Applied Kinetic Arts

This is a documentary of the making of the Raygun Gothic Rocket and its installation at Burningman.

One day when I was working on the rocket, this kid showed up with all this camera gear and lights. He started setting up and taking shots in the middle of the shop while people were working. Not just snapshots, mind you, but actual photographs.

I remember being a little annoyed at first, because he was kind of in the way, and he wasn’t there to do anything but take pictures.

But when I saw the photos this guy was taking, they were amazing.

I got to know him, and it turns out he’s an amazing photographer and videographer named Sean Donnelly.

After taking photos and videos of us throughout the making of the Rocket, he came out to Burningman with us to videotape the installation. In addition to putting together a great Oakland Tribune article about us, he also did this video documentary that he just posted on Vimeo.

So many times I cringe whenever I see myself in a video that features the work we do.  But because Sean spent so much time with us, I think he really captured who we were and what the project was about.

I love how it shows the project from the beginning to the end, all the way through to the installation. It really focused on the people. Sean realized early on that the people who made the rocket made it to be with the people who were making it. The fact this video shows that is one of the things I like about it.

Blast Off! from Sean Donnelly on Vimeo.

a documentary on the building of the raygun gothic rocketship!

Experiments with conductive glass from Almost Scientific on Vimeo.

Here we’ve created a dielectric barrier discharge with transparent, conductive glass.

When we did our last show at the Exploratorium I did a video interview with Wired about what The Neuron Chamber was and how it worked.  I loved that they wanted me to explain in detail how it worked and not just give a 5 second sound bite.  Well the video just went live and it’s really great.  They wove in some footage I gave them from our show at The Science Gallery in Ireland and Maker Faire.  Thanks Wired!

The piece shown here is the recent reincarnation of a previous one: The Performer. The Performer was nearly destroyed in shipping, due to careless packing on the part of a gallery and what could only have been violent handling by UPS. This was around 2 years ago. Many months later, I started receiving emails that the piece had appeared, broken and headless on ebay! There were some bids, and the carcass was purchased. I was then contacted by the new owner about possible repairs. After some time he concluded that he could not afford the repairs and put the sculpture up on ebay again! This time it was purchased by someone else who went to the trouble to actually drive the poor broken fellow up to my open studio a few weeks ago. Moved by the distances and hardships that the sculpture had endured, and the enthusiasm and commitment of its new owner, I recently undertook the task of making the piece whole again. Due to its strange tendency to return from the great beyond I have re-named it “Boomerang”. I feel the attitude in his facial features reveals some of the mischief that no doubt lurks in whatever passes for a soul in the case of roots.

She’s pretty much done.

Nude IV (Delilah)

58” x 28” x 38”

Typewriter parts

2009