Out with the old, in with the new. The Raygun Gothic Rocket Ship, a much loved addition to the Embarcadero waterfront over the last few years, has been taken down. On to pastures unknown. The Space Cowboys took the Unimog down and Rocked the Raygun away.
What started as a BRAF funded collaboration to get temporary large scale art installed in public places, blossomed into a two & a half year run of the Rocketship patiently waiting for its lift off at the edge of the city, the border with the bay.
In the meantime, Disorient Burner and Artist Leo Villareal has created the largest LED light sculpture in the world – 1.8 miles long, and 500 feet high, featuring 25,000 LED lights that will cost less than a couple of thousand dollars a year in electricity. The Bay Lights has launched, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Bay Bridge with data input being fed from traffic and weather pattern data, amongst other things. The $8 million project is expected to generate at least $97 million for the city.
The final result is 25,000 LED lights strung up along the 1.8-mile stretch of bridge connecting San Francisco and Treasure Island. The individual lights are spaced 12 inches apart and each one can be set to one of 255 brightness levels. The designs Villareal created and programmed to flicker across the bridge don’t include any images or text, and the sequence won’t ever repeat itself.
“What people will be seeing are abstract sequences which are inspired by the kinetic activity around the bridge,” said Villareal. “It’s not literally traffic or the water or any of those sorts of things.”
The designs were also inspired by Villareal’s previous experiences in the Bay Area in the 1990s, when he worked in a research lab in Palo Alto and attended the Burning Man festival.
The result is an open-ended piece of art that Villareal calls highly subjective. Lights might dim slowly from the edges or shapes will unexpectedly dart across the surface like comets. The movements are playful, relaxing and unpredictable.
“You can imagine anything you want in these lights. For me, it’s the mustache,” said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who sports a signature tuft of hair on his upper lip. Lee was on hand for the opening ceremony, along with California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom.
While designing the sequences, Villareal had to address practical issues like safety for passing boats and drivers on the bridge, as well as artistic considerations such as making sure the animations were viewable from up close, below the bridge, and as far away as Twin Peaks, where the bridge can been seen on fog-free nights.
After obtaining permits and securing funding, trimming the bridge was the final daunting step of the project. Teams worked from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. over the past few months to install the fiber optic network, choosing late night hours in order to have minimal impact on bridge traffic. They used custom clips to hang the lights on 300 vertical spans, mounting some lights as high as 500 feet. Locals have caught peeks of the final product over the past couple of months as producers tested the lighting system ahead of the big debut.
On Tuesday, the hard work finally paid off as crowds of onlookers braved rain, cold winds and a few rogue waves to see the light display’s first official showing. Artist Carolyn Tillie and her husband brought chairs, picnic food and wine to the show. Others accessorized outfits and even bikes with blinking lights to celebrate the occasion.
Mayor Lee predicted an extended lifespan for the project, saying the city will want to keep the display longer than its two-year engagement. He hopes it will help give San Francisco the reputation as a location for world class art.
Relieved to finally hit the On button for the project after years of work, Villareal isn’t thinking that far into the future at the moment. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” he said.
I missed the Burning Man contingent at SXSW, being there with a contingent of my own in relation to different festivals. But they were there in full force, to support the Burning Man movie Spark’s debut.
Jim Harrington of the San Jose Mercury News was not impressed. He’s never been a Burner, and doesn’t want to become one after watching the film.
I’ve never gone to Burning Man, the gigantic free-spirited, clothing-optional gathering of artistic souls and gregarious spirits that takes place each year in the Nevada desert.
I’ve never even wanted to go. I guess there’s just something about one of the event’s main principles — “There are no spectators, only participants” — that doesn’t quite mesh with being a professional critic, who is, by very job description, an observer.
Yet, I feel like I now have a better understanding of those who live and breathe for this event. And I guess that’s probably the main goal of “Spark: A Burning Man Story.”
It’s important to note that this is not really a documentary about what it is like to actually attend the freewheeling fandango. It’s not filled to capacity with scenes of nude folks running about the desert, playing games and juggling fiery objects. In fact, amazingly, there is very little nudity in this film.
Instead, it’s a film about what goes into putting on such a mammoth event. The stars of “Spark” are the festival founders, organizers and those who spend months each year preparing the often-impressive art installations that are erected on site.
It is, of course, only side of the saga. That’s probably why the filmmakers carefully had the title read “A Burning Man Story” as opposed to “The Burning Man Story.”
This story is indeed pretty interesting. Yet, certainly not interesting enough to get me out to the desert
Marcia Franklin at the Boise Weekly (that’s Idaho, folks) was much more impressed, but also flagged the disappointment at the lack of nudity:
Spark: A Burning Man Story—part of SXSW’s stellar documentary lineup—succeeds because it applies both a journalist’s and a cinematographer’s eye to the characters and commotion behind the annual Burning Man event in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.
