Worlds collide

Right now part of my work world involves researching Secondlife for a project I am working on. I was amused to discover that there is a Burning Man in SL called Burninglife. It takes place in a virtual desert concurrently with BM out here in RL (that's real life to you and me.)

Is my avatar supposed to be at Burninglife while I'm at BM?

If you're so inclined, you can read more about it here.

Solar Player Piano

All week I was looking forward to sharing this with everyone at the meeting, then the snow came, and memories flooded back, and, well, you know the rest. I would much rather try to explain it in person, but don't want to wait until April, so here goes...

As I daydremed about the theme of Burning Man this year, specifically "man's interaction with nature", things drifted in and out of my head. A wall of stained glass that created images at certain times of the day and angle of sun...kind of a Raiders of the Lost Ark thing (when Dr. Jones is down in the pit with his staff of the right height).

How about a grid of shaded solar cells, all attached to drivers that turn on and off a single musical note? The grid could be oriented such that, due to the shading of each cell, only a few solar cells are activated in the early morning, but, as the day went on, different cells would turn on, get louder, more and more ramping up until finally crescendoing at a certain time or times (noon, 2pm, etc) and, as the sun went down, slowly fade away. This grid could play a tune, a series of tunes, or whatever we wanted.

I have no idea of the logistics behind this, but it would be awesome to pull it off.

---Baron All

The Playa During It's Yearly Opposite

Hello hello. Thank you for the meeting updates. The Baroness and I were (and still are) bummed we didn't make it.

Stumbling around the web today I found this link to pics of the Playa right now, which just happens to be 6 months from when we all will be there. Very pretty, but in a different way.

Frequent visitors to Boing Boing (I'm looking at you, Professor) will have already seen this.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/27/black_rock_winter_sn.html

---Baron All

Transmogrificatory!

Thanks for filing that meeting report, Prof. It's all true!
(Scroll down and read Third-Group Meeting Rundown first.)

Update on potential other camp members - I talked to Dan Donohue. He did get a ticket but is not 100% sure he can go. I showed him the blog and got him up to speed, somewhat. He has other camp offers - but the Luscious Gizmoteer and I will work him over some more this weekend. LG will also redouble efforts to talk to Kristen Nadaraja nee Nygaard.

Also, at the meeting, I showed some little sketches of making our bikes into little perambulators. The idea would be to attach some sort of arched pole coming from the back of the bike with a little fake balloon on top so that the bike looks like a balloon-carried vehicle. The balloons could be lit up which would be very practical at night. The practicality of making such contraptions? I dunno. I'll try and post some of those sketches at some point.

We had plenty of little ideas percolating around the lasagna. The concept of Transmogrify came up. I've got some ideas - use whatever parts of them you want...
We could be a camp of Transmogrifiers! People could bring us objects (or ideas) and we can work with them to transmogrify it- perhaps with a specialty in synaesthesia. Can we satisfy people's transmogrify needs? I qhoth the philosopher, Hobbes, "It's amazing what they do with corrugated cardboard these days." (Go to Transmogrifier.com and search Calvin and Hobbes for the word "transmogrifier" for technical details about transmogrify technology).

We bring some crafting supplies and tools (glue gun, paint, staple gun, tape... as well as manipulatable would-be-trash like plastic and corks). Maybe we help someone transmogrify their simple sun hat into something with shiny decorations, or perhaps we could transmogrify their song into a flavor... We could transmogrify plastic containers to be part of our faux-stained glass. When someone comes and asks us to transmogrify playa dust into booze, we can proclaim "It cahn't be done!" with a flourish. We could all have our specialties - taste, alchemy, whatever. We have a sign out front to let people know when services are being offered (whenever we feel like, plus a few set hours). We don't have to do anything all that spectactular, so long as we deliver strong schtick - then we're providing entertainment and a very creative experience.

We would be able to find others to collaborate with. If the Taste Wagon continues to roll in 2007, we could work with them - hopefully get them to be there for our party. I can imagine holding a couple transmogrify workshops early in the week where we may even be able to recruit a few fellow burners to help provide transmogrify services. I know some folks who will camp elsewhere, but might be willing to play at this sort of think. I think the concept allows for all sorts of fun interpretations - from the practical reuse/recycle end to the more trippy fantastical end.

