Ephemerisle art/construction feedback
Apr. 26th, 2010 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mattbellIf you're planning on attending Ephemerisle or (even better) interested in making some art with me, let me know your take on these ideas:
1. Floating balance games: Inspired by the lightsaber fight on the path to the achievement lounge, we could set up interesting floating structures (eg a long thin bar or a series of small platforms) and let people do lightsaber fights, tugs of war, and other fun events that end in people falling off and splashing into the water.
2. Walk on water. Find a way of putting a platform that's, say, 20 feet long and 5 feet wide just an inch or two below the water's surface. This is actually rather tricky to do, as the added weight of the people likely will affect the height of the platform, and I wouldn't want it to drop more than an inch or two. The brute force way to do this would be to get, say, four Coleman Islands which would collectively hold 8000 pounds, and then use them to suspend the underwater platform in the middle. Then several people could walk along the walk-on-water platform with ease.
3. Floating obstacle course. This could consist of narrow beams, spaced platforms you jump between, and other challenges. It would be more difficult, less soft and forgiving, and substantially smaller than this inflatable monster.
4. Walk-on lilypads. This would be kind of like the floating obstacle course, but more artistic. Viewers would see a series of large lilypads floating in the water. However, an underwater support structure would connect these lilypads, allowing people to step from one to another and be supported. The walk-on lilypads could be made with thick transparent plastic on top, allowing them to be lit from the inside (and thus glow at night).
5. Aquatic erector set. This falls more into the "interactive art" category. Basically, if you find poles of various lengths and construct receptacles for those poles out of foam or other materials, you could have a truly flexible building system. If the receptacles are made out of foam or hollow plastic, they would likely float. This would allow people to easily build a variety of interesting structures on the playa surface. Custom foam parts can be mass produced with expanding 2-part foam mix. Thus stuff is fairly brittle though... it would likely have to be reinforced with something.
6. Current-ripple visualizer. This is actually different from the ripple theater. I envision doing a floating grid of objects that optomechanically shows off the ripples and water currents. (Optomechanical implies cheap) For example, a stick pointing out the top of a weighted but buoyant bottle would tilt in response to passing ripples. A grid of these could look like a field of grain waving in the wind... except that the functions generating the "wind" would look very different.
7. Floating dome. (This is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
proctologiste 's idea). You would be able to swim up to the dome and climb on and around it. (The dome would be skeletal like a burningman dome) In some versions, the dome might even be mobile, allowing you to move through the water by rotating the dome.
1. Floating balance games: Inspired by the lightsaber fight on the path to the achievement lounge, we could set up interesting floating structures (eg a long thin bar or a series of small platforms) and let people do lightsaber fights, tugs of war, and other fun events that end in people falling off and splashing into the water.
2. Walk on water. Find a way of putting a platform that's, say, 20 feet long and 5 feet wide just an inch or two below the water's surface. This is actually rather tricky to do, as the added weight of the people likely will affect the height of the platform, and I wouldn't want it to drop more than an inch or two. The brute force way to do this would be to get, say, four Coleman Islands which would collectively hold 8000 pounds, and then use them to suspend the underwater platform in the middle. Then several people could walk along the walk-on-water platform with ease.
3. Floating obstacle course. This could consist of narrow beams, spaced platforms you jump between, and other challenges. It would be more difficult, less soft and forgiving, and substantially smaller than this inflatable monster.
4. Walk-on lilypads. This would be kind of like the floating obstacle course, but more artistic. Viewers would see a series of large lilypads floating in the water. However, an underwater support structure would connect these lilypads, allowing people to step from one to another and be supported. The walk-on lilypads could be made with thick transparent plastic on top, allowing them to be lit from the inside (and thus glow at night).
5. Aquatic erector set. This falls more into the "interactive art" category. Basically, if you find poles of various lengths and construct receptacles for those poles out of foam or other materials, you could have a truly flexible building system. If the receptacles are made out of foam or hollow plastic, they would likely float. This would allow people to easily build a variety of interesting structures on the playa surface. Custom foam parts can be mass produced with expanding 2-part foam mix. Thus stuff is fairly brittle though... it would likely have to be reinforced with something.
6. Current-ripple visualizer. This is actually different from the ripple theater. I envision doing a floating grid of objects that optomechanically shows off the ripples and water currents. (Optomechanical implies cheap) For example, a stick pointing out the top of a weighted but buoyant bottle would tilt in response to passing ripples. A grid of these could look like a field of grain waving in the wind... except that the functions generating the "wind" would look very different.
7. Floating dome. (This is
proctologiste 's idea). You would be able to swim up to the dome and climb on and around it. (The dome would be skeletal like a burningman dome) In some versions, the dome might even be mobile, allowing you to move through the water by rotating the dome. 
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 02:10 am (UTC)These are far more versatile. They don't waterlog as easily as waxed pulp. And securing them would be a breeze; just lag bolt or screw the cap into a wooden superstructure (sheet of ply, 2x4) and later screw the bottle to the cap. It's the ultimate reuse. Time consuming, perhaps, but cheap.
My chief idea was a floating hamster wheel, a basic tube with bolted bottles outside the tube. Mobility and fun!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:08 am (UTC)Or maybe that would be the whole game. You wouldn't have clubs at all. You'd play by moving around, but you'd lose points if your foot ever touched the ball or if the ball rolled off the edge.
Hey, I really like your idea.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 05:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:13 am (UTC)I got to chat with one of the people who made the Ok Go rube goldberg machine a few months back, and they said that most of the mechanisms were extremely delicate and even random air currents could mess it all up. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w ) So I'm thinking the machine would have to be set up to have much more solid triggers.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:35 am (UTC)and i swear i'm not on LSD.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 10:55 pm (UTC)In order to reduce engineering delta, perhaps making it into something hamster wheely would be a good idea.
I've found this product: http://www.qualitypooltoys.com/sl9089.html but it's clearly too small. I haven't been able to find an adult-sized one.
But the design for it inspired me to think about how to duplicate it. I think that an inflatable structure is just too weak to support an adult without some fancy engineering. Instead, one could do something such as take two very large circular tubes (perhaps what they make the floating islands out of), and place them side by side, like wheels, with rigid connectors, such as metal pipes. This maintains the "monkey bars" feel of the dome. A good and relatively cheap way to augment this would be to cover the bars with (or rather, insert the bars through) some sort of foam, perhaps the same material those pool noodles are made of, both adding protection and flotation (well just a bit of the latter).
This also eliminates the very difficult problem of making sure that the dome floats and relatively evenly.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 04:56 am (UTC)http://www.intheswim.com/shopping/product.aspx?productid=SKU20035&scode=I9TKSHOP&e7=Y&e8=T0892&pcode=102&keyword=T0892
So we could (presuming the buoyancy calculations work out) bend the ends of someone's spare aluminum burningman dome struts to make various 3D polyhedra, and then sheathe them with foam to make the structure float. They might even be climbable.