View toward the more densely populated part of Black Rock City, from just beyond Sacred Spaces. On the right are pairs of lamps lining half a mile of Promenade from the Temple at 12:00 to Centercamp at 6:00. Between the purple glow of Hilary's icosohedrons and the brighter skyline are many installations, some easily seen from afar, some not. Transportation is on foot, bike, or 5 mph art car.

Sewing for your little girl can be habit forming. When she was big enough to assert her preferences, frilly dresses were dinosaurs. This trend was an economic boon, but the itch to stitch still lurked.

"Mom, could you make me some EL wire sculpture?" How could I refuse? For a couple weeks of frantic prefab in Hilary's apartment, I lived mostly in a wire cage. While others soldered electrical connections, squeezed pieces of rubber hose onto the ends of 7' garden stakes, and spray painted wires, I twisted little bits of wire around plastic coated EL wire (think mini neon) to make 12 images of my daughter going through what Laban Bartenieff movement mavens refer to as the body scale.

Icosohedrons are 20-faced structures, and if you know where to look and plant your feet, Golden Rectangles abound. This geometry fascinated old Leonardo and figures into the drawing of male proportions we study in art school, known affectionatly as "the Da Vinci guy."

More info at Hilary's site: http://www.hilarybryan.com/SacredSpaces.htm

The 2005 Decompression website has a multiple exposure of the virtual dancer by night.

So what do you do in an icosohedron? Here's a demo by Hilary.

ding

(sorry, no wave file)

The team Hilary assembled to make this magic work was spread across the country. New York based Carl Gruesz programmed the lights to coordinate with the EL dancer in the center icosohedron, so that when the animation reaches for a point spot in space, people in the other icosohedrons can reach for lights in their own spheres. Over many weeks, boxes of elecronics arrived at Hilary's apartment, carried by an increasingly intrigued FedEx driver. When we finally hooked up the little control boxes to the ends of the wires I'd been wrestling, and then turned them loose, even I was hypnotized.

Packing the kaboodle off to the desert in corners of several different vehicles was another undertaking. Reassembling it there after arrival, yet another. There were still wires to be connected for each separate structure, cable to be buried, and glitches to deal with. We had the great fortune of camping with Charlie Wilde of IMS. He put in many hours of expert electronic work on the searing and dusty playa. Here are some night shots of the first time the animation was iluminated.

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Hello?



See all that alkali dust catching the camera's flash?
That's why dust masks and bandanas
are haute couture in Black Rock City.