The indelible master of the pedal-power madness that is Scotty C. has just completed yet another amazing kinetic sculpture on wheels known as the Duck Flambé. A local rag has a story on a night it hit the town: Fire it up.
What a gorgeous ride! Congratulations, Scotty and co-builder Ken Beidleman!
A large gallery of pictures of construction in progress is available to peruse.
The latest project I’m part of is coming along nicely. What is it…? Well, think a 4-person pedal-power kinetic sculpture on handmade 4ft diameter wheels using cannibalized bikes and metal lawn furniture weighing in at over 13 ft long!
We call our crew Krank-Boom-Clank and the “kinetic conveyance of whimsey” we’re building is known as the “Hennepin Crawler“.
We’re well on schedule for both a Burning Man 2008 appearance and racing the rails at The Great Handcar Regatta on Sept. 28th, 2008 in Santa Rosa, CA.
See the picts on Flickr too.
Sunday, September 28, 2008 — Santa Rosa, CA
Erasmus P. Kitty Presents: The Great West End and Railroad Square Handcar Regatta and Exposition of Mechanical Wonders!
A SPLENDID CELEBRATION OF ART, SCIENCE AND INGENUITY, FOR THE DELIGHT AND EDIFICATION OF ALL WHO ATTEND.
A SPECTACLE FOR BOTH YOUNG AND OLD!
The Handcar Regatta invites Builders, Tinkerers and Artists to create and then race a Human Powered Rail Bound Vehicle for the adoring public.
The Handcar Regatta brings Art and Science out of the galleries, studios, and smokey laboratories, out among the People, where everyone can enjoy it and participate!
The Handcar Regatta will delight the senses with Melodious Music, Daring Diversions, Rollicking Games, Delectable Comestibles, and all manner of Adventurous Entertainments!
THE HANDCAR REGATTA IS NOT TO BE MISSED!
The spirited chaps and lasses at Neverwas Haul are currently endeavoring to incur benefaction by public acquisition of exclusive and superlative Goggles via the Ebay Aetherwebs.
ITEM!
Genesis of the illustrious Neverwas Haul is recounted in brief: Aether Emporium wiki / Neverwas Haul
This is most exciting! The 2008 “Honorariums” (grantees) have been posted! I could quite easily spend all day (and the next) greedily perusing the entire long list. Apparently, the kind folks at Burning Man have given a higher number of 38 total grants this year (up from the usual 30 or so). Also, they received more international proposals than ever before. Looks like an amazing year for art (as well as the usual WTF!? projects) on the Playa! See below from Jack Rabbit Speaks:
ANNOUNCING … THE 2008 BURNING MAN HONORARIUM PROJECTS
The Burning Man Art Department is pleased to announce the funded projects for 2008. This year we are funding 38 projects, an increase from our usual 30 or so, as we are funding more small projects. Less than 1/3 of the projects are from the Bay Area, and we received many more proposals from abroad than ever before. We have four overseas projects this year: two from London, one from Amsterdam, and one from Wales. (Note: grants for the Man Base art installations will be announced in a future JRS.)
The funded projects are:
Altered State, by Kate Raudenbush, New York, NY (Click on New: Altered State)
Amazing Jellyfish from Y12K (PDF), by Jared Gallardo, Salt Lake City, UT
Basura Sagrada, by Shrine, Tuktuk, and the Basura Sagrada Collaboratory - Pasadena, CA and Portland,
Bummer, by Myk Henry, New York, NY/Geneva, Switzerland
“Bummer” is a super size Humvee measuring 38 feet long x 18 feet wide x 16 feet high. Half of the Hummer will be painted in military khaki and the other half a bright sporty color. This sculpture epitomizes this country’s obsession with power and the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the American dream.
Celtic Forest, by Laura Kimpton, Bob Hoffman and Jeff Schomberg, Nicasio, CA
Chasing the American Dream, by Hedy Siroco, Wynnewood PA
DreamYourTopia Checkpoint (also at ePlaya), by DADARA, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Drum Wagons, by Quill Hyde, Brooklyn NY
Elevation, by Michael Christian, Berkeley, CA
Elevation is a fully climbable sculpture constructed of winding tube steel ladders that elevate to a seated perch for one, on its peak. The height of the piece will be 56 feet.
Fleeble Flobbler, by Charlie Smith and Jaime Laudet, Atlanta, GA
Free Flight, by David Boyer, Reno NV
“Free Flight” is a sculpture that celebrates the ultimate freedom, the escape from the bounds of earth. Consisting of six wind-driven kinetic birds, this sculpture is in constant flux as the winds of the Black Rock grow, recede, shift and change.
Hand of Man, by Christian Ristow, Taos, New Mexico
Harmonic Geometry, by Glenn Easley and Rikk Carey, Vashon, WA
glenn.Easley at gmail.com
Hydrogen Economy, by False Profit Labs, San Francisco, CA
Illusion, by Benson Trent, Provo, UT
Ketchup, by Bruce Bender, Marshall, NC
Legends of America, by James Cole, Auburn, CA
Lepidodgera, by Rachel Norman, Mike Thielvoldt, Lira Filippini, and Jake Haskell, Palo Alto, CA
Man Gwyn Man Draw?, by Defaid Daf a Joe, Wales
McEnlightenment, by Michael Brown and Violet McKeon, San Diego, CA
Mutopia, by the Flaming Lotus Girls, San Francisco, CA
Net Work, by David Bengali, New York, NY
Nowhere Ominibus, by Pete Johnson, London, UK
Pictures of You – Images from Iran, by Yechdosay Chahar, Crested Butte, CO
Pool, by Jen Lewin, Boulder, CO
Popaver Rubrum Giganticum, by Gary Miller, Wyndmoor, PA
Popaver rubrum giganteum (giant red poppy) consists of three hundred 10′ tall poppies in various shades of red. The design allows for variation in the layout and placement of the individual elements.
Pswarm (PDF), by the Dept. of Spontaneous Combustion, Oakland, CA
Pyrocardium, by False Profit Labs, San Francisco, CA
Shiva Vista, by Dave King, Reno, NV
Shrine of Fortuna, by Art Farm, Graton, CA
Shrine to the Oven Mitt, by Steven Goodman, Mountain View, CA
Spaghetti West Ten, by the Mutoid Waste Co., London, UK
A 12′ long, by 15′ tall motorized apocalyptic horse, part beast, part rust-ravaged machine, pulls a punked-out parody of a pioneer’s covered wagon, which contains a stage for musical acts and performance.
Swarm, by Michael Prados, San Francisco, CA
Tantalus, by Peter Hudson, San Francisco, CA
Tantalus is Peter’s fourth large scale zoetrope. Participants must engage a laboriously intense mechanism that puts a modern spin on the myth of Tantalus while reflecting on the seemingly dwindling fruits of such labor.
The Cave, by Chassy Cleland and Henya Emmer, New York, NY
Wheel of Thwarted Ambition, by Anton Viditz-Ward, Telluride, CO
This kinetic fire sculpture represents change, rebirth and creation. Driven by a hand crank, a wheel containing buckets of burning wood is spun around, creating a ring of fire and producing lots of fireflies.
You are All so Many of Me, by Michael Emery, Santa Cruz, CA
A multitude of small cut mirrors provides the opportunity for both literal and metaphorical reflection. During the day, the viewer perceives a cubist self-portrait smiling back. At certain points during the night this reflection will be enhanced with a variety of images projected by LCD upon the mirrors. The viewer is invited to interact with images of fire and water as well as a racial/gender spectrum of other humans. The viewer is invited to contemplate, and perhaps to help create the American Dream of FREEDOM FOR ALL.
Zsu Zsu: The Crybaby Drama Queen, by Mister Jellyfish, Sparks, NV
Who Is Zsu Zsu?
“Zsu Zsu the crybaby drama queen won’t you come play with meeee,
I built you this trailer for Burning Man so you would care for meee.”
“Zsuuu Zsu, Zsuuu Zsu… Leeeve me a geeft then go ahwey!
…Zsuuu Zsu, Zsuuu Zsu… Eetz so fuckeeng HOT.”
UPDATE - More Zsu Zsu madness
“Zsu Zsu noooo! No Zsu Zsu, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO….”
RESPECT THE ART: IF YOU DIDN’T MAKE IT, DON’T BREAK IT!!
Over the last several years, Burning Man has seen a disturbing trend growing in Black Rock City: more and more art installations are getting vandalized or damaged every year, including everything from tagging to outright destruction.
Artists work exceptionally hard to create artwork for the playa at great personal expense. Understandably, they are deeply affected when their work is destroyed or damaged … and participants who would have otherwise experienced the piece as it was intended are also affected. While some participants may see vandalism as their personal form of “radical self-expression”, ultimately, personal expression needs to be tempered by the realities of co-existing within a community, which requires mutual respect to thrive.
