding them in a stuck clenching pattern. This participatory installation will offer a safe and sacred space for pilgrims to be invited to shed obsolete patterns of all kinds. where in our world are we invited to behave this way? Usually these emotions are held invisibly on purpose, or else surface in unconscious ways.
This altar provides a permissive environment to expose oneself, privately or publicly, and even be encouraged to go deeper into exploring and letting go of resentments or attachments, things we once needed as coping mechanisms, but are now obsolete, yet we may never have purged them from our brain’s hard drive. Time to clear space for new healing, new life force and space for new inspirations and ways of being in the world.
Internal Flame
A wooden clad, curvaceous, teardrop/flame shaped shrine with a stone flower base. ‘Internal flame’ is a star tetrahedron steel sculpture, which will have an eternal/internal ‘flame’ back lighting the sculpture and the vertical reaching spire.
Interspecies Communication
“Interspecies Communication,” is an interactive kinetic-musical-sculpture of metal birds and fish, and was inspired by the idea of spontaneous group behavior. From the unprompted assembly of molecules that led to life, to the behavior of social communities, the ability for an individual to react to change through the influence of those around it contributes to a spontaneous behavior of a larger group without a single leader.
As Participants climb onto the sculpture and cause it to move and to sound, their influence on each other, in combination with the sense of interspecies communication inherent in causing the bird to sing, creates a spontaneous ritual behavior that leads to group cohesion. Like a bird murmuration and a school of fish, the forms of the sculpture (made up of smaller bird and fish forms) hint at the remarkable ability of many individuals to maintain cohesion as a group in highly uncertain environments and with limited, noisy information.
Interstellar Emissary
“If you were asked to construct a message to alien civilizations on behalf of Earth what would you say?”
This was the challenge put to Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, Frank Drake, and the rest of the NASA appointed team that assembled the Voyager Disc and Golden Record. Placed on each of the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft that have now left our Solar System, the Voyager Record is a “mix tape for aliens” expressing our better nature, hope for our future, and optimism that we are not alone.
The Emissary Disc, 1.75-meter in diameter, is edge-lit with five meters of color-changing LED lights. Sounds and images from the Golden Record are played back. A prominent push-button allows participants to receive a “Greeting from Earth”, one of the 55 messages encoded in different languages on the Golden Record. The complete image collection explaining human science and culture plays on repeat.
It's a Chicken and Egg Situation
A “Chicken and Egg Situation” is one where it is impossible to say which of two things happened first or caused the other to happen. This installation, featuring both chicken and eggs, takes the traditional riddle and turns it into a giant art object focused on the immediate experience of play. It has a smooth curvilinear metal framework in the shape of a huge chicken, with a cage of tubular steel hoops forming the body and a large circular opening at the rear, which Burners climb into via a ladder. Inside there is a pile of gigantic leather-covered foam eggs that they can lie on and hug and frolic about in. The activities of the Participants themselves turn the installation into performance art. Aesthetically it is a shape of great purity and simplicity, emphasizing the ovoid and symbolising fertility. The artwork is the creative expression of a paradox that has exercised philosophers and scientists for centuries – Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Kafka 9.0
Why an installation like a wall? Why call it the “KAFKA 9.0”?
Because it’s a wall, it protects all round, and a wall, even if it seems hard, lends itself to clear vision, both near and far, dominant but not invasive, it envelops without being claustrophobic.
Why Kafka? Because with his famous metamorphosis, is pure Alchimia, is the transformation of material into material, and with art it transforms soul into soul.
It’s a passage, a conversation, a way to achieve full knowledge of oneself, and therefore full freedom.
Art is knowledge, and as such, has to be able to be communicated and have an emotional impact on man, providing food for thought processes and feelings that become a journey, and that’s how art transforms, like Alchemy, an Alchemic ritual.
The installation consists of a decagon with a diameter of about 10m* made up of wooden posts with slanted supports and horizontal planks that, attached at preset heights, support the wooden structures on which to place the art.
Keyed Up Shark
Keyed Up Shark uses the universal fish symbol recognized around the world in rituals and ceremonies. The attached keys represent all our multifarious openings and closing as humans and visitors to this place.
Kinetic MerKaBa Vehicle
The MerKaBa is the divine light vehicle used to ascend into higher dimensions of existence. After careful study of the ancient practices and literature, the Kinetic MerKaBa Vehicle was realized as an interactive art installation. Travelers ascend the 7 Chakras along a spiral stair case leading into the heart of the MerKaBa. One by one, they board the vehicle, nested by plush upholstery. Together, they begin to charge the vehicle by rotating along the stationary railing. With every rotation, the mallet strikes the gong, sending reverberations throughout the vehicle. The outside world begins to dissolve as the travelers ascend into higher dimensions.
Kino Pālua - Dual natured
Kino Pālua is a dual phoenix structure, which together symbolize the journey of rising above the challenges we each face in life. On one side there is fire, representing the inner pain, rage, fear and negative experiences we wish to overcome. On the opposite side is water, which represents the safe, comforting place we individually seek. Feel the heat and hear the roar of the six propane poofers as you let it all go inside ahi, and be soothed by the calming and embracing experience awaiting you inside wai. A truly dual-natured experience.
La Victrola
La Victrola is a 30-foot tall wood and steel sculpture celebrating the music of a bygone era. Built by a community of volunteer artists at American Steel Studios in Oakland California, its period details,
musical curation, and live performances stand as organic counterpoints to modern digital culture. La Victrola entertains and educates the public by playing crackly forgotten recordings from the early 1900s, a time of great innovation in jazz, blues, bluegrass, and country & western. On select evenings, La Victrola’s cabaret stage hosts period appropriate vaudeville and music performances transporting participants back in time.
Labor. Female ritual.
Fiery Sculpture
Sculpture is named the cult of woman in labor (process of childbirth)
Sculpture show creating new sence a woman in childbirth
The material of the sculpture is chosen clay
In the process of creating the clay is transformed from a soft state into a solid and solid ceramic emits bright light
We draw an analogy
From the soft earth all living and non-living things are created, which is united by a single luminous cosmos.
The process of giving birth is the concentration of overuse for create a new, new sence, new life.
The sculpture, created from clay, is fired to hard luminous ceramics.
Red-hot ceramic sculpture are showered sawdust. Sawdust burns touching the surface of a bright sculpture. Merge one the fire.
Leave No Spirit
The deity ‘Burner’ is posed to celebrate qualities of geography and culture in Black Rock City. ‘She’ is ornamented with symbols particular to BRC rituals. We are collaborating with local artists and youth to give voice to our community. Students will choose messages the deity speaks, giving youth a voice.
The deity in Nataraja is ornamented with symbols of Black Rock City. Tongue feeds messages representing rituals. Limbs, horns, and drawer opens from either side. She wears a dust mask, goggles, spirit hood, and possesses objects such as LED, hula hoop, cup, jewelry, and other accoutrements. She is bi-symmetrical to allow different perspectives or moods for the viewer. Nooks, limbs, and drawer offer citizens places to leave or take ‘gifts’.
Life Forms
Evocative of a sacred, ancient forest, these dream-like Life Forms envelop playa-goers in a sense of mystery and serenity. Individually, each totemic Life Form emanates a life-force vibration that impacts visitors who linger among them. Simple wooden benches invite travelers to rest for a moment and perhaps reflect on the strange beauty of this special moment.
Light Years Away
Light Years Away is a naturally and supernaturally inspired interactive sculpture. It is a representation of the boundary between the plane of existence and that which lies beyond. That plane is punctuated by a symbol of a powerful natural force, the vortex. This vortex is a doorway through which one can send their thoughts and prayers. It is a shrine, an altar, an homage to spirituality and the rituals that connect us.
Light Years Away has a powerful presence. It is tall and covers a large space. It is geometry, numerology, spirituality, chaos, and nature. It is an homage to the vortex and a harnesser of its mighty power. It is a vessel for hope and grief. Through it one can confess and pray. One can remember and forget. One can whisper a secret or yearn for release. It is a tool for all. It is a tool for many. It is a doorway for all the sadness. For all the hope. It is for us to wield, and for us to revel in, as it is both a doorway to the other side and a doorway into ourselves.
Lithic Altars
Lithic Altars
Three stone tables, set into separate outdoor rooms form an interactive play space for ritual, dancing and other acts of communion and fellowship.
Stone is meant to be touched. It improves infinitely with wear, becoming something burnished, something better. Sometimes water is the agent of change, wearing down the edges and smoothing over the brittleness of its natural state. Other times stone is worn by centuries of human footsteps, traveling the long roads to market, to worship, to home. The tops of these tables are ancient granite stair blocks; their worn surfaces bear witness to 600-900 years of architectural service. Collected and re-purposed, these blocks are crafted into useful objects meant to sit at the heart of human exchange.
Rhodes adds, “Like much of my work, Lithic Altars sit at the crossroads of architecture and sculpture. They inhabit a gray between monumental and intimate not frequently explored.”
Lost Cargo
Lost Cargo exists frozen in time, an aircraft moments from crashing. In this moment, who are we? Where are we going? What have we accomplished? Are we afraid?
Luster Cluster aka Blinky, Pinky, Kinky and Tried
Luster Cluster is a collaborative sculpture garden created by several LGBTQ artist teams working together. Like a group of jewels, our six vibrant, glowing, blacklight sculptures draw on each other to shine more brightly than they could alone. “Tower of Luster” is the tallest, a 24′ tower with hand painted murals that provides a backdrop for events. “Bent” is a freestanding 16′ double-curved, multicolor band. “Strato Spheres” is four 5′ white geometric spheres, each with 120 individually-addressable LED facets. “Rhombus” is two free-standing welded metal sculptures, hand perforated to create dizzying moire effects. “Luminous Gaze” is two 20′ free-standing eyes which move in the wind and gaze out into the playa. “Glory Hole” is an interactive, climbable experience with painted steel and lacy geometric webs leading to two 4′ diameter paraboloid mirrors. Hand-painted day-glow art can be pushed through the glory hole for a distorted funhouse mirror effect.
Macchina Naturale
Macchina Naturale (Natural Machine) is a large kinetic wind sculpture reminiscent of a whimsical machine from a bygone era. Industrial elements blend with an organic tree-like form to create an amalgamation of the man-made and natural worlds. With their canopy of motion, light, and shadow, large horizontal paddle wheels create a contemplative Zen-like space. As our ecosystems are increasingly under assault, may this environmentally interactive sculpture be a reminder of our need to work with, rather than against, nature.
