Dance Dance Immolation was a much-loved cornerstone of the fire art community. It was commonly referred to as “Dance Dance Revolution, with flamethrowers pointed at you” and it truly lived up to that description. DDI started in 2005 with Ian Baker, Morley John, Matt Blackwell, and Jonathan Stray. It quickly added more and more people. Over the next few years it created a large family. It spawned the Interpretive Arson group, which grew up into what is now known as Ardent Heavy Industries. It created new relationships, killed a few, singed some body hair, and delighted thousands of people. It also tormented us with horrible J-Pop that we secretly loved.

Dance Dance Immolation had a good run, with 12 runs over its 8 year life span:
* Burning Man 2005, 2006, 2007, 2013
* Fire Arts Festival 2005, 2006, 2007
* NIMBY Circus in 2005
* Our only private event in 2006
* The DDI Media Circus in 2007, an attempt to get some good videos and photos of the piece
* How To Destroy the Universe in 2007
* Denmark’s Smukfest in 2009

Dance Dance Immolation is survived by 2pir, Syzygryd, and the latest addition, the Ardent Mobile Cloud Platform. In lieu of donations, we kindly request you work on your own fire art piece in remembrance.

In 2013, everything’s going mobile and smart companies are turning to the cloud for their mission critical infrastructure. Here at Ardent Heavy Industries, we’re taking it to the next level, introducing the Ardent Mobile Cloud Platform…

A short video showing off our early software design for our latest project, Syzygryd.

The sequencer and the display layer are written in Processing, the iPods are running touchOSC by hexler, and the computer making the noise is running Ableton Live with Native Instruments’ Massive. We’re working on getting better sounds set up for it, now that we have the software generally functioning.

Thanks a ton to Audrey, Yosh, and Nicole for editing, and Ian for filming.

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

Dance Dance Immolation is officially in the Guinness Book of World Records: Gamer’s Edition for the “Hottest Video Game”. You can check out our full color spread online, complete with photo (original photo by Kristen Ankiewicz) of a player getting blasted with fire.

Interpretive Arson can now proudly say that we are an international, award winning, record setting fire art group.

How to lend your support:
You can pledge here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1362561841/nimby-industrial-art-and-diy-space
Note: These pledges will only go through if we reach $17,255 in pledges. You’re better off just donating to NIMBY directly

Donate directly: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=10559466

If you want to donate a large tax deductible donation, please email rachael@nimbyspace.org for details.

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:
[nggallery id=1]

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

The Denmark crew has arrived at Smukfest and we spent a jet-lagged day setting up Dance Dance Immolation on a raft. Yes, a raft! Ian setup his camera to take an awesome time-lapse video of the setup process:

DDI Smukfest Setup Timelapse from Interpretive Arson on Vimeo.

The break in the middle where everyone disappears is lunch (though you can see Nicole coming back to check on it while we’re all gone, because she’s like that). The blue tarps went on when it began to drizzle. The video ends just as Ian and Jonathan are walking the inspectors from the Danish Technological Institute through the system (with their 12 year old daughter!) They approved us, though they tell us they need to see our test run Tuesday night. Just to be sure, you understand.