Please help us spread the word: if you didn’t make it, don’t break it! Help stop mindless vandalism to artwork on the playa.
Some of the artists tell their stories below, in a letter to our community from Kate Raudenbush, who created the Guardian of Eden last year. We reprint them for you here, in the hopes that their words speak more persuasively than any missive we could craft. We know that most JRS readers are unlikely to be the culprits of vandalism; we hope you will help by taking time to share in watching out for the artwork in our city.
Some dome-suckers from HouseMusicTV at Burning Man 2007 caught our “Ice-Flo” art car on tape.
It’s ever so short and more of an accident, but… there it is. See our rig at about 3:35 into the video.
The host says pointing, “Lookit this over here: this whole, like, iceberg… That’s actually a vehicle, a ‘Mutant Vehicle’.”
Alright, now I know it all actually happened. It wasn’t just a horribly wonderful dream after all.
YouTube - DAFT PUNK -BURNING MAN Going Crazy @ Dome Sweet Dome-HMTV 37
12,000-lb. Giant Mechanical Spider Is A Tad Intimidating
The machine is powered by a 454 cubic inch chevy V-8 married to a modified TH400 trans coupled to two klune extreme under drive planetary gear boxes, uses a rockwell 2 1/2 ton military axle to supply power to the leg crank shafts, The final drive ratio is 125:1. The legs are supported on a 4 link system and uses 56 pivot points and 114 bearings.
Yikes!
I’ve lately been tracking Kinetic Sculpture Racing (KSR) and the derby-like DIY race events it fosters around the country. This struck me as an interesting mutual influence scenario with artists’ kinetic sculptures off the Playa influencing art at the Burn and vice versa.
Wikipedia has an entry describing the advent of KSR:
The Kinetic Sculpture Race has been an annual event in Ferndale, California since 1969. It began when local sculptor Hobart Brown “improved” the appearance of his son’s tricycle, and was challenged to a race down Main Street by Jack Mays. Soon, another twelve machines entered to inaugurate the first race. Neither Hobart nor Jack won; instead, the first winner of the Kinetic Sculpture Race was Bob Brown of Eureka, California whose sculpture was a smoke-emitting Turtle that laid eggs.
Today, KSR is usually about a hearty race over pavement, water, sand, dirt, and even mud. More general info about KSR can be found at Kinetic Kingdom which also features the Kinetic Grand Championship race.
Here are a few links to sites and galleries of these amazing projects. Go out to a race near you and bring a bit of the Burn to the “default world” and support your local kinetic sculpture racers! Better, yet, build your own.
ePlaya’s Kinetic Sculpture Racing Camp, BRC: “Only once did we lose a Kontraption in 2007, and we found it near The Man within hours. The dust storm was no doubt a factor, which we understand. But do try your very best to bring the silly thing back, and if you cannot, PLEASE tell us where it is — absolutely no hard feelings.”
Laughing Squid’s tracking of Bernal Heights Hill Soap Box Derby 2007 Photos and Bike Kill V, Chaotic Bicycle Olympics in Brooklyn
da Vinci Days Kinetic Challenge, Oregon: “…get ready for our human-powered, all-terrain competition with road-worthy, mud-sloshing, water-slogging kinetic sculptures!”
Kinetic Universe, Inc., Arcata, California: sports the motto “Adults having fun so children desire to grow older”.
Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race, Maryland: “The eight-hour race covers 15 miles–mostly on pavement, but also including a trip into the Chesapeake Bay and through mud and sand.”
Prescott Valley Kinetic Sculpture Race, Arizona: “…while the judges cast a critical eye on all entries for any infractions. Bribes were generously doled out and readily accepted.”
Klamath Kinetic Challenge, Washington: “If you missed the 2007 Klamath Kinetic Challenge you must be kicking yourself. It was great.”
Port Townsend Kinetic Skulpture Race, Oregon: Celebrating its 25th year of races!…On the Playa!
Look for the huge blue iceberg with live and DJ music pouring out for the thirsty party folk. We’ll be having a good ol’ time!
Here is one sweet set of wheels. I’ll be sure to keep a look out for the Crimson Crow on the playa: SFist: This Crow’s Gotta Fly — A Plan For Burning Man
Got something interesting rumbling beneath them goggles? Suck @ CliffyPop
