That’s right, we’re pulling Dance Dance Immolation off the shelf, dusting off the playa and bringing it back to life just in time to Destroy the Universe!

If you already have plans for April 25th, blow them off. Great, since you don’t have plans we’re making them for you. Come out to the new NIMBY on Saturday the 25th and join us for How To Destroy the Universe Part 6. We’re taking part in a gluttonous rampage of Transgressive “Industrial Culture” to celebrate the Impact of THROBBING GRISTLE. We know, it’s a little bit of a departure from the happy hardcore rave-y kind of experience we normally do, but who said we were never open to a little experimentation? We’ll be there with a mob of other artists, musicians, and large art pieces. For more information on who as well as details on the entire 4 day celebration of “Industrial Culture” check out mobilization.com.

What: Dance Dance Immolation
Where: NIMBY – 8410 Amelia St, East Oakland, CA
When: Saturday. April 25th 5pm – ?

Take note! If everything goes to plan, it’s entirely possible that this may be the only time this year that Dance Dance Immolation runs on this continent. So don’t miss your chance to get blasted in the face with fire!

The Balsa Man Burns! by romzelino

Welcome back to all of those that went out to the playa this year. As you may have noticed, Interpretive Arson took the year off in an official sense. Both Dance Dance Immolation and 2pir stayed in storage for the Labor Day weekend this year, but many members of IA made it out to the playa on their own. Anomaly, a piece by Mary Franck and worked on by many IA members, was there. And of course several IA members helped out with setting up and running BRC as well as working on various art projects, including Morley’s contributions to Michael Cristian’s Elevation.

MiniDDI

For those of us that stayed behind, there was the first Balsa Man. It was a somewhat last minute event organized primarily by Colin that would fill a gaping hole in our Saturday night. While the Man in Black Rock City was delayed due to whiteout conditions, several dozen people gathered at Baker Beach to watch a 3ft tall effigy of the Man burn, complete with fireworks, flash powder, and idiots who danced in the ashes. The call for other mini-art was answered as well, with a Temple of Reduced Expectations, a mini-trash fence, and even a mini Dance Dance Immolation. The transportation and setup of MiniDDI was the fastest anyone has ever seen, and just like the real thing, everyone enjoyed it. Unfortunately as two long time members of IA, Rubin and Reed, battled it out on MiniDDI, a horrible software glitch occurred when Rubin missed a step in “Butterfly”. The result was a thoroughly charred and destroyed MiniDDI. A video of the the run can be seen below:

More pictures and videos from Balsa Man can be found in Colin’s Wrap-Up post for the event. And yes, the theme for Balsa Man 2009 has already been announced. It is “Big Dreams Writ Small”

As usual, we’ve been working on improving 2pir. A while back Ian and Nicole came up with the idea of taking it out to the playa to run for the 4th of July, which provided an excellent opportunity to fix up some lingering issues. There was some last minute scrambling to get things in working order, but we managed to haul it out to the Black Rock Desert. On Friday, we set everything up and started to test, but the new ignition system wasn’t working as expected. We downgraded to super-janky igniters (i.e. wicks soaked in lamp oil.) They weren’t nearly as pretty as the nichrome wire, but they worked for a couple of hours as we played late into the night. Saturday was much more successful. We reverted to a refined version of our igniters from the Maker Faire, which ended up being the best ignition system so far for 2pir. We invited several people to spin fire, flags, or swing whatever they wanted around as we pumped music out of our sound system. Those who chose to jump on the platform and perform had a blast, and were quite entertaining for everyone standing around the perimeter.

Evan took some great pictures
Ed got a couple of videos