1999 Art Installations

A place to view some of Dali’s paintings and ideas on time and space.

You will see, be drawn toward, and then enter the mouth of The Black Hole (a 30′ black windsock, secured to the playa floor). Experience your mental projections, crunch your own time/space continuum, become One, and extrude out the very narrow far end.

In some still region of the Playa, somewhere out past the Man, you stumble upon eight meditating souls, eight fractured/reflected visions of earth & sky; you stumble upon nothing; you stumble upon yourself.

This 20′ tall man in made entirely of speakers.

The manta is a twenty foot plywood sculpture of a manta ray in the style of a childs wooden puzzle.

A 10′ tall wooden spaceship has embedded itself in the playa.

This life-sized orange fabric elephant was supported by a bicycle.

I dreamed of a field of silver platters supported by rusty iron pipes and heaped with rice and vegetables, crowned with mummified fish carcasses.

Made of 2000 candles and gifted with a great mane of amber hair, FlaMe WoMan looks out of one blue eye with an iris in the shape of a spiral, and sheds a tear from the other. She wears a long blue & green flickering skirt. The core of FlaMe WoMan is a fire pit which receives messages from visitors. Around the core, altars are built by participants, creating a sacred space for rituals.

The Golden Goddess is a large smiling head, shining brightly in her golden skin. Participants are invited to write a wish on a piece of sacramental paper, which can then be glued to her surface. After she is covered with wishes, we will burn her and send your wishes to the heavens.

H.M.S. Love is the story of a submarine captain who fell in love. Stalking the dark emotionally cold Atlantic seas of dodgy relationships he met a woman and got giddy with love. It all happened so fast that he surfaced out of control and found himself in a desert. H.M.S. Love is a full size WWII submarine, 50′ in length.
URL: www.gucciboy.com

Spencer Tunick’s second annual group nude photograph is made entirely of participants and is part of his Reaction Zone series.
URL: www.spencertunick.com

A dozen hand-decorated table lamps hang in perfect balance from this 16′ tall spinning metal mobile.

This simple haybale house cooled by an evaporative generator provides a quiet shelter from the sun and heat of the playa.

Everything that is marvellous carries with it much that is instructive, and, in this sense, The Museum of Ten Thousand Wonderful Things, may be made useful for the highest educational purposes. Events which happen in the regular course have no claim to a place in any museum that professes to be a register of what is uncommon; and were we to select such Wonders only as are capable of familiar demonstration, we should destroy their right to be deemed wondrous, and, at the same time, defeat the very object which we profess to have in view. A marvel once explained away ceases to be a marvel. For this reason, while rejecting everything that is obviously fictitious and untrue, we have not hesitated to insert many incidents and exhibits which appear at first sight to be wholly incredible.

This 16′ X 12′ desk towers over participants in this project by San Francisco Art Institute students who created it for Burning Man in a class.

A golden 12′ high Phoenix rests on this hand-pulled Mardi Gras style float. The bird breathes fire from her beak and she bleeds wine from her breast, where she has pecked herself to feed her young.

A stylized wooden dinosaur spreads its red-lined wings over the playa.

The Running Man is a mechanical-kinetic sculpture which creates a semi-realistic illusion of a person running while on fire. The Running Man was built from discarded bicycles and other found metal. He is wrapped in cotton rags and/or kevlar firewick, doused with flammable liquid, set on fire, and then pulled by car, bicycle, or other vehicle. His runs are not scheduled or announced and last for only a minute or two which increases the random and surprising nature of the experience.

Tall wooden towers support red fabric banners which are lit by red lights.

He is a 20-foot high hollow figure of a diver made of multi-colored plastic records illuminated from within giving the effect of stained glass. Stan is brought to you by Finley Fryer and the same folks who brought us the Chapel of the Burning Book at Burning Man ’98.
URL: www.snowcrest.net/finleyfryer/

This human carwash is a long corridor lined with tactile elements including boas, rubber balls, scarces, sponges, brushes, and feather dusters.

The Tesselated Dodecagon is a nocturnal refuge from intense sound and light. Straightedge-and-compass methods create a hypnotic pattern of diamonds and squares in the plane.

The Tetrahedron is a geometric figure described by green laser beams in air, with pyramidal structures and towers holding mirrors to reflect the beams, thus forming the vertices. Six, 20-foot long beams form a four-sided (tetra=four, hedron=sided) pyramid sitting on its edge, which seems to delicately rest on its supports although it’s made of light. It will be possible to walk under The Tetrahedron, as its lowest edge is 10 feet off the ground.

A time portal in the heart of Black Rock City is strategically placed on a sight line between the future and the past. This 80′ long and 30′ wide structure features over 800 rainbow colored lights controlled by a sixteen circuit multi – sequencing solid state control panel. The lights zip back and forth the length of the tunnel in continuously changing patterns. From the inside of the tunnel looking toward the future, one will see the Burning Man in the distance. The time tunnel is the central hub for the Black Rock Taxi Service, the Flying Saucer Space Port, and a number of other art vehicles designed to abduct innocent city dwellers and take them on adventures around the Playa.

Trout Flambe, constructed of cast iron, cast aluminum, steel, bronze, vinyl and propane, is nourishment for thirsting consciousness, not bodies. The vinyl tube of the skeleton (visible through the partially consumed body) will fill with propane and ignite periodically, leaving a weird impression of a fish skeleton on dark-adapted eyes.

WaterBoy is back and this time he’s recruiting. Looking for mermaids, octopi, jellyfish… etc. Lots of water, scuba, snorkeling and more water.