Magic Paint Mirror
The Magic Paint Mirror is a device free augmented reality experience. It tracks a users body and in a reflective video projection allows them to draw and paint with their hands. Various movements and gestures control a pallet of brushes and looks. By tracking the users bone structure velocity and interpreting real-time spectral analysis of live audio the painting process is alive with animations that are driven by sound and movement. Up to 6 people can paint on the same projection at the same time. The collectively created image evolves throughout each night.
Magnetic Waltz
Magnetic Waltz is an interactive kinetic display based on ferrofluid (a magnetic liquid) which invites Participants to explore the bewildering interplay of magnetics, fluid mechanics, and gravity. The ferrofluid dances and twirls, choreographed via hidden electronically-controlled magnets. As participants dance in front of the piece, it responds to their movements. Ferrofluid is a magical substance which inspires participants to take a closer look and question their perceptions. What is it made of? Why does it ooze and form those intricate labrynthian patterns? How can it seem to defy gravity? Is it alive? Will it be my friend?
The Phage’s mission is to bring the joy of science to the Playa. As a scientist, peering into a microscope and observing a phenomenon for the first time inspires child-like wonder and curiosity. We hope that Magnetic Waltz evokes similar feelings.
Makhalych (aka Birding Man)
The project of Vasiliy Shchetinin “Makhalych” (Birding Man) is a rebirth of his personal art character “Ikarushka” whose history begins in 1989.
Most renown object showcased at the First International Festival of Street Theaters 1989 USSR (“Caravan of fools”, Moscow-Paris, curated by Slava Polunin). A hyper-realistic figure dressed like author, hanged on wings 12 meters width, became a main symbol of the festival.
The early version of the object symbolizes an image or a romantic freak, looser. The new one, offered for your reference, tends more for the thematic of overcoming, challenge, reaching for new horizons.
Philosophical and artistic concept refers to a number of images that are widely recognizable , archetypical, classical. Ikarus and similar characters of myths and legends, Vitruvian man and Leonardo daVinci flying machines sketches, utopian imaginary of Russian Avant-garde, Soviet Constructivism, and contemporary kinetic art.
Man Looking Over His Shoulder
18′ tall humanoid sculpture depicting “Regrets”. “Regrets” is looking over his shoulder; looking back over lost opportunity. An empathetic man with a single dominate eye; pondering those choices made or not made and their everlasting impact on his life.
Margareta Appalachia
Phase I: colossal woman (18′ tall) striding across the playa in an interpretation of classical Korean Hanbok robes. Her body, hair and clothing are made out of natural, burnable materials, including coal. Participants can engage with her more by entering a small ‘mine shaft’ door in her dress. This takes folks to a coal-seam inspired room presenting a panorama of a Carboniferous rainforest. Letters about hope for the future of Appalachia (written during the February 2017 Frostburn Regional) are featured. At night, LEDs illuminate the entire piece.
At dusk and dawn, a 20 minute film edit of the film “Margaret” (1990) by John McCormick will be projected, featuring stories from the life of a Korean-American kid thriving in Appalachia. (Preview here: https://youtu.be/mOxy18EJOE8 ).
Phase II: the installation is set on fire by a man wearing large orange angel wings at dawn on Saturday. A steel frame remains, suspending a life-sized, angelic woman.
Maya's Mind
Maya’s Mind is a large bust of Maya Angelou on top of 3 books where you can walk in to the back of her head. Maya’s Mind is a 15 foot tall 8 feet wide sculpture of Maya Angelou the African American great poet. This sculpture will be a large bust that will be placed on 3 books lying flat and creating a stairway that you can walk up into Maya’s mind.
The top of her head on the inside will be hanging a Birdcage that has no bottom and inside will be a bird in honor of her most famous book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. On top of her bust she’ll have a head wrap that turns into Birds taking flight symbolizing I Rise I Rise Again. Walking up into the back of the open head area will be a mural of her childhood and different phases of her life including her famous poetry readings and interaction touching surfaces with different textures and shapes and discovering hidden pictures under, in, and around things. I am hoping to have voice activation for some of her poetry if I get permission to use her voice. Her voice is unique and powerful.
MegaPrayer
MegaPrayer is a monumentally scaled Rosary elevated 10-25 feet over the surface of the playa. Each of the 60 beads will contain an LED array that will blink according to preset patterns. The Cross of the Rosary will stand at ground level and will be the size of a person, so that participants will be able to pose on the Cross, making themselves a Messiah for the moment. This project may be read to act both as an homage to the healing and redemptive power of spirituality and as a tongue-in-cheek criticism of the excess of corporatized religion.
MesmerElda
The piece is a series of concentric rings spiraling outward from a central spire, lit with tens of thousands of LED’s in a series of amazing patterns. A set of spiral stairs allows Participants to climb into the Plexiglass viewing room, which has been treated with one-way mirror material. From the outside, Participants will see a multi-faceted silver pod atop and embraced by the rings. From inside, the Participant can see down through the floor and around them, overlooking the playa.
Metaheart
METAHEART •Meta (from the Greek preposition and prefixmeta- (μητά-) meaning “after”, or “beyond”. The Metaheart is a mirror-clad, 3D form that rises 23′ from the ground and reflects anyone who sees it and the environment surrounding. With its 3 arching arms, the heart motif can be recognized from any direction or distance. In the center (the heart of the heart), dwells a jungle gym in the ancient geometric shape of medatrons cube. This rotates under human power with the participation of any curious admirer who’s willing to spin the structure.
The Metaheart is about infinite discovery. The geometric shape in the center of the heart represents expansion in every axis and plane. At the base of the heart lies a biometric sensor where anyone who approaches is welcome to place their hand. The computer driven LED’s lining the entire heart will pulsate with the rhythm of the participant heart beat. Three red lasers, each at a 33 degree angle atop the sculpture, sweep the sky.
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Methuselah V.2
Methuselah is a 20′ metal sculpture of the world’s oldest tree. The tree’s bark is steel, patinated to blue, brown & white, and seams of glass reveal propane flames within the trunk, reflected in a mirror below. The tree’s roots form benches on which Burners can congregate.
Ancestry and evolution are central themes for our work, whose namesake’s rings and branches bore witness to the entire span of recorded human history. Great trees gave their limbs and leaves as axles, paper, bows, hulls and roofs, and held space and time for our ancestors’ radical rituals.
Black Rock City contains many altars of dance and ecstasy, and many more of learning and relaxation, but the city provides comparatively few spaces for contemplation and remembrance.
Circular spaces, lone trees and eternal flames are all strong ritualistic symbols and joining them in Methuselah helps to dislocate Participants from the frenzy of present day time and re-anchors them in the still time of mythology.
Midnight Star
From a distance, seven illuminated rings seemingly hover above dark quiet playa. Closer, one discovers each of seven rings mounted on an inconspicuous pole fading into dust. Varying in height a few feet over head, the rings rhythmically pulse, dim, and color shift. Dusty denizens stroll through the field of light.
Ambient ethereal sound filters through the air, layered NASA space recordings: interstellar plasma whirls, lightning from Jupiter, deep-bass starlight waves, Saturn’s melodic hum.
Three microphones stand ready, adding human voice to the mix. As people sing, speak or whisper into the mics, the hovering illuminated rings respond, matching color and intensity to vocal rhythms.
As midnight nears, people patiently watch the horizon, as each of the Big Dipper’s seven stars slowly glides into center-point alignment inside the illuminated rings. Midnight ritual ensues: a learned astronomer opens minds and hearts to cosmic wonder in a guided meditative tour of the night sky.
Milk and Eggs: A Shrine for the Goddess on the Playa
Milk and Eggs Goddess on the Playa Shrine. This small wooden building holds a clay female figure that will serve as a kiln at the end of Burning Man 2017. She will be carried to the fire to immortalize her contents after serving to enlighten the citizens of the playa. The immense history of woman as procreator is recorded on the walls with both sacred and profane statements. Also included on the wooden slats are centuries of symbols of femininity and fertility. Clay is the oldest art form because once fired it is permanent. Clay is our connection with the earth and goddess have been made from the earth for thousands of years
Mirage
A sculpture revering the power of the feminine.
Morning Ritual
Morning Ritual is a dedication to the most unsung hero in our homes. Whether it’s the parent that needs a couple of minutes to themselves, a close embrace after a long night of drinking, the morning expulsion of fluids and matter, a young woman coming to learn of her transformation, or just a quick pee, the toilet is the ever present and sacrificial lamb to a clean and sanitary living. The toilet stands 4 feet tall made of CNC plywood.
Munanen - The Cosmic Egg
Space has always been a source of amazement and wonder for humankind, and the universe in its infinity has remained a mystery to be solved. It has sparked stories, which have formed the base for modern cultures.
Munanen – The Cosmic Egg combines the latest innovations of space technology, wooden architecture, and audiovisual design to create a space pavilion will translate signals from space into an immersive, interactive experience of being in interaction with space. The installation consists of three different elements; wooden dome, ground station, and biosphere.
The broad aim of the project is to make space technology available for larger audiences and to increase understanding of our shared origins – that we are all one, part of one universal plan.
My Daily, And Lifelong, Hiawatha #1
“My Daily, And Lifelong, Hiawatha” by Jimmy Descant, “One Bow – Many Arrows”, lead artist for The Amalgamated Debris Assemblage Guild, presents the Native directions, with a Shrine of divine ‘found object assemblage’ on a wood slat structure; with a concave opening to view his relic, a broken arrow symbolizing peace. Many openings are for notes and prayers, and interior for small relics from the public.
In Native American culture, the four arrows at the cardinal points in a circle are all pointing inwards. The circle represents the world and also an individual. The arrows represent “the attitudes or attributes with which a person must view every event and consider every problem if he is to find enlightenment”. Thus he must look at things from:
1) The direction of wisdom (arrow of the North)
2) The direction of innocence (the arrow of the south) 3) The direction of Introspection (the arrow of the West) 4) The direction of far sight (the arrow of the East)”
MÚCARO
A 30′ tall representation of Múcaro, a wise and woody owl. He comes to Black Rock City as the mascot of Puerto Rico and as a testament to the wisdom of all our teachers, the people who (hoo!) inspired us. NiNO is dedicating Múcaro to one teacher in particular in Puerto Rico: his mom, Mrs. Hilda Alicea, who taught for more than 45 years inspiring young people to work hard and go for their dreams.
This piece is for people to enjoy and have fun. To be transported again, to have a sense of adventure. Participants enter and exit through an opening under one of the wings. Inside the body is a cozy space with high ceilings and a single spiral staircase that journeys through childhood memories. The walls are set-designed to take them back in time and travel through school years as they climb. At the height of the stairs are two ladders for access to and from the top. It is here where they find the focal point – a sweeping view of the playa through Múcaro’s giant eyes that move with its head as it rotates.
Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner
This art is in two pieces, ten feet apart. One is painted black, one is painted white, both are on wooden and metal pedestals. The material of the art is carved plaster of Paris, primed with a glossy finish.
The figures are under 6 feet high allowing them to be touched, walked around, and examined. There are four benches around the art allowing Black Rock City citizens to sit, gather, discuss the art, or just relax on their journey across the Playa.
I would hope the piece sparks discussion on being your true self, to open up to all aspects of life and what it has to offer. In short, to come out of the corner you may be in and stand in the light of life. Feel your Bliss.
NOETICA
Suspended 20 feet above the Playa, NOETICA looks solid and imposing. The artwork evokes universal themes and flows from one portion of the sculpture to another. Upon nearing, it becomes clear that the piece is in sinuous and seductive motion, and that the movements are interconnected from cube to cube; just as ideas, originally thought of as fixed and immutable, become fluid and linked with cooperation and communication. Viewers participate in creating this movement, and interact with the piece by working together to move the smaller joystick, causing the larger piece to move in a similar fashion. Coordinated movement is rewarded with fire and lighting effects. At night, poofers dance in the sky as golden images move on the playa surface below.
Northern Spork
The main feature of Northern Spork shrine will be a vertical spork; a symbol our regional group has adopted. The spork will be embossed with arcane symbols that have regional and historic meanings, that have been used in projects we have brought to playa over the last 4 years. Water plays an important role in our cultural identity, and as a cleansing medium. It will be a secondary feature as waves at the base of the spork. The offering receptacle, a jell-o mould, invites tributes and or messages from Burners who make a pilgrimage to the shrine. There will also be some personal references to pay tribute to MN Burners we have lost from this plane over the past few years.
Nota Bene
people are always leaving notes on the fridge for one another. come see what note was left for you.
NousCreation
Burning Man is like its own little world, a universe of potentiality and creativity. This piece approaches the cosmological understanding of creation and being as viewed through the lens of Plato’s Timaeus, wherein the Demiurge (or Craftsperson) is understood for transforming ideas (Ideals) into reality. Just as the Demiurge created the universe, so will Participants in this installation be able to help create a facet of the Burning Man reality and world by interacting with a display that shifts in various modes of communication (symbols, colors, movement) relative to movement. Both the installation and the Participants will evolve and change as a result of each other, creating a microcosm of a universal approach towards growth and creativity.
The installation is comprised of three major parts: a canvas of changing colors that represents the collective unconscious, the dynamically-changing display inspired by the Mind, and the sensors wherein participants interact in reality.
OASIS of Life, Dream your World
A pyramid of human scale with a square base where Participants are welcome to sit & to experience the shadows of the hoops. Round hoops floating @ the top of each triangle sides, a DNA sculpture rotating slowly, a chromed ball inserted in the ground & a flag with symbols floating high.
At night, it will be seen as a beacon with a regular light pulsation from the square base as well as from the sides of the triangle.
The square base is built to accommodate seats integrated & angled in a way to allow the Participant to resonate with the energy of the form/ hoops he/she is. The triangle side of pyramid is built with proportions of sacred numbers. The DNA Spiral is a 13′ long fiberglass spiral band covered with reflective pieces with a continuous rotating motion.
In the center of the DNA, exists a vertical representation of the seed of life held by a aircraft wire strung form the top triangular cap attached to the chrome ball half buried.
Arcturians symbols will be displayed all along the square base.
Of a Temporary Nature
Fairy shrimp are strange, almost alien looking crustaceans, with eyes on posts, legs like fans, and antennae resembling tree branches. Stylized giants appear as a ghostly dance of familiar yet mysterious shapes.
From a distance the forms entice participants to wonder, and drawing nearer, the shapes may appear as intriguing possibilities of what they represent, Branchinecta sp. The fairy shrimp are constructed of rip-stop nylon, and float affixed to bamboo poles. The individual sculptures are around 12′ long and 4′ in diameter. They represent the very real and very tiny creatures underfoot. They emerge here to dance in unison with the wind. When there is no wind, there is rest, and maybe some slight shade. Here is existence of a temporary nature – as fairy shrimp: to eat, to dance, to mate, and to enjoy each other’s company before our pool dries up, again.
Pagan Bunny Shrine
The Pagan Bunny Shrine is a large golden shrine built for the symbolic relic of the Pagan Bunny. The Pagan Bunny is a symbol of the spirit of spring, the berth of fertility, ART and hoppiness. Everybunny is blessed with freshness, and are rejuvenated as they look upon the golden Pagan Bunny Shrine. Participants are encouraged to leave with the relic gifts to the SomeBunny Special, and to wish for fertility, love and rejuvenation.
PARAGATE
PARAGATE is an 11′ tall mirrored portal which offers citizens an opportunity for self reflection and contemplation. Approaching PARAGATE one first encounters a 24′ diameter ring of 64 solar lights defining a protected ritual space. At the center of this space resides the PARAGATE portal, a cylindrical steel gateway covered on all surfaces with a mosaic of 16,000 small, irregularly, cut mirrors. Moving closer, Black Rock City citizens find their mirror reflections multiplied and fractalized by the convex outer surface of the portal.
Entering the convex inner portal, citizens find their reflection rearranged and compressed creating a cubist self-portrait. Inside the portal a hallucinatory audio collage designed to complement the citizens’s mirror mosaic reflection runs nonstop during the event. An oracle offers the participant his or her appropriate ritualistic suggestion. On top of the portal 3 wind vanes turn in opposite directions creating a flurry of irrelevant motion signifying nothing.
Petunia Remains
Out of the sea of Nothing,
arises on the event horizon
a beacon of possibility, a mirage of an age of peace.
As the sun rises,
Petunia Remains vo Svoyasii.
[εξερχομαστε εκσταση να υπόσταση]
[we go out, through outstanding to understanding]
“Breaking kNews vo Svoyasii”, presented by AS IF. FM!
In a hopeful, honest attempt to make certain wishes come true,
on the sunrise of the Null of September 2016,
Twinkii, the magical wishing twinicorn,
has burned Petunia, the kNewspaper blossom!
“Petunia Remains” is what remains of it, literally.
Petunia remains a beacon, which leads away, as it randomly jumps from place to place.
Twinkii acknowledges that “leading away” is not like “misleading”, but rather like “a way”.
Petunia remains Twinkii’s desert mirage, a dream,
neither remainder, nor a reminder of the magical way he is, or a path he is on.
He continues on his radical, self-reliant far-reaching journey of a particle,
of a small party.
Phoenicopterus Rex
We are bringing our dream to life and that dream is a 40 foot tall flamingo! Inspired by Don Featherstone’s classic, Phoenicopterus Rex will feature climbable legs and a sitting area on the back of this massive lawn ornament.
As an art piece, Phoenicopterus Rex is a physical manifestation of Americana pop-kitsch meets modern industry: all bubblegum pink, fiberglass and steel. It aims to make the familiar absurd, exciting participants with the iconic image and then drawing them in so that they may interact with the structure.
In its final installed stages, fake grass and a white picket fence will surround the flamingo, transforming the immediate space into a hosted experience. The piece will be lit by spotlights mounted to the surrounding picket fence, to be a beautiful pink beacon in the night.
Phoenix Rising
It is a large bird made up of many different sizes and types of wood. The bird has outstretched wings like it is trying to take off and rise above the playa.
Piano on The Playa
Imagine the austerity placing a grand piano on a stage where it does not intrinsically belong……and where that stage becomes the playa, and the theatre becomes the cosmos, and the performance becomes a thing, on a thing, sending sound out to many things. The eclectic mix of ambient music will be a respite from the intensity of whirlwind art, creativity, and the immense vibrations of Black Rock City at large.
Pinhole Project
Public participation is part of the power of Pinhole Project. Our photographic process is a community event. We empower users to collaborate on the composition and exposure often serving as models and composers of the photographic product. One person sets up the scene, someone times the exposure, everyone holds for 40 to 120 seconds and another records the exposure time, location, and time of day for prosperity.
The barrel cameras next travel their way back to our Desert Darkroom. In Illumination Village, a storage container is transformed into a full wet photographic darkroom where the playa magic continues.
We will be building and supporting a Playa Gallery located in Illumination Village once again this year, displaying our Art as it is created by our project and developed in our Desert Darkroom!
Platonic One
Platonic One is an LED sculpture designed for interaction and play, an intersection of the platonic solids, fractals and the powers of 2.
Playa Time
“Playa Time” is a representation of the impermanence and ephemerality of all things, especially the wind and dust on playa.
During the day, the geometric patterns of the structural elements are an aesthetically pleasing type of mathematical art. The acrylic panels contain designs evocative of our shared experience on the playa. These designs may include elements of such radical rituals as seeing the sun rise behind a temple, being caught in a dust storm, and dancing to incredible music only heard once anywhere in the world.
During the darker hours, a system of flex sensors, micro-controllers, and LEDs will bring the wind to life. With calm wind, the structure will gently pulse in different colors and shifting patterns. When the wind picks up, the lights will appear to “flow” with the direction of the wind, and the patterns and colors will move more quickly and intensely with more vivid colors.
Pleiadian Oasis
The Pleiadian Oasis is a safe space for people in all phases of consciousness out in the deep playa. A constellation of sacred geometric structures is mapped out to mirror the stars of the Pleiades. This hazy cluster by the trash fence serves as a beacon calling all light workers, cosmic healers, mystical visionaries, desert philosophers and deep playa interdimensional travellers.
Pollinator
The Pollinator is a kinetic sculpture built to hypnotize and enthrall. It is made to burn with poetry.
POR (Point of Reference)
POR or Point of Reference is an irregular tetrahedron designed to point to Center Camp for weary wayward travelers. Using 2000 LED pixels it will light the way home. Graphics are controlled by a programmed Arduino and controlled via push buttons. Power is supplied by solar charged batteries.
Private Icon
5 sacred spaces each containing a Unique Icon and medatiion space. Native American, Buddha, Virgin, Holi, Earth Goddess. Come and commune with your own private Icon.
Project Flashlight
Project flashlight is the joy of light at grand scale.
Pure, incredibly bright white beams like fingers of god in the dust, contrasts with the night sky, scale across the open playa, interplay of beams, light in motion.
Military and NASA billion-candlepower searchlights, reanimated for art! Interactively controlled by smartphones, tablets and light-saber toys.
Promethean Passion (A Fire Inside)
Ever since Prometheus stole fire from Zeus to liberate humanity from darkness, the same torch has been passed down the millennia through teachings and ritual. And so fire has come to symbolize Liberty.