Co-producer-co-director Jessie Deeter, whose background is in journalism (Revenge of the Electric Car, FRONTLINE: Death by Fire), crafts a story that goes beyond a history of Burning Man.
“I didn’t want to make a PSA for Burning Man, because there are plenty of those,” she says. Deeter examines the tension between the communal ideals of the event, which began as a small gathering on a San Francisco beach in
photo from BurnerFashion
1986, and the current reality, in which organizers have to ensure that a pop-up city of 60,000 doesn’t collapse into mayhem and danger.
That has meant higher ticket prices and new rules, including a ticket lottery—all of which create a backlash against the organizers, which we see as the film progresses. It’s a story replicated in many organizations that become wildly successful.
“It’s a story of growing up, primarily,” says Deeter. “You reach a point where as the founder of your small, cute little company that has this ideal, you have to then look at yourself and say, ‘What are we going to have to do to grow it?’ And you can choose as the remaining founders did to make certain compromises… or you can choose not to.”
We learn more about those founders, who include a dynamic group of women and an intriguing man who left the group because he felt it had betrayed its roots.
Deeter also winds in the tales of three participants for whom Burning Man has been an epiphany, including a disabled Marine who builds and burns a replica of Wall Street buildings, and a woman who is welding a 12-foot heart—perhaps the purest symbol of the original ideals of Burning Man.
Filmed almost entirely using DSLRs, as well as a drone for aerial shots, the film is gorgeous: a virtual carnival of images that reflect the spectacle that is Burning Man. (Some in the audience, however, were disappointed at the lack of nudity.)
Deeter, who’s filmed abroad under tough conditions for other pieces, says she was nevertheless “terrified” of the sand destroying her equipment, and used underwater housing to protect the cameras from the capricious sandstorms.
This film is for those who’ve wondered about Burning Man but never wanted to actually “live” it, as well as for groupies who want a visual reminder of its importance in their lives. Speaking of that, if you’re at Burning Man this year, plans are to show the film on the Playa.
Dan Gentile praised the film’s visual composition and narrative arc in the Austinist:
For those that haven’t been to Burning Man, it’s hard not to think of it as an escape for the type of drug-user who’s really into peace, love, and glitter. Spark: A Burning Man Story smashes this stereotype, spotlighting the intense amount of hard work and dedication that has helped to grow the festival from a small beach side bonfire in 1986 into a 50,000 person spectacle of unbridled creativity in the Nevada desert.
The film is comprised largely of interviews with the founding festival team, nearly all of whom have stayed the course and dedicated their lives to Burning Man’s come-as-you-are philosophy for the past 30 years. They’re a motley crew of idealists, showing their age in appearance but working with an adolescent fervor to expand the festival infrastructure while holding fast to their ten guiding principles. As the scale increases exponentially, these principles are threatened and shake the community to its core.
The narrative arc follows a cross-section of burners whose meticulous preparations for the festival highlight its growing pains. A former businessman who found his freak flag at the fest curates an all-inclusive plug-and-play sub-camp where self-reliance goes out the window and attendees have more of a responsibility-free hedonistic experience. A young female metalworker who has Kickstartered a massive heart-shaped sculpture fears she may not receive a ticket despite her months of planning. A contractor who’s building a faux Wall Street complete with an eight-story Goldman Sucks building stresses over his construction schedule. The viewer feels their struggle, cheers once the projects are complete, and can’t wait for them to all be burned to the ground.
Visually the film is a treat, with a cache of some of the most vibrant B-roll you can imagine. Wide-eyed, barely clothed women dance through psychedelic light structures, ramshackle Mad Max vehicles shoot flames, and a temporary city of 50,000 cheer as it all goes up in flames. But the real takeaway is that this isn’t just a giant rave, but rather the type of event that people pour their entire lives into, and receive something just as valuable in return.
It’s not a giant rave? What? I obviously didn’t get that memo. That ain’t the kind of takeaway I wants ta be eatin’!
Angela, at Lost In Reviews, gave it a pretty good overall 3 out of 5, and put it on her bucket list:
Only three minutes into the film, and I knew I would have to go to Burning Man sometime in my life. After watching the film, I realized that may not be as easy as imagined.
The documentary Spark is about how the elusive festival in the desert, Burning Man, came to be and is today. In this moment, what do you really know about Burning Man? Before watching the doc, I knew very little. I knew it took place out in the desert, it was something like five days of hippies dancing in the sun, taking as many drugs as possible and commemorating the entire experience by burning a huge statue of a wooden man on the last night. Come to find out, my predictions were not too far off. Although the festival is a week-long and there is much more involved than hippies getting high in the desert. It’s much deeper than that.