In this context, my collaborative art cyclorama would be an excercise in worldwide societal transmogrify.

Am I making sense? Whatchyou think?

Third Group Meeting-Rundown

For those that weren't able to attend here's a brief rundown.
Aristotle made a great veggie pesto lasagne. LG and TBone made a sushi salad and Mr. Alchemystic, true to his name, concocted a butternut squash pasta. But enough about the menu.
Many ideas were put on the table. We talked about the shade structure, Mr. Alchemystic said he'd like to help with that. We talked about the shower and gray water, Mr A said he'd help with that too. LG and Aristotle talked about the food, to which Mr. A agreed to assist as well. He also expressed and interest in the Perambulator. Wheew! My A. is going to be busy.
We talked a lot about different designs for different aspects of camp. No final decisions were made but some headway definitely was. We brainstormed on ideas for a camp name. We came up with "Pooh and Strawberries" or something with "luft" in it. We should work a little more on this. We also talked about handing out shrinky-dink necklaces, rubber stamping people and iconographic wristbands that would identify a person's sin preferences (Sin Rings? Sin Strap?). Mr. A even talked about henna tattooing. Tbone talked about his cyclorama painting idea and the preponderance of penises in casual art. Professor Fate (that's me) talked more about his Perambulator idea. There was even a model of it. Many suggestions were made. LG agreed to get us all on a group calendar and spreadsheet through google to keep track of people's availability and what items they had to contribute to the camp.
What we didn't talk about was the date for next meeting. The Baroness of Less and Baron of All were Soarely missed and will be expected to have extra cool stuff to talk about at the next meeting. The Great (and fabulous) Leslie will have much to talk about as well (like how Prof. Fate won't stop talking about the Perambulator).
And remember to collect green and clear plastic containers for the stained-glass panel and corks for the curtain!

I am, how you say, blog

wow, computers sure can do a lot of shit. this is my first blog ever. i am so excited.

i love this Art from Garbage idea. That is one of my greatest passions in life, creating art from what would otherwise be garbage. one man's ceiling... or what's that saying?

my brother learned, while working at a science summer camp, that you can make, yes make, shrinky-dinks using plastic to-go containers. well specifically, clear plastic recyclable #7, or was it #6? i'll find out. basically, you cut out the shape you want, color with sharpies, and bake in the oven for about 10 seconds. voila, garbage-charms. this could go a long way with the panel or curtain wall of whatever this stained-glass-mosaic-garbage-wall materializes as. yes, i'm very excited to see where we can take this idea. i'm in.

till next time,
i am
mr. alchemystic
the psuedo scientist.

Making art out of trash

We (the Baron and Baroness, Fate and I) were sitting around riffing some more on art for the burn last Sunday. We thought it might be cool to create a large stained-glass-like piece of art of The Green Man using clear plastic from packages that you would normally throw away. Like the obnoxious trays that Trader Joe's packages all of their fruit and veggies into. Or soda bottles. There are cool shapes everywhere!


We haven't figured out how we would assemble the pieces together, or how we would color the clear plastic, or much more than this, but that'll get figured out. It would be a curtain or wall for the camp. Fate and I have started collecting plastic items already. It's amazing how much trash our family of four generates.

I've also got my co-workers in on it. This could get out of hand...

Steam Dreams

That was a great meeting the other night. This is gonna be a badass burn.
I would like to hear more from Matt and Eran - how do you guys imagine spending your prep time and energy when prepping for the burn?

Jon talked about having a thin material covering the dirigible with lights inside. This is the method that made this seahorse chariot one of the prettiest things on the playa. You can see it works tremendously well.

I've really got no experience on engines and whatnot - but, Jon, I want to encourage you to find someone who can let you know how much weight different engines can handle. Perhaps an art car forum on tribe will have the answers. All of the art cars I remember on the playa were built off buses, tractors and cars. The car ones seemed to struggle when they got to six people.

Maybe we could think about a two-person perambulator and a posse of steam-punked bikes. When we travel around town together, we'll be memorable which will make people want to visit our camp full of Wonders .

One wonder could be a collaborative Cyclorama (360 degree panoramic paintings - popular at 19th century world's fairs). LG and I tossed around a similar idea before our first burn.