Close to the Temple, just after The Man burns, citizens of Black Rock City will help Fire Meister Timeless drive real flames, with their very own breath, hot and cracking into one of his solid wooden sculptures. The installation’s centerpiece, Liberty Torch returns for a second visit, now refined, with a finish. After months of carving, wooden flames engulf the face of The Man, here to be consecrated once again by “Fire Inside” — a new fire art form born of our fabled playa. With each breath, through copper tubes, the searing flames will bore deeper through the night and collective Burner intent will infuse the wood. By morning the master work will be extinguished, to preserve the fruit of a powerful ritual burn.
Psychedelic Tunnel
The Psychedelic Tunnel itself is a canvas for conveying visual interactive art as well as a tool for encouraging personal creative expression by using the senses & physical motion. It is the fusion of music and light in an enclosed space. Its inherent interactivity allows the citizens of Black Rock City to become the composer of their own visual experience. It’s a place to be amazed at the art, but also as an amazing part of one’s journey through the playa. The enclosed environment completely engulfs you in a world of interactive light patterns & full-surround sound. Play with it and watch how your fellow citizens express themselves, or even create a shared experience!
Psychic Laundry
The Psychic Laundry stands in Deep Playa moving in the wind and casting illustrative and provocative shadows day and night. The ritual of hanging sheets and clothes to air in the sun and wind evokes the need to air and clear the collective shadows, family dramas, neuroses, complexes, dirty secrets and old karma from the personal psyche.
Public Displays of Awareness
If you were waiting for a sign, this is it.
Giving new light to the term street art, these subtle yet striking public displays of awareness offer a series of connected and thought-provoking messages on industrial traffic signs immersed throughout the playa . The signs foster the ethos of global consciousness with wise words, connected statements, and enlightening messages that promote positive thought and inspire an inner dialogue. The beauty of these installations is that it is for everyone: public art in its purist form; a series of affirmations- relevant to all of us, applicable on so many levels. It is the intent that everyone on their unique journeys will have an opportunity to be touched by a seemingly serendipitous message. All people – no matter how divergent their concerns, no matter how fragile or empowered they are – will be able to experience it and perhaps, receive the message they needed to see.
“Art is only real when shared.”
Pulsefield
Pulsefield is an interactive open space where the movements of up to 50 participants are simultaneously tracked and used to generate rich video displays on the playa floor with correlated music. With multiple modes of operations and user-driven behavior, the experience is continuously changing.
Pyramid of the Dead
The Pyramid of the Dead is a structure comprised of individual “nichos”, artisanal hand made tin altars. The artworks displayed in the nichos are designed by different people from the Burner community, and offer respectful and personal tributes to deceased loved ones. The nichos are exhibited together, in the form of a pyramid and community altar. This is a deeply profound piece inspired by the day of the dead and the Mesoamerican architecture put in a completely new contemporary context while maintaining its deep meaning.
Quantum Ocean
A block of ocean is made of wood, topped with wooden waves that shift between several positions.
Physical matter captures energy in quanta and the wooden waves tell this as a parable. Each wave position corresponds to a quantum of energy – in this case, human effort captured by turning of a wave motion crank.
This human work has a ritual quality; likewise – established human rituals are formalized, requiring input of energy in packages.
Perhaps through such means all rituals say that, in addition to deities, we love the matter we are made of?
At intervals, few grains of rice are tossed into the air above the waves. They fall into the quantum ocean just as drops of water return to the waves. That is also a recurring finale of the ceremony of mankind’s marriage with a material world.
Radical Virtual
Real or virtual? Make your imagination real! Calm or fire – it’s your choice in which conditions do you like to see what you want while peeping through Radical Virtual.
Rainbow Raceway
Rising from the dust in the wasteland beyond Black Rock City, this surreal set of structures brings to life a classic video game setting, providing space for wonder, play & refuge. Each night technicoloured lights shine down on the playa as we invite Participants to compete for glory on the Rainbow Raceway. Here a fairytale castle provides magical vistas to those that climb atop and shelter to those within. Pipelines provide speedy transportation between locations and may contain hidden treasure.
It’s the racers and crowd, however, whose participation truly creates the experience. Similar to a child’s big wheel, racers ride trikes low to the ground as the trike’s lights react to the raceway. With a blur of speed and a trail of dust, the themed trikes and costumed racers circle past fevered spectators demonstrating the power of the electric drives. Racers need to keep an eye out for items placed by spectators and other racers which are either power-ups or obstacles affecting the speed of the trikes.
Rainbow Ritual
Rainbow Ritual represents the awesome (and long) journey that the sunlight makes in order to sustain life on this planet. This piece is comprised of 2 wooden stands (each 4 feet tall) next to each other. Within each one of the wooden stands lies a sculpture made up of multiple glass triangular prisms. These prisms break up the sunlight that shines through them, causing a rainbow-like pattern of light to circle the ground around each wooden stand. One of these wooden stands, which has an opening at the top to invite the sunlight in during the day, can be rotated, whereas the other is stationary and equipped with lights to keep the glass prisms lit up all night.
Reaching Through
Reaching Through is a large metal kinetic sculpture, consisting of 5 tube like structures that flow up towards the sky in forms resembling coral or plants. It is made kinetic by the use of suspension springs taken from trucks. The suspension springs are placed about half way up each of the tubular structures, allowing the top pieces of the sculpture to sway and move in the wind or when touched by people. Lights shining up from within the sculpture along with the moving parts create an ethereal essence. The natural forms rise up from the playa, reaching through, and swaying in the wind. This piece is about the organized functionality of living organisms, in contrast with the disorganization and sometimes seemingly chaotic physical world considered to be reality.
Red Tea Ceremony
Come and experience the Japanese Tea Ceremony.
Reverence
Stand in the center of Reverence, and meet seven generations of your ancestors. Feel your heart break with gratitude for the gift of life, for how hard it can be, for the serendipity, for the raw beauty all around you. Feel the mystery of life. Look up with wonder at the stars – the same stars your ancestors knew so well. You are directly descended from 254 ancestors in the last 7 generations. Reverence surrounds you with sculptures representing these people who gave you the gift of this present moment.
Rhythmic Ritual Of Love
Rhythmic Ritual Of Love incorporates the most basic of human needs, to love one another.
It is a giant vagina with a swinging penis thrusting back and forth for 4 burners to ride to their satisfaction. It uses a Newton’s cradle framework to support the swing as it thrusts in and out of a custom painted orchid/vagina.
Rituals of Love- Broken Hearts and Lost Dreams
Rituals of Love- Guilt, Anger, Remorse, Loneliness,Forlorn- human endeavors that break us. Open your heart to the possibilities of happiness. Let go !!
Roving Ritual
Our 6×8 Roving Ritual Rhythm Machine cart is inspired by a Balinese gamelan. Covered in jewel toned prayer flags, gongs, and various percussion, our cart is pulled by two people simultaneously. Our purpose is to be processional-style musical support for art installations all over the playa.
Roving Ritual
Our 6×8 Roving Ritual Rhythm Machine cart is inspired by a Balinese gamelan. Covered in jewel toned prayer flags, gongs, and various percussion, our cart is pulled by two people simultaneously. Our purpose is to be processional-style musical support for art installations all over the playa.
S I N Z
Project #8 on the Deep Playa Trash Phence, S I N Z, is talking to you! 60 signs will dance on the green phence posts, each one unique and quirky. As you ride or walk along the phence you will discover a special part of BRC. Chuckle and relate (not a law firm) your way as you negotiate the beauty of the deep playa. Each sign has a hidden or blatant playa meaning. Feel free to reorient them if the winds have turned them, some have messages on the back intended for the perimeter crew and law enforcement agencies that patrol outside the phence. A few wind chimes will gently orient you. The Electric Horseman will churn the dust as he does his thing year after year. JustGeorge, CowboyKarl and the Phence crew are the real phence artists out there. So get out to the deep playa, ‘cuz art is in your camps, its on your wheels, its – well its also where you least expect it. Dragnet/BlinkingManCamp/97…Dusty Poon Saloon!URL: https://vimeo.com/219201892
Contact: phenceart@yahoo.com
Safety Third
Safety Third is a bright red safety pin, over 7 feet long. It is in the unclasped, non-safe position, angled like a protester’s upraised arm. The base is rusted steel.
Seven Deadly Zins
Have you ever opened a bottle of wine?
I’m assuming the answer is yes.
Have you ever noticed how the corkscrew looks like the man on Saturday night?
Us too.
Our wine bottle is meant to help everyone remember what it feels like to be on the playa when the Man burns on every other night of the year; for the image of the effigy with his arms in the air signifying the matriculation into another chapter of our lives and the joy that this event brings to us.
Shadowbox
Shadowbox is just that – a box-shaped device that captures shadows. While the images cast on the screen may first appear to be simple shadows, Participants quickly realize that these are no ordinary shadows – they dance and play along.
As Participants move their hands within the device, the image moves from a simple shadow to effects such as shifting colors, size distortion, and time echoes.
Shamanic Portal 2.0
Enter the circle and let yourself go… the Shamanic Portal will take you to uncharted territory. Depending on your personal power and experience, be prepared to journey into non-ordinary reality. Strategically placed on one of the playa’s most powerful, naturally occurring vortexes, the portal will gather and gain power the more it is used.
Dance, sing, drum, chant, meditate, breathe, spin, hoop, use body postures and any other techniques that focuses your consciousness and takes you away. Participants are encouraged to open the portal either individually or in groups at sunrise and sunset.
Don’t believe? Give it a try and then decide.
Ambient trance-inducing sounds are available to support your experience.
Disclaimer: this is an art installation; use at your own risk. Participation in this installation is the sole responsibility of the participant. The artist is in no way responsible for whatever happens to you during your experience. Individual experiences may vary.
Shibari Sanctuary
As you approach the Shibari Sanctuary what appeared to be a red mountain from afar will turn not solid as you thought, but made up of a network of intricately tied red rope. It’s made using Kinbaku, Japanese rope bondage technique. There are two different natural highs to explore here. One inwards and one outwards. This place is one of bondage and freedom. Where you may find peace in a feeling of deep confinement, or explode outwards towards the sky. You may be surprised where you feel most free.
Shogyo Mujo
Shogyo Mujo is a unique installation that utilizes projections, lighting, and music to bring a sculpture to life. BARTKRESA studio and sculptor Josh Harker collaborated on the twelve-foot tall faceted skull, exploring the intersection of the physical and the imagination. Shogyo Mujo represents the first of the three marks of Dharma, which states that all things are impermanent. The project has evolved into a 360° musically driven, interactive visual centerpiece that has been featured at festivals and creative events.
