Omega Recoil: Denmark container load from oscar champagne on Vimeo.

After almost 6 months of rebuilding 2pir, testing, doing paperwork, and way too much time at NIMBY, 2pir is on it’s way to Denmark for Smukfest 2010! As you can see above, we spent the last Saturday afternoon stuffing everything into a shipping container for the journey across the ocean.

In the container with 2pir is Omega Recoil’s Tesla Coil, and Therm’s brand spanking new robot. Last year we put DDI on a boat. This year we’re putting 2pir in the air. The flame effects and the platform are going to be 3 meters in the air with festival goers milling about underneath them. We’re going to take the beach at Denmark and show the Danes more fire and electricity than they’ve seen in a long time.

It’s time for another Ardent Heavy Industries/Interpretive Arson Open Shop! We’re inviting everyone to stop by our (newly cleaned and reorganized) shop space at NIMBY to take shop tours, hear about our upcoming projects and events, and play with some fire. We’ll also have a little food, but mostly some hot coals to cook whatever you want bring. This time we’ve got a tentative schedule:

• 7:00 – Coals are hot and doors are open!
• 7:30 – Shop tour #1 begins
• 8:00-8:15 – Syzygryd (aka that thing we’re building for That Thing In The Desert)
• 8:15-8:30 – Robots with Sam and Morley
• 8:30-8:45 – What AHI/IA is up to this year & how you can get involved with Ardent
• 8:45-? – Fire toys outside, hang out and chat about projects, etc
• 9:00- Shop Tour #2 begins

Swing by and enjoy some friends, food, and fire.

Friday, January 29th, 7:00 PM
NIMBY, 8410 Amelia Street, Oakland

There was quite a bit of photos and video taken of Dance Dance Immolation while we were in Denmark for Smukfest earlier this year.
Allan, the Skanderborg Festival Photographer, got some great shots of DDI during our run in Denmark at Smukfest. I highly recommend viewing the panorama shots on a wide screen monitor:

[View with PicLens]

There’s also pictures of DDI and Interpretive Arson’s Danish adventures from Ian:

As well as Ed:

What is Ardent/Interpretive Arson up to? Well, lately, we’ve fragmented off to do a lot of smaller projects, as well as exhibiting our primary projects.

Existing projects: DDI is back from Denmark, complete with a lot of organizational stuffs for the trip across the pond. 2pir made it to the playa and back, with some ignition woes that we may or may not discuss. Spurious Causality is a steampunk-styled control panel that controls… who knows what? David, Audrey, Ian or MotoMike will be on hand to talk about that.

Robotics! Morley and Sam are both working on two extremely different robotics projects, Morley rebuilding a battle bot frame to shoot fire, and Sam is making a semi-autonomous walker.

Fire! Ian’s got all manner of portable fire, some in the works. Ed made a nice portable flame effect that he or Nicole will discuss if prompted, and likely demonstrate. Peter is fabricating the prototype for a liquid fueled effect.

Music! Nicole (and friends) will be discussing a new large-scale project idea that integrates fire, light, music, and serious interactivity.

Optical curiosities! Neil and Casey and friends made a thing called HaloWall. It’s big. It creates rainbows in unusual ways. Refurbished and rethought after the playa thrashed it, tonight they demo night-time lighting effects and more brilliantly colored rainbows.

Metalwork! Morley and friends are teaching themselves to MIG weld, Sam is teaching himself Aluminum TIG. There’ll potentially be some bits for practicing sheetmetal fabrication, and discussion/demonstrations of metalworking in general.

Shop Upgrades! Unless you’ve been around lately, you probably haven’t seen how our shop has changed drastically. Come just see the new layout, hang out, and be a part of our shop family.

If you plan on staying through the evening, bring something to throw on the grill, and we’ll hang out some in the yard as well! We’ll have the grill hot, and as always, beer’s a dollar.

Wednesday October 7th, 7:30 PM
NIMBY, 8410 Amelia Street, Oakland

Don’t forget that the Universe is being destroyed this Saturday at NIMBY!  Dance Dance Immolation will be running and shooting rivetheads in the face with fire.  Not only is it a night of good industrial music, fire, dancing and fun, it’s also a benefit for SRL’s Todd Blair.

SAT 25 April – @ NIMBY in Oakland
8410 Amelia st., Oakland, CA 94621-1836
(All Ages)
5 pm – ? am
Massive Festival event at NIMBY’s 35,000 Sq. Ft. space!
Music, Machine-Fire Art, Dance, Performance Art, Crazy Antics
SIXTEENS, SWANN DANGER, BAD UNKL SISTA (Butoh inspired dance), THE ART OF BLEEDING, CROOKED COWBOY and the FRESHWATER INDIANS, SORIAH, SWORDS OF FATIMA, TOILING MIDGETS, SCOTT ARFORD, THE COPPERTHIEF, BIRTH,
Interactive Machine-Fire Art: DANCE DANCE IMMOLATION, LIFE SIZE MOUSETRAP,
THERM related artists: EVAN TRACY, RYON GESINK, ALEX NOLAN, VANCE CEARLEY (Exothermia – Fire/Ice sculpture)
Visuals and DJs: CHKNFSH, MOLITOV, POST-PUNK.org
“Industrial Culture” film screenings: DECODER, F-SPACE @ Thunderdome, etc.

$9 – $20 Sliding Donation

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

We had a chance to run a full test on 2pir last night and surprisingly everything worked beautifully. The new sensors are awesome, as is the new water heater, and of course the flame effects still create ridiculous amounts of fire. Come see 2pir in action at the Maker Faire this Saturday. We’ll be running in the evening and will be letting people up on the platform to create their own fire.

Dan also created a nice photo montage set to music from last nights testing: