Burning Man 2004
the inexorable progress of


Chasm
by Logan and jD., with the Projekteers Group.

Mudding or meeting us on the playa? Here's all the info.
View the Proposal.
Go back to the public page.

Pre-Playa Party Date: Saturday August 14, 12-6pm (or anytime really)
Come bend rebar, gawk at the paraboloids, view the video, and eat snacks!
At the HotHouse, 1369 Francisco St in Berkeley

Dates on the playa:
Wed Aug 25 - jD & Logan get playaside and build paraboloids for a couple days.
Sat Aug 28 - Sunset all-hands at Chasm for Mud #1
Sun Aug 29 - 9am at Chasm for Mud #2 & complete installation by Monday
... enjoy the freaking week! ...
Sun Sept 5 - Sunset all-hands at Chasm for breakdown & burn
Mon Sept 6 - jD & Logan leave the playa, with a sleepover in Reno at the Truckee River Lodge, arrive home on Tuesday.

August 8 - Back from Santa Cruz! Countdown: 16 days to departure.
Check out all the action at www.horg.com/chasm/chasmprogress3

- We saw Deb's amazing petroglyphs in development. The paint works great on the playa on the paraboloid!

- Even between moving and starting school, Raven's getting the Chasm Metal Book together. It's going to look absolutely dreamy!

- Jennyg is wrangling LEDs to light the paraboloids like in the pic at the top of the page here! I'm very excited! We hope to have a few strange colored ones coming from the chasm rift, too. spoooky.

- jD's latest work on the video is sensational, including a glimpse up the inside of the periscopes interior gear workings.

- The periscopes are basically completed! Just a couple paint touch ups.

- Got us an old kid bicycle cart attachment, and we're decking it out lunar module style to match the bikes! It pulls so smooth and we will love it for battery packing around.

- Also: AUDIO. Hotdamn! We're gonna have some. One channel sounds out of the chasm, the other channel sounds out of the periscope while the gears are shown in the video.

- Met a whole gob of extra swell folks who'll be campmates this year ... shaping up to be an awesome camp!

- LEM round 1 is complete! And boy is it sexy to sit in.

- And to top it off, we spent a fabulous evening at the Lick Observatory with other chasmonauts & friends, relaxing, taking in Science, and enjoying all sorts of views.

What's Next: More working of butts off. This Saturday: Pre-Playa Party! Come on down for a gander.

July 25 - Just about one month left ... I think I need another beer.
We're in the middle of the tornado now, just trying to keep all these spinning things-to-do nailed down. Adventures since mid-May:

- NOMAN July 4th was, as usual, fucking awesome. Buto dancing under a full moon, hot springs every night, fish car, new yert, horgamophone and serious snacking. Got some great feedback on the video and mud advice from noman campers. The optics, btw, worked terrific. Thanks, Optics Guy!

- Now for the real juicy stuff: www.horg.com/chasm/chasmprogress1 shows you in REAL LIFE PICTURES what the hell we been doing when we aren't complaining to you about everything we've been doing. Check out that prototype periscope jD made (sexy!), and the small paraboloid mud tests.

- Also tested on the playa were the first metal sheets of the Chasm Book done by Raven and Lazertran, which is this pretty amazing medium that lets you photocopy anything, and then attach that image onto anything else. Works great, looked beautiful out there. Hotdamn!

- More good news is that since Noman jD has done several more mud tests, and we now know what we are doing! jD's inner sculptor is creeping out again with each mud test tried, and I'm talking OBSESSION. But what kick-ass results, check out these puppies: www.horg.com/chasm/chasmprogress2. A combination on the wood frame of burlap sacks (picked up free from coffee shops) and concrete mesh can be made in advance pre-playa. Once on the playa, we can simply use playa itself to do one thin coat of mud (aka Mud #1) and then one slightly thicker coat (aka Mud #2) on top of that. Beauty!

- And now, the video. Completely out of context, but here's a couple stills of what you'd see when looking through the periscope: www.horg.com/chasm/chasmunderdev1. Give us lots of feedback, please! This is still under revision ... the big question is: does it look like you are looking at the underside of a flat earth playa?

Other developments:
-- We took a model of Chasm to the Heliodon at PEC, a device that lets you see the course of the sun during the day anywhere in the world at any time of year. Now I know where best to place the paraboloids for effect and to protect the periscopes. PEC is open to all, the people are awesome.
-- Looks like we will be able to have audio! Yay!
-- We're seriously considering LED lighting options to flood the sides of the parabloids (as in the Proposal picture). We may need some advice on this one ...
-- Chasm will only run during nighttime hours, as you just can't see the video in the periscope well enough during the day. We'll be putting a timer on everything to run about 10 hours every night. Hopefully we'll only have to charge out two deep cycle batteries every other day. Whew.
-- Hey! I learned to solder and build my first circuitry! Thanks Dvb! He'll be posting a fab site with very easy how-to info in case anyone would want to do the same sometime ...

What's Next: We work our butts off until ... Santa Cruz! A much needed break to visit LEM under construction. We'll be there around Aug 5-9 or something. See you then!

Cinco de Mayo! Go have a beer already.
The whirlwind has begun! Adventures since mid-April, when we signed the contract in the presence of rockstars Lady Bee and Crimson Rose, include:

- Slurkin' through the mud at the Hayward Regional Shorline, with a nice Ranger Man who drove us to find just the right mud source to most closely match the playa mud we'll be working with. Now we got 10 gallons of the blackest siltiest mud which I water down every morning in our backyard.

- Video is full steam ahead, with jD and Dvb pumping out some amazing visuals. But no spoilers will be said here! Must be about 80 hours spent on that part already.

- First Contact is made between our Santa Cruz Posse and the nice Optics Guy with Lick Observatories. They play with lenses, and looks like this periscope idea might work after all. We'll be there with a full prototype in a couple of weeks.

- The first cardboard periscope is created, just this past weekend! It stands nearly 6 feet tall, about 2 feet around, looks nearly exactly like the pictures. Once again, jD's sculpting hot glue and cardboard ability is amazing.

- And finally, after an unexpected road trip down Route 4 to the new Fry's out in Concord (recommended!), research on 12V car DVD and monitor systems has been concluded. Today we purchased the first monitors on EBay.

So the next big date: May 15th in Santa Cruz, where we burn DVDs and assemble the cardboard periscope with dvd/monitors and lenses together for the first time. Ooooooooo!