Shrine de Vine
Shrine de Vine is a nature and architecturally inspired experience to ritualize a “memorial to be” that grows with ritual interaction. It takes on the language of traditional ‘shrine’ architecture’ hybridized with natural influence of nature: how vines and crystals grow.
The structure will integrate a variety of building materials to withstand both the frequent visit of the public Participant and of the wind and weather.
Shrines often traditionally pointed to history and respected characters of the past — Shrine de Vine honors what is to come for those seeking to meet their future hero – the mirror of self – and instigates interactions for meeting that self. LED lights illuminate this experience.
Shrine de Vine will be a structural illustration of how a structure grown can be both grown from natural materials and mechanisms — and fabricated with social sculpture and interactive technology in mind – exemplifying a meaningful architecture for a near future way of building in mind.
Shrine of Brotherly Love
We the People of Philadelphia, in Order to form a more perfect Gift, establish Communal Effort, insure Radical Inclusion, provide for Radical Expression, promote Decommodification, and secure the Blessings of Jawn to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Shrine of Brotherly Love.
Shrine of Dough
Bread is a staple common to myriad cultures around the world. The Shrine of Dough celebrates all Dohdisattvas on their journey to spiritual enlightenment. Woohoo!
Shrine of the Singing Sun
The Shrine of the Singing Sun is an equatorial sundial with specially tuned strings radiating from each of the twelve hour markers, and etchings and inscriptions celebrating science, mathematics, music, and of course the Sun.
At night, a hoop of LEDs marks the progression of time, and lights the strings in patterns illuminating musical possibilities.
Silent Lotus
The Silent Lotus is a shrine meant to create a therapeutic and healing space where participants can share a secret, intention, hope or regret with Harpocrates, Greek god of secrets. Written notes can be slipped into one of the four wooden pillars representing the bridges between roots and freedom. Harpocrates will guard the secrets until the last day, when they will burn along with the Man and bring relief and forgiveness.
Sinner Stage
The Sinner Stage is a heathen theater setting with three large steel and rebar sculptures on it. The Devil’s Throne stands powerfully at the center cushioned with sensual red velvet, and on one side is The Satan Andrew’s Cross, both standing over 8′ tall with 4′ ceramic horns looming overhead. On the other side is The Dark Star, with the appearance of a sand worm crossed with a flower it is poised, blossoming, and ready to strike. It is made with 560′ of 1/2 inch rebar twisted and woven together forming the base/stem, 33 ceramic thorns, and 5 large ceramic horns/petals at the top reaching 12′ tall.
Solaris
Solaris stands as a large, colorfully painted canvas bold in contrast to the mystical sand colors of the deep playa. As the abstract canvas breathes among the wind in solidarity, from afar one catches a glimpse from its colorful accents during the day and when lit and alive night. Its true golden hour exists during the celebration of the sun as it faces and frames the magical moment of sunrise.
Solidarity
The human hand and it’s gesture depicts a strong and powerful emotion and response.
The closed fist represents defiance, strength and solidarity.
This sculpture “Resist” is a unifying symbol to all that stand for justice.
Solipmission - An Initiation Into Future Realities
A small crew of artists will be locked up inside a black box for the entire week of the event. They will create a virtual Burning Man on the inside walls without ever viewing the outside, just based on what visitors tell them.
Somnium Communis Silva – The Grove of Collective Dreaming
The “grove of collective dreaming” is a unique interactive space and an audio-visual experience driven by algorithmic composition. As one enters the dome-like structure, they find themselves in a cozy, forestry ambience in which they create knowingly or unknowingly everlasting peace of sounds, glinting illumination, and visual projection on the canopy of the dome. It is a mysterious little grove which has a life on its own, but every participant who steps inside contributes directly to the feedback of the installation – just like a forest organically interacts with its inhabitants.
Although a mirage of electronic nature, the grove aims to illustrate the imprint and connections everyone has to each other and their surroundings.
Soul Spaced
Soul Spaced is a space for self reflection and ritual during the day with four, six foot mirrors. The concept is inspired by Cesar Manrique and the mirrors will be located on either side of a plain white cube and on the roof and the floor. This space provides infinite reflections in multiple orientations.
In the evenings, sound activated LEDs that surround the mirrors, and the participants own lights, will created infinite spaced out experience.
The cube ( 8′ x 8′) shall support an outer wooden pyramid / mayan steps with a seating area. The wooden pyramid shall be 21 feet tall to pea which participants can climb up and over to get view of the Playa.
The mirrors and lights shall be removed for a burn ritual.
Soup Flavored Blankets
Soup Flavored Blankets serves the wandering souls of deep playa in the late hours of the night. SFB offers various, soups, teas, ciders, ramen, and much much more. The giant soup can acts as a beacon of warmth, while the giant cracker box serves as a heating station/ soup kitchen. Soup Flavored Blankets will be serving every night until they burn to the ground!
Spacecats 2.0
This is a dedication to all those who had to say goodbye to their friends, and to all the furry friends who are now up in the stars.
Animal companions play an important role in many people’s lives, and although one can find many things in Black Rock City, animals are absent. Studies have shown owning a pet helps anxiety, depression, stress, lowers blood pressure, and regulates heart rate. For some people, just interacting with the sculptural representation of a cat can be a nice reminder of the animals back home while their guardian is on Playa.
Spirit Automaton
Man Spirit Automaton is a 7′ tall audio video interactive sculpture in the shape of a person made of: metal, electricity, and light. The environment of the sculpture will be a video input modified and mixed with prerecorded media and displayed on the head of the sculpture made of 3 monitors with lighting accompaniment emanating from the body. The sculpture reacts not only with the observer in front of the sculpture but also with its surroundings in a variety of modes. The multi media sculpture explores an abstract postmodern narrative through the observers movement and the sculptures light and video show.
Standing Army
Kent Rasmussen’s sculpture “A Standing Army” is a comical poke at society’s male half.
Standing Army is a sculptural storyboard. Four 4” by 10″ sheets of swinging perforated steel act as canvas, while a set of 320 moveable phalluses made from standard industrial material will act as paint to illustrate a variety of social commentaries – some funny, some serious. The artists of the Logical Phallusy Collective will change the sculpture’s story at least every 12 hours. Suggestions from the denizens of the playa will be solicited for new stories. We want to provide the medium for people to express their thoughts and ideas with phalluses. The entire wall will be mounted within a steel “A-frame” structure and guy-lined down. The structure is very stable even with minimal intrusions into the soil due to the inherent stability of the frame; the perforations in the steel panels make them able to swing to sluff off high wind. Lighting will be by either battery or generator.
Step Forward
Step Forward transmits the principles of consciousness and neighborly love, increased through Art.
Euterpe is a giant teenage girl puppet who walks and talks, interacting with Burning Man’s participants to learn from them and to, tenderly, teach them her values.
A young girl dreams of a better world in which everybody loves each other. One day she wakes up in an unknown place where she doesn’t really know if she is awake or in a wonderful dream. She watches in amusement all that takes place around her at the time she gets involved in Burning Man’s experience.
Sunrise Sunset Horseshoe Bench
Give yourself the gift of relaxation and renewal. Stop and be still for a moment. So much is moving on the playa… What’s that? A BENCH! Like an oasis for the weary traveler, a place to sit and regenerate is a welcome sight. Residents face residents… take in the sunset or the sunrise… relax and enjoy the good luck horseshoe bench!
SWNG
SW)*(NG is an art-play project. It is an 11′ tall two person swing built utilizing wood & steel, with support structures constructed in the silhouette of the Burning Man logo. We invite participants to play and experience both the active and contemplative fun that something about swings just brings about.
Sysimetsä
Beauty lies within the Burnt Forest.
Sysimetsä is a memorial for the fires that destroyed Lake County, as well as a beloved art space by the name of Ravens Landing back in 2015. Participants walk through a burnt forest with trees that stand erected from the playa with huge ravens perched upon their branches. Pieces of burnt metal and scraps are hand crafted instruments of sound, bringing the forest back to life through interactivity. The sound sensitive lighting will dance to the beat of our hearts. This place is a temple for the old and new, a sacred piece of nature that is awoken to hold space to give thanks to what’s been given and what’s been taken. In the belief that change is the only constant grace given to Humankind, to embrace it in all ways is the only way to brighten our evolution. The philosophy of Sysimetsä is to Experience, Let Go, Accept, Be Thankful, and Recreate the world you want to live in.
Tara Mechani
Tara Mechani is a figurative sculptural installation that fuses representational aspects of the female Buddha, Tara, with future characteristics of the female robot in a contemporary way.
The idea is to create a “being” that encompasses both the past and the future, melding worlds of ancient wisdom ideology and philosophy with future mechanics and technology.
Its interaction and expression urges viewers to contemplate the other-worldly union of these two compelling and guiding forces usually at opposition now intertwined.
Tell Me Yours, I'll Tell You Mine
A modern twist on the gothic-style Roman Catholic confessional booth, in which the booth is topped with a large neon sign reading, “Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine.” The structure is stained dark wood with gold accents, along with a stained glass piece. On the two opposite sides leading into the entrances, there’s a candle-lit red carpet, with guiding ropes, hanging bells & chimes. Pews, facing the confessional, invite onlookers to see into the grid panels on the confessional, to view the silhouettes of those inside. Inside, participants sit facing a writing scroll, to write their confession on, sharing their beauty of truth. It will be humbling to enter the booth, and as one sits down to write, or speaks to the silhouette of the confessor across from them, they will not only see a blank slate, but also see how many others sat in the same place before them, filling the wound up scroll with their innermost secrets, seeking absolution and freedom.
Temple of Forbidden Symmetry
When face-connecting 5 octahedra in a circular fashion on a plane, the small wedge that remains between the 1st and 5th octahedra makes it impossible to close the loop. This is an example of forbidden symmetry. Welcome to The Temple of Forbidden Symmetry.
Temple of Gravity
Gravity is a central component of all of Zachary Coffin’s massive, larger-than-life interactive kinetic sculptures and the only force that he believes he can truly have faith in. In 2003, Zachary Coffin built the Temple of Gravity as an expression of the year’s Burning Man theme – Beyond Belief – and this year, we’re bringing the massive 180,000 pound sculpture back for Radical Ritual.
The Temple of Gravity is a 60-foot diameter steel dome with 5 arms, each arm supports a suspended granite stone slab (which weighs ~15,000 pounds) and is anchored by a granite base slab.
The 11 Benches of Sitting Man
The 11 Benches of Sitting Man will be spread throughout Black Rock City. Each bench is different. 1-10 are based on the 10 Principles. #11 is Radical Ritual, a nondenominational sacred space. This evolving art project is dedicated to providing a reflective resting space.