Now after learning a little bit more about the fest, I began to wonder why they would even want to film a documentary on Burning Man. What I mean to say is the essence of Burning Man was a free-spirited festival in the desert where everyone brought in what they needed and left nothing behind. There were no corporate sponsors or advertised drinks sitting around. By announcing to the world that you have this secret, little, awesome festival in the desert, won’t everyone want to come? Won’t it become too big? That question, or one very similar was asked to one of the co-founders in the film and he answered with a question: What is too big?
Of course, how free-spirited could this festival have been after all? Sure, there were no bouncers telling people where to go, but without some sort of guidance out there, the scene was surely going to turn into the lizard orgy Hunter S. Thompson feared was all around him. The entire idea of Burning Man is that they are setting things on fire, at the end of the fest. Well, I’m no scientist, but I would feel confident in stating that fire mixed with people on drugs can not end well. According to the film, the festival in 1996 turned into the wild, wild west, with every man for himself.
Since then, Burning Man has had to step up their security a bit to protect themselves and everyone else that attends the fest. It’s still far from corporate, but not quite as free as in the good ole days. But then, what is anymore? The film spent the last twenty minutes or so just filming the goings on at the fest. No narration was needed, just a little music to set the scene. We get to see huge dance parties, dusty people making out, many things being set on fire, and tons of creative costumes and vehicles riding around showing off their glowing lights and flame-throwing dragon cars. Going to Burning Man is definitely a photographers dream!
I give Spark: A Burning Man Story 3 “” out of 5
Here’s an interview from SXSW with Director Jessie Deeter
London. Black Rock. City. We brought you news of this way back in January, when Whatsblem the Pro conducted an in-depth interview with London BRC’s Alan McCann.
Now the Daily Mail in the UK has picked up the story:
A group of artists are planning to set the Houses of Parliament ablaze but this time Guy Fawkes won’t be around.
Instead, the visionaries plan to build replicas of London’s Tower Bridge, the House of Commons and the Tower of London at the Burning Man arts gathering in the Nevada desert this summer.
Though the impressive installation will cost top dollar and take hours to construct, it will all go up in flames at the end of the experimental arts event, keeping in line with the festival’s motto to leave no trace.
Lead designer Alan McCann plans to recreate some of the most iconic sites from his homeland at the Burning Man festival in Nevada
For Queen and Country: The artists want the more than 50,000 people who gather at the arts festival in Nevada to experience the significant sites fundamental to British culture
Alan McCann, a Dublin native, is leading the project to bring London’s most iconic sites to the week-long annual event in the Black Rock Desert, 120 miles north of Reno, Nevada.
Though initially a Burning Man skeptic, Mr McCann attended the gathering in 2012 and became a believer.
‘The beauty is you always come back to a blank canvas,’ he said in a promotional video for the effort about how he decided to bring a bit of London to the southwest.
After admiring the displays from the 2012 gathering, which included a replica of Wall Street, he realized the wisdom of destroying the art installations at the end of the event because it provides a clean slate for new ideas to be born.
‘My background being from the UK, I really wanted to plant something from where I’m from on the playa and I have a strong heritage that I’d really like to bring to the playa.’
The plan to recreate the UK monuments includes four phases with a pricetag of $20,000.
First on the schedule is the construction of a working House of Commons.
Hoping the place will be ‘energetic, vibrant, loud’ and a center of debate, the artists want people who can’t voice their opinions in their home countries to experience a forum where ideas are freely exchanged.
The second phase is the construction of the full Houses of Parliament, with an Ale House, an indoor theater and spaces to display portraits of Britain’s most celebrated monarchs and historical figures.
Next is the construction of Tower Bridge, which will include an actual drawbridge that will open and close in order to allow art projects to pass under the suspension bridge.
Though the bridge will stand over sand instead of the River Thames, the designer hopes visitors will sit on the bridge and imagine the cool water beneath them.
Last is the construction of the Tower of London, showing the darker side of the city’s history with its dungeons and even a brothel – which seems like a welcome design for those festival goers for whom the event is just a week long orgy and drug fest.
Mr McCann has joined forces with nine other enthusiasts to help make this project become a reality.
Under the auspices of Fractured Atlas, a UK based non-profit, they are raising money for their LondonBRC project.
If they really wanted to bring the best of London to Burning Man, they should open a Hakkasan and build a replica Stamford Bridge. Maybe throw in Selfridge’s and Cyberdog, those convenient taxis everywhere and some pouting Eastern European supermodels.
Is this another overly-ambitious Burning Man pipe dream, being overhyped in the media before it’s even remotely being built? Anyone notice how Bliss Dance didn’t need to do this? London BRC certainly need some help in their Indiegogo project, I think most Americans feel that we already helped you guys out in World War II, so why should we do it again? But perhaps some of the UK Burners would like to chip in to make this project a reality.
