Installation Art

Jadu Beta at Burning Man 2004  (Black Rock City, NV)

I got a chance to work with sculptor Saul Melman at Burning Man Art event.  For the project I was the Structural engineer, Draftsman, Electrician, and Rigger.   It was a fun project, very challenging with some really amazing folks to work with.   The environment was crazy!   It reached 110 degrees F durring the day, 40 degrees F at night, 50 mph winds with gusts from all directions, strange 4-6 inch loose packed soil, schorching sun at 3800ft elevation, amazing sunsets, brilliant stars, moon so bright it was like you could read a book by it.    Our project was the only substantial sized sculpture that was completed ON TIME even with the crazy weather of 3 dust storms, rain, and random Thor-like winds.

Finished product 2 days before festival start.  450 air bags, 36 4x4 posts in the ground 3 feet deep, 3500 feet of electrical cable, 36 florescent fixtures.

Airplane view, small nub to the left is a bicycle.  The sculpture was large, 100+ feet wide by 250 feet long.   I was brought onto the project as the mechanical engineer, draftsman, surveyer, electrician, and person to tie things down from blowing away in the fierce winds.

The layout was the easy step.   I built a special a laser protractor to survey out the lay of the land shown below.   (less fun ones can be purchased for $400).  It was super tough figuring out the structural design for a group of 450 air bags in 50 mph winds.

Me, Pheonix, and Sev finished electricty and upon first cranking the generator to life, all the lights worked.  That was one of the really fun moments, where there was encouragement that we could make it.

That night we had our first majior dust storm.  When I say major:  all but 2 of our 10 tents blew flat, 50 mph winds.  When we went to sleep that night we were convinced that the sculpture was a goner, but no!  All the hard work, the rigging, and the good design worked.  That sculputure, that is nothing more than plastic air pockets of air, stayed stuck to that ground like a Hilti epoxy to a concrete core drill.   We rocked the playa.   But seriously, we really suceeded in building an absurd sculpture in an equally absurd environment.   The ground there is like no other, 6 inches of alkali loose pack (drywall dust), we used 18-20 inch stakes and hand tamped the 35 4x4 poles into the ground.   The picture was taken in the second dust storm later that week.  Those pods are so brave and strong

My structural design was a success in getting all those silly air bags to sit upright and stand real neatly at 18 foot heights.

Neat Stacks.  Another big engineering whoopla was my input on using snap rivets to assemble the entire sculpture together.  Similar fastners can be found in car pannels, they are just a ribbed spike that when inserted in a hole, locks itself in.   We used those with a custom built plastic washer to achieve each of the 4000 connections.

It was an insane amount of work.  3 weeks design, 2 weeks prep, 1 month in the desert, and that was just me!  There were 10 other people on the project some of them working the year before on it.   I just got involved 1 month before setup.   You would not believe how much stuff you have to take with you to the desert to live and work for 1 month.   I packed 7 bags of equipment and tools.  I used every last thing I brought.  Great trip.   The greatest bunch of people I've ever worked with.   I vetted my designes against the rest of the crew's know-how and the ideas always came out as better for it.  Everyone contributed so much -really a blast.

Secretly though the entire trip was to test some new inventions that I built especially for the trip.  One was a laser protractor.   It was used to perfectly space and survey out the pole positions on the land.  It worked great.    Another was a solar recharging  light system.

The Impossible Tea Party, Dumbo Arts festival by Flux Factory

These are some rafts that I had built for some friends who did this show on the East River.  They all sat in formal attire on rafts and had a tea party.

Zen Garden

This is a zen garden that I built out of found objects and 150 pounds of buttons.   It was for a photo in Reuse magazine.  The buttons I got from Material for the Arts in Long Island.  Sitting among all those buttons and raking your hands through them was very satisfying.

Coke -a Cola Stile

This is a stile that distills putrefied coke down to alchohol.  I built it for a friends show who told me more-or-less how it was to work.  Apparently 20 bottles of putrefied coke leads to one bottle of Coke liquor.  The key is to boil the jar at a specific temperature and pressure so that the alcahol boils but the water dose not.  It kinda worked.....

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