The Altar of the Intentions
The Brazilian Burners, with the collaboration of Massaru Emoto Institute, will provide a unique and unprecedented quantum experiment using the main element of life aligned with the flux dynamics that rules all existence in the universe.
This “sacred” altar is a project that goes beyond aesthetics. We ask Participants to send their purest intentions into the water of our artwork. Samples of the water will be sent to Massaru Emoto Institute where they will perform the water crystal photography.
This project intends to create a pure interaction between the water and people. The photos of the water crystals will show the blueprint of the energy field of intentions sent to that water during the week. Embodying the spirit of Burning Man, Friday and Saturday night, we will be utilizing the transformational properties of fire. We will ignite a flame that dances inside the water vortex burning and releasing all collected intentions of the water and offering them into the cosmos.
The Aquarian Shrine
The Aquarian Shrine is a colorful, musical and sacred site for the reverence of the life-giving element of Water. The twin tailed water-nymph serenades you with her sweet siren songs, cradling a shell at her belly, full of reflection, revelation, and information. She emerges from a large clam-shell of cupped hands, coming to surface in the palms of offering and collection. In her shell she is grateful to receive drops of water as prayer from your vessel, and a song from your lips.
The Bear
Large burningmanesque bear. Contains the poem “The Bear”. The poem is an intimate invitation for the courage to create ourselves beyond the default world of our culture.
The Bridge and The Cage
THE BRIDGE & THE CAGE
Eternal return is a concept that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur an infinite number of times across infinite time or space.
THE BRIDGE is a crossing from one reality to another; poverty to prosperity, from adulthood to old age, & into different facets of maturity. Sometimes crossing a bridge happens as a rite of passage. Sometimes one is stuck forever at a door that never opens, grieving for a dream that is never granted. However there is always the eternal return to the bridge, an endless yearning to travel across into a better, brighter place. We are like plants in the soil that always strive to reach for the sun.
THE CAGE stages the fact that we’re trapped by profound ignorance and limited cognitive capacity. We’re trapped by our need for absolute good and evil. Our human choices lead us into vulnerability and into natural disaster. We are surprised at our suffering, when this is history of the world.
The Chapel of Stage Own Death & The Marriage of Convenience
The Black & White Chapel of Death & the Marriage of Convenience rises from the playa like a 3D Yin Yang sign, providing all one or two’s needed to either Stage your own death or become conveniently betrothed. Please come preform your Radical Ritual & sign the guest BRC guest book.
Don’t miss Sunday’s high noon 5 mph drag race where Marriage will pit against Death in the race of the century between the Matrimonio Gondola vs. Gondola Funebre. High noon sharp!
The Crane of Remembrance
The Crane of Remembrance is a memorial to celebrate those whose lives were lost during the Oakland Fire at the Ghost Ship in 2016. The Oakland Crane symbolizes Oakland city where this event took place. The memorial plaque gives thanks to those who gave their spirit of person, their skill in art, and their movement in dance. The Crane of Remembrance has a swing to sit, rest and reflect. We keep their spirit alive and celebrate this week on playa during the day. At night LED lights will dance on this structure to celebrate while spotlights shine on the crane and into to the sky.
the Cranebow
The Cranebow is a gift, from the Asawa School of the Arts, dedicated to Draven McGill and all those who perished in the Ghost Ship fire. As it slowly moves from red to purple, it imbues the love of the entire community of SOTA for this beautiful young man, this lover of music, this fallen adventurer, our friend. And, like all rainbows on the horizon, it reminds us of the rays of bright sun that shine through the raindrops of our tears, releasing us at the heart from the sorrows of this mortal coil.
The Dandelion Garden
Dandelion Garden (DG) is an tech-art installation, which resembles futuristic mini-garden of specific plants with a giant dandelion as its core, grown in the unusual environment. Dandelion Garden is a predecessor of the Field of Magic Dandelions (FOMD). The installation is meant to be installed in the open space, and make an impact on Participants through a) interactive illumination; b) static observation of the frozen-like inner structure from a close look; c) surprising discovery of Dandelion Garden in an unusual place.
The Dragonfly Mating Ritual
The “Dragonfly Mating Ritual” represents sensual togetherness. The deeper meaning of love that can be found through the ritual of mating. An act essential to the survival of species and an honoring to the sacred masculine and feminine. Amassed in a beautiful fire breathing lotus flower representing the purity in body, speech and mind that can be found in the intimacy between two consensual individuals. Sculptures of 30 mating dragonflies, in their ritualistic heart shape, swirl around in the air from rotating mobile arms surrounding the observation deck. Black Rock citizens have an interactive carnival style playground that represents soul level transformation through the ritual of mating.
The Dung Bug
Guided by the sun, the Dung Bug will adventure across the dust on its daily ritual of spawning new friendships and shared experiences by utilizing a unique and a highly interactive human gerbil ball propulsion system.
Similar to a children’s tricycle, the 10′ diameter Dung Ball is rolled forward by the walking weight of participants riding inside and is steered by an experienced bug pilot operating a pivot between the front and back wheels. The tessellated surface of the Dung Ball isn’t exactly round and in combination with kinetic legs the bug has an articulated and lifelike movement as it clunkily moves along the playa. At night, the bug will utilize pixel-mapped LED lighting and starcaster lights to illuminate its travel path and inner workings. The starcaster lights are a nod to how wild dung beetles use the moon, stars, and Milky Way to safely travel in the dark.
The Edge of the World
The Edge of the World –
Ancient civilisations believed that the world is flat and stands on 3 elephants which in turn all stand on a big turtle who stand on a giant snake. Point 3 is the End of the World for us, if you look inside you can see the edge of the world.
The Fireside Circles
For those of you who miss a nice and simple fire to congregate around, The Fireside Circles are concrete burn platforms with concrete benches and a cord of firewood for you, the community, to sit and get warm while watching the world go round and telling stories. You, the community are the fire tender. Please keep it clean and beautiful. Leave No Trace.
The Flower Tower
The Flower Tower is a 70 foot tall metal structure ornately decorated by thousands of painted metal flowers, some of which will blow fire.
The Gift of Good Fortune
The Gift of Good Fortune is a forced perspective image stretched across multiple rectangular frames. From any angle other than the apex viewpoint, the piece appears as separate geometric parts, reducing in size from one end to the other. From a single viewing position, all pieces of the image align to create a flat, unified portrait of the Hindu deity Ganesha.
In Hindu tradition, Ganesha is the deity tasked with removing obstacles and creating good fortune. As powerful as faith can be, however, most obstacles will not be overcome by faith alone. It requires some level of human intervention. This often requires a willingness to look at the problem from multiple different perspectives. Once you have examined the impediment from varying points of view, the path forward becomes much clearer.
The Gilded Brine Shrimp
The Gilded Brine Shrimp Shrine is a testament to the most radical ritual of all, that of the life of the Brine Shrimp every year on the flooded playa. The Brine Shrimp worshipers wish to take this opportunity to build a Golden Shrine to this amazing Artemia. With a large shrine in the shape of a half globe, representing the Brine Shrimp egg in cryptobiosis, the Brine Shrimp worshipers will present to the Gilded Brine Shrimp a large golden cloth to represent water. Sitting atop the half globe is a large Gilded Brine Shrimp, watching closely his offspring.
The Gloaming
When our world is closer to the Otherworld, spirits travel the thin spaces, and it is at dusk when the aes sidhe welcome the coming night. In ritual that stretches back before humans – and that also anticipates a future when they don’t exist – the sidhe revel in the endless cycle of light and dark. The court bursts from the Otherworld, and bystanders see a dark figure with pulsing veins of red light and a silver face that reflects a person’s soul, followed by cavorting figures who tap on many drums.
In caricature of the Pied Piper leading children astray, some of the sidhe beat a march, while other figures dart among onlookers, drawing bystanders in as the group strides toward ritual stations of drum and light. The court – and its new attendants – pound a rhythm as the sun sinks below the horizon towards the inevitable transformation of light to dark. The sidhe and its new court howl in joy as the sun drops past the skyline, and the blessed cool of night bathes the land in its embrace.
The Journey
The Journey looms like the long forgotten remains of a prehistoric animal that has been illuminated from within. An intimate inspection reveals the evenly spaced, rib-like spirals that create the form, defining an unending path without a clear beginning or end. The Journey’s toroidal structure is a mortise and tenon, interlocking wood construction forming 36 interconnected rings. Each ring is a double helix, 10′ in diameter, creating an 8′ interior corridor that circumnavigates a 22′ circular inner courtyard. The installation’s footprint is 42′ in diameter.
Pre-programmed sounds, such as sunrise/sunset meditations, help participants reflect on their own journey. The interior surfaces of the double helix passageway have addressable LED lights. By day, the structure is a walkable audio enhanced interactive piece allowing individuals to examine the beauty of the construction. By night the piece’s impact is based on the light experience and its responsiveness to the audio and environment.
The Labyrinth of Dreams
The Labyrinth of Dreams provides a tranquil place to walk, mediate, and create your own prayer flags.
The Launch Facility
The Launch Facility is a miniature space station designed to send Earthlings into deepest space. Orientation for starship operations is provided at Post Nuclear Family, located in the city. The launch event will be on Friday night at 21:00 on the playa at the provided coordinates, weather permitting.
The Messenger
The Messenger Shrine consists of a Monumental, archetypal, figurative Bronze sculpture surrounded by a temple architecture of salvaged post-and beam wood. Oil lamps hung from the structure as well as covered votive candles surrounding the bronze, provide aesthetic illumination, while a propane flame burns perpetually in the heart cavity of the sculpture.
The Mirror
A freestanding mirror which reflects our world and reveals the depth of our imagination.
The Mystic Huldre
In the ancient forests of the Nordic old lands, there lives a people hidden to the eyes of humans. They share the same space as humans, but look far different. These are the Huldre or hidden people. The Huldre do not meddle in human affairs, but will help those in need. But they also punish those that seek to destroy the shared land. Intentions and offering to the Huldre will curry their favor to help those lost or in need of protection. Seek the Huldre when lost in the dark.
The Overflowing Cups
One’s cup overflows through participation.
The Phoenix Rainbow
The Phoenix Rainbow is a GIANT programmable RGB LED Rainbow! The Phoenix Rainbow stands as a 32′ wide by 16′ tall symbol of love, joy, hope and possibility! The Phoenix Rainbow will dazzle and delight with its myriad of colour and programming wizardry!
The Pier
The Pier, shhhh, its a secret pier. Well, tell your friends, and their friends. And come fish for hippies or pretend to be barnacles on the butt of society. But, shhhhh, it’s a secret.