This last picture is a doodle on a slightly-greened steam punk look.

Doin' it Green

An decor idea that was mentioned in the first meeting was making something - perhaps a beaded curtain - out of old wine corks. In that vein, a couple of other ideas of DIYG (Do It Yourself Green) I've come across...

Rip-Offable Ideas for Used Disposable Chopsticks

Playing Card Top Hat

Be sure to use old cards, not buy new ones, for the highest greenness factor.
And, a way to reuse old Franzia wine pouches. This was a waste stream item we'd figured was unavoidable, and I'm thinking that T&I can continue to use at least one pouch created at BMan after-playa.

Doing Steampunk Right

Here's an interesting website that describes how steam power works and how to make your Steampunk creations look realistic. The author has a lot of experience making actual steam powered creations with a fun style. This level of detail will be important in making the Perambulator look cool, not junky. Check it out!

The Green Man

Being inspired by T-Bone's painting and wanting to learn more about the theme for Burning Man this year, I did some reading and poking around on the web. I had assumed that the theme "The Green Man" was merely a play on words and was a way of giving this years event a more environmentally friendly bent. The official BM site discusses how the carbon imprint of the burn will be offset. It also explores the deeper, less obvious meaning of The Green Man - how the story is an allegory for our relationship with the earth. I read up on The Green Man on Wikipedia and learned a few things: there is never a green woman, The Green man is a popular name for British Public Houses (that's a pub to you and me) and it is a pagan and mystical symbol of rebirth and spring. All very cool. No wonder T-Bone has been riffing.

Here are some images of The Green Man that I think are interesting.





So now I'm ruminating on how to tie-in this theme with our steampunk motif. Perhaps we could carve a figurehead of the Green Man to go on the perambulator, with brass leaves that extend around the ship as railings or some sort of decoration...


This was my favorite image out of all of them (aside from the fairly obnoxious greenery where his pubic hair should be)...a Green Man on the outside of an old custard factory in Birmingham, England.

Now you can get Email Notification

I've set up a blog email notifier so that you can be automatically informed via email of blog posts.

Follow the instructions below:

-- Look in your inbox for the email from Google Groups that invites you to become part of BurningUp2007.
-- Click to accept the invitation.
-- Click on "edit my membership" on the right hand side
-- Choose how you want to read the group (this is how often you want to be notified by email. If you want an email every time someone posts, choose the "Email" option.)
-- Enter your camp nickname
-- Click "save these settings"

Cyborg Overture

Have I mentioned that I'm excited about the 'Green Man' theme? I've begun riffing on the nature/human thing in this painting - and there will be more to come.

I'll also be building up the 'Burning Man' gallery on my website.

The Professor and I visited our local flea market this morning and picked up a few cool items for the permabulator/camp...a small spinning globe (you can just see it in the cargo net of my car), a beautiful brass telescope (only $25!), and a tarnished silver pitcher. There was lots of steampunk-esque stuff there today. Like I said, once you start looking for it...

On the way home, we spotted these urn-shaped baskets on an offramp on the side of the highway and Fate scaled a chainlink fence to retrieve them. We think they'll look good hanging off the side of the perambulator or as containers for things in camp.

All in all, a good day's scavenging.

LED costume ideas

Here is a website full of animated fun LED clothing. The prices are a little steep but I like the ideas.

Save your good trash

On the heels of Tbone's post I'd like to remind everyone to keep an eye out for Perambulator parts and stuff for the camp in general. Try to think outside the item's original use to create something strange and wonderful. Today I scavenged some 'Oak' Pergo from the dump. (Illegal I know, but I hated to see it go.) I think it will make great flooring for the Peram. I also located about forty feet of metal fencing to scavenge for the frame. Finally a decent reason for me to collect cast-offs! Shhhh. Don't tell The Great Leslie, it's all been added to my disaster of a garage.

Spare Perambulator Parts

Here's a couple of Perambulator parts we've got laying around:



The Controlling Interface doesn't add so well, and the blackjack option only barely works, but I think it may do for Navigatory Numerals in the pilot's berth or for other uses in the public chambers.






This Dirigible engine could be given a proper surface treatment - the gears are all in order. We may be able to separate the Gyrational unit from the Oscillatory base.



Are these parts the right models?