Madagascar Institute

My Work With Madagascar Institute, a non-profit (really no-profit) Machine/costume art collective in Brooklyn NYC.   They work to build interactive art exhibits in Nyc and around the world.

Yankee Yank (Glastonbury, UK)

While working with the Madagascar Institute  designed and constructed 'Yankee Yank'  a tug of war game installed at the 2003 Glastonbury Festival in the UK.  Two teams fought for fire and the honor of pulling a rope for no decernable reason against other like-minded folk.  I had a great time, learned alot, and got to work with my tallented and fantastic NYC buddies along with new United Kingdom friends.   CHEERS!  Here Here!  (picture by Jason Enghal)

Off to the left is the frame that me and Touch designed.  It was built all out of scavenged steel.  Heavy duty as hell since 20 people can easily pull 1500 lbs of force.  We built in spring dampers to absorb the force and to keep the secruing stakes in the ground.  We really overdesigned the project but the end result, thanks to everyone's labor, effort, and input turned out great. The goals we had to accomplish was "unclimbable, secure, safe, heavyduty, looking dangerous, pretty pyro. (pictures by the wonderful Jason Enghal)

Condiment War (Dumbo Brooklyn)

This was Condiment War.  A supreme battle using Mayonase, mustard, katchup, pickles and just about everything else.  My catapult (pictured right)  is loaded with a bag of Katchup,  it launched it directly onto the table 40 feet away.  I also launched heads of lettus.  The catapult has a 150 lbs of launch force from 6 garage door springs under 600 lbs of tension force.   The battle lasted 30 minuites, involved about 200 people, and our team won (of course).  I built a bunch of weapons for the show including: 3 high lighs, 15 Foam mid-evil weapons, and a bucket of sponge missiles.  You can see me crouching beside the catapult in my napkin samuri outfit I made (picture left).   Below are more pics of the war.   Yes, it was messy.  Yes, scores of people got hot sauce in the eye. Pictures by Wamp and Bill Lanides.

Fire Polo (Berlin, Germany)

We also went to Berlin Germany.   Ahhhh Berlin.... Beautiful, well engineered city.  There we built a fleet of puppet horses to play a polo game in the streets.  It was very big production.  We had a country music band playing Jonny Cash songs, syncronized flamethrower cannons as goal posts, fireworks, mayhem, silly costumes.  I built the above mechanical actuated horse puppets.  The one on the left had car fender hoves that were actuated by a trailing wheel movement.  The head moved with the legs in a realistic movement.   That was the most impressive one that I built.  The one on the right was a horse, deconstructionist style using as many wheels as I could scrounge.

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