Shoot the Moon

April 26, 2007 : Shoot the Moon The more difficult-to-find materials have arrived. White bowling ball Teflon tape I still need to choose which pipe to use for the control bars. May 17, 2007: Preliminary Plans The plans are almost done, except for details on the legs and the fake two-inch-diameter screwheads that hold the rods.… Read the rest

Seating

May 15, 2007: Seating Seating will be provided by three modified Playa Love Seats. The design that I created for Dangerous Games sculpts the ends of the original Playatech love seat and orients the back piece for better strength. See the love seats’ Dangerous Plans PDF.… Read the rest

Desert Test

Here’s the schedule for the pre-Burning-Man test: Tuesday, July 3: Drop off  and , leave , and arrive at . July 4: Leave , and arrive at . July 5: . July 6: More . July 7: Can you get enough ?… Read the rest

Dangerous Games at Burning Man 2007

I installed the Dangerous Games at Burning Man 2007, starting Monday afternoon and finishing the next day after the Man had burned four days early. Participants enjoyed playing all of the games. Here campmates Veronika and Clay play the Labyrinth while Burning Man employee Pokie Dot knocks over the Dominos.… Read the rest

New Site Using WordPress

It’s time to move away from hand-edited HTML to a real content-management system. The old site’s content will appear gradually, starting some time in the future. But for now, this is a fresh start. This site uses the StudioPress Genesis Framework with the Associate child theme.… Read the rest

Burning Man 2015 Project

“Worthy” is my project for Burning Man 2015. It presents fourteen situations along a curved wall that participants can vote on—whether they care about the situation or not. Each situation has a pair of pushbutton-activated electronic counters to display the number of votes either way.… Read the rest

Worthy’s Displays

To count participant votes in the “Worthy” project, I need 28 counting displays, two displays per wall segment. Each display must have five digits to prevent counter overflow during the one-week Burning Man event. Since I could not find sufficiently large pre-made displays with more than four digits, I had to make my own.… Read the rest

Protecting the Generator

To power the Worthy project during the 24 hours of every day that it’s installed, I’m going to use a Honda EU2000i generator and an extended-run fuel tank. I just built this lockable crate, which will be bolted to the art project itself.… Read the rest

Display PCB’s Schematic

All good printed-circuit boards start with a schematic diagram. Here is the schematic diagram of Worthy’s printed-circuit board. It uses a simple microcontroller; 10 one-inch, seven-segment LED displays; two segment drivers; and five digit drivers.… Read the rest

A Little Bit at a Time

I leave for Burning Man on August 28, and so I try to make some progress on the Worthy project every morning. Here’s today’s achievement: the crate that will secure the generator and its extended-run tank now has feet and has been painted.… Read the rest

Recreational Analytic Geometry

Each fluorescent lamp that illuminates the Worthy project is supported by two pieces of bent 1-½” steel tubing. My test of a single-radius bend looks boring, and so I’m going to try a double-radius bend. But what radii? After some math, I can plug different numbers into r1 and r2 until the curve looks good.… Read the rest

Kiln-Dried Lumber

The  desert weather at Burning Man will dry lumber, causing it to shrink, bend, or twist, and so I’m starting with kiln-dried (KD) 2×4s. I had intended to find KD wood locally sourced, but as I visited the area’s lumber companies, I was surprised that all had only green 2×4s.… Read the rest

Lumber Chopped

I used my chop saw to cut all of the Worthy project’s 2×4s to size. Partway through the process I discovered that I should have cut the long pieces before cutting the short pieces: what was left couldn’t be cut into what was needed.… Read the rest

Worthy Content

While I enjoy the construction process, the whole purpose of the Worthy project is to display provocative content for Burning Man attendees to consider and vote on. Below are nine candidates for the 14 available positions on the piece’s curved wall.… Read the rest

More Content

Now twelve images are done, and that leaves only two to go! Here are three new images along with two updates. This first one was inspired by the 2014 Black Rock City Census, which mentions that 71.8% of burners do not identify with an organized religion. … Read the rest

Final Worthy Content

A while back I decided to use a topic from Chris Mooney’s The Republican Brain. In the book, he describes two personality traits that mainly differentiate liberals and conservatives. They are featured in the 13th and 14th images for the Worthy project.… Read the rest

Wall Segments Assembled

Ah! I finished assembling the Worthy project’s 14 wall segments with time enough for painting most of the 240 ft2 of the portions that are black. Tomorrow I’ll attach the the segments, finish painting the black parts, and start painting the 300 ft2 of the remaining portions, which will be white.… Read the rest

Installing Worthy at Burning Man 2015

(Updated September 6, 9:30 PM with a photo from the christening.) Burning Man’s art team, the ARTery, located Worthy in the inner playa, near to the 3:00 road, a placement which allowed for high traffic. I was surprised to discover that Worthy’s 2:30 placement was just behind the popular roadside Honoraria installation Totem of Confessions and in the vicinity of other Honoraria installations Love Tester and Life Cube Project.… Read the rest

Participants Respond to Worthy

Here are pages from the journal that was mounted on Worthy during the installation’s third through final days. I enjoy reading the many different responses.   Read the rest

Voting Results for Worthy

Worthy tallied votes over its five days on the playa. Below are the results for its 14 topics. Understand that actually I don’t care much about the results because I asked people to vote to make them think. Still, I care about the results somewhat, and I see that I correctly anticipated most of them, but there were a few surprises.… Read the rest