The Probability Probe
The Probability Probe has come to BurningMan to collect data and transmit it back to its creators. The probe may have come from a different planet, from the future or from a different plane of probability. Its origins will be decided by the Burners who visit the Probe on the Playa and interact with it.
The structure stands 32 feet tall (including antennas) is highly interactive and has a number of key technologies built into it. These include a highly sophisticated lighting system and the ability to send targeted messages directly to a library of exoplanets around the universe. The initial vision for the structure came from a recurring dream that the lead artist has had since childhood. It is hoped that Participants who come in contact with the Probability Probe will not only ponder the possibilities of where the Probe has come from but also question where they themselves have come from and what are the different probabilities/possibilities for their own lives.
The Puddletown Panorama
The Puddletown Panorama is designed around a 14’x7′ trailer pulled by a custom, unique tow-vehicle. It has the look of an old-time circus/carnival sideshow with shade canopy, hand painted artwork and lettering, decorative metal work, illuminated by Edison-style LED bulbs and custom-built gas or oil lamps. The focus of the trailer is the primary, 5 station, 3d viewer for looking at stereo-cards. It is a rotating contraption inspired by the 1890s “Kaiser Panorama”, only in reduced table-top form.
Alongside the viewer is a bench (doubling as a storage unit) where Participants waiting to use the viewer can hang out while looking at additional 3d-cards using hand-held viewers. The entire piece is a work of art and craftsmanship, dedicated to the exhibition of another art form, stereo-photography. For its inaugural outing, it will feature the work of stereophotographers, or “stereoburners”, who have recorded Burning Man over the last 20 years.
The Reflection Altar
What is revolutionary art? Revolutionary art is the manifestation of visions and dreams with the intent of a further integrated, fulfilled self and society. It is the practice of inspired action to progress beyond what we are, in to what we desire to become. This art piece has been created to facilitate the introspection of one’s self and the collective whole. How can we gather inspiration from the darkest, most desolate and corrupt aspects of our reality’s condition, and transform it in to the foundation of our own innovative revolution?
The Shrine of La Santisima Muerte
La Santisima Muerte: the Lady of Shadows, the Sacred Death, the Skinny Lady. Looking out from her Shrine, she rejects none, for all will come to her in the end. She represents the universality of death that generates a fundamental equality amongst all of human kind. Her Shrine is covered in symbols and imagery of our innovation and folly, our greatness of spirit and failures of character, our precious love and our violent hate, for around the core truth of our shared humanity lie the challenges, choices, will and imagination that create and define the individuality of our human spirit. Arrayed before her, six heads of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, the Bringer of Knowledge, hold high the lanterns that dispel the darkness of ignorance and concealment, illuminating the path to discovery.
The Shrine of Lost Moments
The Story Behind
In December 2016, a tragic attack hit near one of the memorial places in Berlin at Gedächtniskirche (Church of Memory in the center of the city). A man drove a heavy lorry into the crowded Christmas market. Twelve women and men came to death, others were heavily injured. This incident (which happened near to most of us living in Berlin) inspired us to develop the Shrine of Lost Moments as an art project at Burning Man 2017.
The Project
We all have periods, relationships, or people in our lives that either end or disappear too early, that we have no time to say farewell to or process, or things that we want to end and can’t. Giving these transitions an active place of remembrance and farewell, as a place of transition;
we want to create the shrine of lost moments at Burning Man 2017. The lost moment might also be a period or person that you want to embrace and bring back into memory.
The visitor of the shrine is encouraged to interact and engage: he or she takes a colored piece of cardboard – the Remembrance Piece. This piece is cut in the form of the tower of the Berlin’s Gedächtniskirche (memorial church) and contains the shadow of a person (inspired
by the shadow of vaporized victims of the Hiroshima-bombing).
People can take one of the remembrance pieces and write a name, life period, situation… they want to remember, embrace or eliminate from their lives. Both positive and burdening memories are welcome. Then, the remembrance piece can be broken in two parts – a little bit
like the identity tag (dog tag) that soldiers carry around their necks when on a mission. The upper part stays with the burner; the lower part will be placed at the shrine – designed as a colorful “tree of life.” The tree of life will be burned with the attached Remembrance Pieces together with the Man.
The Solacii
An elegant, 20′ tall body rises out of the desert floor, turning ever towards the new day, offering the hope and inspiration that comes with the rising of the sun at the end of a long, dark night.
This solemn figure comes from an ancient race of beings known as the Solacii, who have observed the entirety of human history with deep empathy – feeling each exuberant joy and aching pain of our species. This individual has made itself visible to humans in this moment in time to offer both comfort and inspiration.
The mysterious being is clothed in an intricate dress crafted from personal garments and heirlooms gathered from the community – symbolizing the collective memories, stories, and experiences of the human race. With wise old hands, the Solacii opens its many layered dress to reveal a refuge for weary & curious travelers. Both cozy and cathedral-like, the inner sanctuary offers a space for solitude and intimate gatherings, a home for meditation, deep conversation, and personal ritual.
The Stakeout
The Stakeout is an interactive artwork where prospective detectives can step into another time. A lone park bench and lamppost offer the perfect vantage point to witness an unfolding mystery.
The Starfield
The Starfield is a 3 dimensional field of light created from an immersive grid of LEDs. Participants see waves and patterns of light move through the space. Once inside, Participants experience those waves washing over them over them, the light moving and shifting around them. At times, the Starfield beckons Participants to play, responding to their location, movement, and noises. All the while, it plays relaxing, ambient music, creating a whimsical, calming oasis of light and sound.
The Temple
The form of the Temple begins with life out of balance. Throughout the Sierra Nevada, species of pine trees are dying, compromised by a bark beetle which has proliferated due to human interruption of the cycle of forest fires, and climate change. The material of these trees, donated to our project, harvested and milled, becomes the basic building block of the Temple. Interlocking timber pieces in formation become a Temple that is both cloud and spire; inverted pyramidal columns suggest the negative-space of a forest canopy, simultaneously supporting a vast pagoda-like ‘cloud’ framework which in turn supports a central spire. In this way disorder gives way to harmony, and a group of dying trees is re-ordered into a cathedral of timbers stretching toward the sky; filtered sun rays will illuminate the intricate work of hundreds of hands building in unison; a collaboration that knits together a community as roots intertwine to give a healthy forest stability.
The Temple of Awareness
Temples offer environments for us to immerse ourselves into an unworldly place of harmony and peace. The Temple of Awareness is an organic form, similar to a pine cone. Seen from above, it evokes aspects of a bloomed lotus. The Temple is a 13-sided dome structure that is 35 ft. in diameter at the base. It has seven levels that reach 35 ft. high, each level with projecting decorative wings encircling it.
From a distance, the wings create a feeling of lightness, while the dome as a whole conveys a rooted presence. Participants enter the Temple through one of thirteen sizable inverted “V” openings. Inside is a welcoming, vaulted, airy interior defined by a series of shrinking, concentric circles soaring overhead. The dome top is left uncovered to allow for the participant’s connection with the cosmos. The open interior design incorporates hundreds of shelves lining every wall, as well as several freestanding sub-altars that provide many niches and ledges for objects of remembrance.
The Temple of Love
The Temple of LOVE is a place to celebrate the vibe of LOVE & In honor of Burning Man, Radical Rituals & LOVE
Within this temple is tactile, interactive walls, each representing a language of love.
Gifting, Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation, Quality Time and finally, Acts of Service.
Gifting:A principle and language is where one can give or take a gift, tie it to a heart, or stash it in a drawer.
You also can get “Touchy Feely” with a wall of tactile fun; OR hug a Giant teddy bear on the wall of “Physical Touch”
For those more about words, they can write affirming words on the Wall of Affirmation.
Quality Time is represented by a room off the back of the temple, a space for a pair or small group to spend some true QT together.
Acts of Service comes from two tables on the end of the temple; come have some tea, or offer a friend a shoulder massage. The tea tables are there for anyone to offer up a moment to relieve or inspire another in that moment for the rest of their day, or life.
The Temple of the Inner Bitch
The Temple Of The Inner Bitch is the place where all are welcome to celebrate and pay homage to the Divine Bitch who lives inside us all.
She protects. She encourages. She kicks the asses of those who wish us harm. She gives us the strength to be assertive when social conditioning sets in. Sometimes she’s the little voice inside our heads that tells it like it is. When unleashed in her devotees’ best and highest interest, she acts like over-ride button, taking control of the situation.
The Thing We Share
The Thing that We Share isn’t a thing at all. It’s an interactive environment, a social sculpture where participants explore a magical Artefact that reveals the place where “I” turns into “We.”
The Three Wishes
The Three Wishes is a triad of flaming metal spires that arc to form a defined and illuminated space for gathering, contemplation and ritual. The first wish is for the visceral thrill of large scale flame art, and the second wish is for the joy of standing in beauty. The third wish remains open to those who visit, as a wish for the future.
The Tomb of Nahtaivel
Ancient stories tell of the Leviathan, believed to be a great beast, a demon or one of the Four Princes of Hell. We believe that this branch of lore represents the individual struggle between right and wrong, physically manifested in the real world. Sometimes facing personal problems can feel like you’re battling a great beast. This temple is about the external and internal forces that bring people together to create the world in which we all participate whether it be good or evil.
The very definition of ritual implies history and repetition. The visual telling of history is an ancient practice older than written lore. We want to encourage people to share their own histories and share their own battles within this space.
Therolin No. 1
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
-Nikola Tesla
Therolin No.1 is a study of electromagnetic and acoustic vibrations resulting in a radical new musical instrument. A 20 foot length of steel pipe acts as the sounding box, while a theramin antenna at the end controls a series of electromagnets that actuate a strand of piano wire within. It is designed to be minimal and unassuming, while still having an intriguing presence. Participants will be drawn in by its form, and only upon closer inspection will they discover something completely unexpected and wonderful. As they get close to or reach out to touch the end of the pipe, they will notice a soft musical sound starting to emit. If they move their hand closer to the antenna, the pitch of the sound will rise, and as they move their hand away the pitch will fall. The experience will be the interface of a traditional theramin, but with a more real, physical sound.
THUNDERBIRDS
THUNDERBIRDS is three towering figures constructed in mixed media assemblage. In name the sculptures reference the mythological beings of Native American lore. In concept they speak to the universality of humankind viewed through our collective stories.
A gathering of human spirits, the weathered rusty steel wings evoke the passage and transience of time. Sound elements conjure a sense of primordial place; the dry lakebed, the playa. Lighting for this installation is a simple circle of illumination, an ethereal cocoon; an open invitation for the continuation of the participatory experience into the night.
In some of the traditional stories, the thunderbirds number four, representing north, south, east, and west. Here there will be only three, with a place delineated for the viewer to join the assembly and become the fourth entity.
Time Machine Elevator
The Time Machine Elevator is a working time machine that sends people to the past in order to correct their future. The artist doesn’t want to ruin the surprise, by disclosing his proprietary time travel method, but he does say “those who find it are in for a treat”.
Tonglen
A placid face of segmented, polished metal, eyes calm and lips pursed, supported by a neck armature containing two volumes, a diamond and a heart. Behind the mouth, inside the curve of the face is a diamond shaped combustion chamber and below it, just off the ground, a heart shaped bellows. A rod protrudes behind the head and joins to a levered handle, anchored to the ground so that a person acting on the handle will cause the bellows to expand and contract, forcing air through the combustion chamber and out of the mouth. Hot sparks from the burning wood will issue out on the exhale and the stoked combustion chamber will glow with heat, shining through the seams and incised writing on the face.
Toosun
The sun feels like it is two feet away during the summer in Tucson. Toosun brings a bit of that to the playa by suspending a burning star above your head. The calming motion of the flame and warm make this a nice place to lay down and chill.
Torch Song
Torch song is a kinetic fire art sculpture. Nine flames move synchronously along the 15′ high structure, creating a choreography of fire, music, and movement.
Totem Orchestra
Totem Orchestra is three 6-9 foot tall mixed media interactive sound sculptures. Each individual totem represents one of the three elements of air, earth and water which will be immersed in the fire element of the Burning Man environment. The shrines are comprised of repurposed and originally fabricated traditional instruments from around the world, integrated into a totemic structure, with each totem being characterized by the origin of the sound waves; a column of air (aerophones, i.e. pipe organ) the vibration of the instrument body (idiophone, i.e. bells, cymbals) and tensioned strings (chordophone, i.e. harp). A sculptural space is provided in this work that is made kinetic with the input of the Burning Man participants. It is the instinctual and primal communicative aspect of music that Totem Orchestra taps into in order to draw out people’s desire for improvisational expression.
Tower of Not Babel
A Tower is seen in the distance. It looks like a Mayan Temple or Egyptian Pyramid. As you get closer, you see people climbing all around it, and stopping. Closer still, you realize that some people are reading, some are writing. As you walk up to it you see that each side has a sign on it: “This side was written on at POrtalBurn” and “This side was written on at Playa del Fuego”. You realize that the Tower is a traveling time capsule that fosters communication. It has traveled to eight different events in the North East United States. Each side has a different personality. You mount the Tower and quickly get engrossed in the art and the prose. You notice that there is a little bin of colored markers. You grab one and carry it with you as you wander up and around the Tower, waiting for that inspirational message to spark a reaction. Time passes, you don’t realize how high up you’ve climbed until you stop and turn, and see the view….and then the epiphany hits you.
Transcendent Souls - a journey within
Imagine two trees shining in copper with exposed roots that grow into hands holding a glowing heart of unconditional love. Transcendent Souls will be approximately 16′ tall and will be made of steel, concrete, foam, copper, glass, wood and chain for “porch type” swing and solar for the electrical components inside of the heart/flame and solar spots lights that shine upward upon the tree trunks at night. Underneath the piece Participants will be able to experience Transcendent Souls from another perspective, with a large porch type swing that will be mounted/hung from the two main tree trunks. This will allow soul gazers to become part of the creation.
Tree of Ténéré
An enormous lifelike tree, Ténéré offers shade to wanderers, adventure to climbers, and transcendent community to those gathered beneath its 15,000 LED leaves.
Like its namesake – considered the most isolated tree on Earth until its destruction in 1973 – Ténéré serves as a place of refuge and ritual for desert wanderers. Standing more than three stories tall, it beckons to passersby with the promise of shade and adventure, conjuring spontaneous communities out of desert sand and sun.
At night, LEDs hidden within each leaf begin to glow. The 15,000 leaves form a dome-shaped “canvas of light” that towers over the playa, spanning more than a thousand square feet. Participants lying under the tree experience sublime light shows set to ambient music or live performance. And they directly influence the canopy lights through their sounds and biorhythms, creating moments of transcendent oneness with each other and with nature.
UKI - Utility Kinetic Insect
Visually UKI is inspired by the resilient biological life in the harsh Australian outback. Stimulated by her immediate environment, UKI senses and responds, pulsating in rhythmic machinations and provoking interactive engagement.
Stimulating the senses of all around her as UKI demands engagement. Being born of both the biological and mechanical, her wings unfold exposing an illuminated underbelly whilst her body and limbs pulsate rhythmically.
Ursa Mater (Mother Bear)
Ever protective of her cubs, this mother grizzly bear looks out to her surroundings. She may have noticed intrusion, prey or just the wind. Ursa Mater (Mother Bear) is a succession in the life of Ursa Major, the standing grizzly bear brought to the playa by Mr and Mrs Ferguson in 2016.
Once again, the coat of this bear will be made up from pennies standing on end, her cub’s fur will also, but their coats will be made up from new pennies. These bears will be made up from over 200,000 penny coins from the US and Canada. The installation will be 12 feet high and the same in width.
Mother Bear is an example of a mother’s protection for her children. She is strong and warm. As with Ursa Major, this Ursa Mater is an example of the majesty of a grizzly bear. Dangerous when provoked but vulnerable to the fear and greed of humans.
Vacant Spectator
“The Scamming Facade”
Through analyzing of the Amsterdam’s RLD and Rome’s baroque church facades, specific elements can be seen as a hidden language through the use of symbols that are identifiable to future occupants. Through the installation I explore the concept of hidden architectural effects and illusions
In the “vacant spectator”, there is an emphasis in the way in which forbidden views allow for the audience of any space to become aware of a reality or a circumstance that has always been present. Allowing the spectator to become aware of this leads to the realization of previous ignorance.
In my research trip to Amsterdam I was able to talk to prostitutes that operate in the RLD. Hearing their opinions on how “the windows” concept results in psychological effects on the client. Although “the windows” began as an element of accessibility, it has now evolved to an iconic attraction element of prostitution in the Red Light District.
Via Homo Incendi
Inspired by the Roman Catholic ritual of the Stations of the Cross and Medieval religious pilgrimages, this installation consists of 22 ‘stations’ placed at locations in Black Rock City mapping the Burning Man logo onto BRC itself. In numerology, 22 represents ‘dreams made manifest’; in Christian Biblical study, 22 represents ‘extreme chaos’, both a great description of Burning Man.
Stations are attached to a street sign post and represent a year in the history of Burning Man and significant events in the default world for that year. Like perusing a yearbook, each station is an opportunity to ponder, reminisce, or strike up a conversation. The stations may be experienced in any order, but if experienced sequentially by year, the pilgrim’s path through the city traces the Burning Man logo.
Vibraj 3.0
Vibraj 3.0 is the next expression in an ongoing series of windstruments. The vessel is an archway resembling A torii which is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine. Upon this vessel are chimes and harp strings connected to resonating chambers and long creature like aluminum appendages that dangle from above and give voice to the wind. Perhaps it’s a gateway to whatever one sees beyond the confines of physical reality. A place to walk through and re imagine, an invitation to pass through from one dimension to another. From past to future, from old to new, from this to that or nothing at all. Just an offering to the wind.
Wind Dancing
Dancing with the the winds of impermanence.
Wings of Eos
The Wings of Eos stand 4′ by 6′ and are composed of wood. Based on a Fibonacci spiral, the Wings are symmetrical and appear heart-shaped. Handprint “feathers” become individual pieces of art as they are inscribed and decorated by Participants at events leading up to the Burn. The essence of this work of art is its collaborative making alongside its relatability. We all can connect with the symbol of an outstretched hand. As feathers for the Wings, handprints are hands-on art in every sense of the term. A sunrise processional on Tuesday morning features gossamer-clad women carrying and composing art from the negative space left behind during the laser-cutting of the “feathers.” Meditation and healing follow this ritual sunrise ceremony.
WonderLamp: Discovering
WonderLamp: Discovering is an illuminated triangle that spins manually and provides video and movement interaction both as it turns and as it stands. The art work is reflects the relationship between two people that is so disparate that it cannot be compared. The image of which is laser cut into aluminum siding that creates the triangle.
WORDLESS
WORDLESS is a large three-dimensional word made out of wood. The word that is displayed is “WORD” and the surface of the structure is covered in pages of scripture from the world’s major religions. The choice of word is a biblical reference to John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The structure stands as a dual monument: first, as a tribute to the power of word as a force of creation and second, as a statement about the relationship between words and spiritual identity.
Xochipili
Xochipilli is a god of art, games, love, beauty, bohemia, flowers and power plants in the Aztec mythology. In Black Rock City this year, a giant low-poly wooden statue of Xochipilli will be erected to celebrate a deep cultural trip. Its body is a temple of art (plastic arts, painting, visual performances, music and dance). Both inside and outside, the sculpture is designed to give a new spiritual, physical and mental experience. It’s our own interpretation of the cult that the sacred image of the Statue of Xochipilli carries. Plywood low-poly skin is a canvas for visual artists. The golden mask will be removed to reveal a metal skull – all that will remain after the burn.
XOXO
XOXO is the latest sculpture created by Laura Kimpton and Jeff Schomberg. Letters written for generations are often signed with XOXO, signifying the sender is sharing hugs and kisses. This Monumental Word sculpture is Laura and Jeff’s love letter to the playa, and the thousands of burners who together make the event the most spectacular experience on the planet.
Your own, personal Jesus
This piece consists of three different “churches”. Each is clearly different in design: one is influenced by the Christian faith; another by Islam; and the third is a modern interpretation of a more ancient, more feminine belief system. They are made of stone and wood, evoking the traditional images of faith that we have become accustomed to. All three are supported by platforms, allowing a single participant to look underneath them and even put their head up in to them, revealing a space of personal worship.
The insides of the micro-cathedrals are decorated in traditional fashion, with respect to each of their belief systems. Stained-glass windows adorn the walls. Music evocative of each faith plays softly over concealed speakers. But the traditional images of faith are replaced by words and images of a more inclusive world, asking the participant to re-evaluate their place in spiritual society
सिंहलद्वीप (Simhaladvipa-Sacrarium of Serendipity)
The Sacrarium of Serendipity is a reflection on immediacy and acceptance. The Flamboyant Gothic style unites the organic nature of flames with strict order, like the free will of humans clashing with social mores. The structure offers not straight lines but instead follows an organic order of repetition and scale. This shrine stands against the winds of change and those pulsing across the Playa and acknowledges the futility of both. Cavities, recesses and invaginations throughout can accept the worries, fears and resistance of human nature and offer them to Serendipity Herself in the final immolation under the Man.