Greetings from Black Rock City
About
Greetings is a mushroom cloud, typically seen after atomic bomb detonations. It stands 60' tall, with a 40' diameter round cap on top and 25' ring in the middle, connected with a vertical stem.
Outer surfaces are nylon fabric, with painted texture. Cap and ring hold their shape using a fiberglass frame and positive pressure from blowers. The stem lashes to central trusswork. The silhouette undulates gently in the wind, giving a lifelike appearance.
By day, the cloud has the color of dirt, a light, brownish grey. By night, interior lights illuminate cap, ring, and stem, playing a series of natural patterns with multiple colors. These are slow, hypnotic, and mildly terrifying.
Ladders within the stem deliver climbers to a viewing deck atop, which offers ample space for socializing or quiet reflection. Landing floors between levels provide basic safety by limiting falls.
The surrounding area consists of various supporting installations to spark conversation and collaborative interactivity.
Interactivity
The piece will provide interactivity through means common to many large-scale Burning Man projects: the center truss structure will be climbable and will feature a chill lounge and viewing platform on top. The lighting will be sound-reactive, allowing DJs and art cars to provide an audio feed while we provide an enormous mushroom cloud music visualizer.
In addition to the mushroom cloud structure, the piece will feature a few auxiliary elements arranged around its perimeter. These elements will be humorous in tone, poking fun at the naïveté of the atomic era and drawing parallels to our own blithely optimistic pursuits at That Thing in the Desert.