If you asked what I was working on during the past year, I could probably tell you that I was “working on “The Machine”. While this could sound like a vague reference to “the man” or something of the sort, it was actually a huge collaborative project that I was working on with a bunch of people. This was created for the 2005 Burning Man Festival.
We had people from many professions including contracting, art, realty, party and event creation, shmoozing, welding, computer geekery, audio, engineers, graphic design, multimedia, dance, performance, and some architecture background. This huge structure was community created, community run and used during the event, and then community destroyed at the end of the event.
The short description given to the Burning Man event beforehand:
Made primarily of steel and wooden parts, The Machine (Mach12e) expresses an elusiveness of time and place. Burning Man participants will at first have the opportunity to view the sculpture, a triangulated meta-mechanical temple, in the open vista of the playa. They will explore its isolation, both spatial and emotional. Three elevated drive wheels and housings, a raised rotating central core comprised of a tower of gears and a transmission, and an upper platform that suspends eight articulated kinetic limbs define its multifaceted rust, blue, and gray form.
(wood, steel, nails, screws, cable, gears, rubber belts, hard rubber casters, soft rubber tensioner wheels, belt tensioner/belt rider system to cut down on the belt harmonics caused by the wind, 8 channel audio, olfactory)
