Fred. (Camp Bisco 11 Art Installation and Decor Liaison)

Once upon a time (last March) my New Orleans family threw a party called Buku Music and Art Project. We had enlisted the help of the talented and experienced minds of MCP Presents to help us promote and run the festival for our first year. MCP ended up being impressed with what my partner Chris Berends (DIRsign) and I had pulled together with our limited budget for the art portion of the festival. Well, as it turns out, MCP throws their own arsenal of music festivals throughout the year, and it is through this connection that Chris and I were asked to come up and help out with decor for Camp Bisco 11 which took place last weekend (July 12-14) in Mariaville, NY.

What ensued during the past week has been one of the more intense experiences of my life. I won’t divulge every little thing that made it this way, but to give you an idea it was just one of those moments in a lifetime that seemed like it stretched on forever but turned out to just be a blink of an eye in hindsight. It was a week full of new experiences and extremes. For example, I gained the humbling understanding of what it feels like to live out of a car for a week. At moments during the set-up we reached the threshold of physical exhaustion from working harder than I ever thought was possible. On the flip-side of that coin, every few minutes we were able to sit together to catch our breath or feed our ravenous hunger felt like the greatest reward I’d ever known. We would reach crescendos of the most genuine laughter and elation, and the next minute be standing side by side in a vast abyss of despair and uncertainty. During this week, no matter what we were doing, the fact that we were alive was starkly obvious and staring us in the face incessantly. Pure, unabashed life permeated and poured out of us with every breath.

The end results of all of our work were a Dirty Paws (Dog Paws Approved + DIRsign) original installation which we affectionately dubbed “Fred”, and the “Tunnel of Lights” area which was something that the festival planners had already had in mind and had enlisted us to create for them. Our installation Fred started from an interest in Sacred Geometry. Sacred Geometry is an idea that has been around pretty much as long as man has. These geometrical forms have been marveled at for centuries and heavily used in the creation of religious and spiritual places. From Wikipedia: “According to Stephen Skinner, the study of sacred geometry has its roots in the study of nature, and the mathematical principles at work therein. Many forms observed in nature can be related to geometry, for example, the chambered nautilus grows at a constant rate and so its shell forms a logarithmic spiral to accommodate that growth without changing shape.” Over the years, philosophical meanings have been attributed to certain aspects of these forms. For example, the Flower of Life, which is the shape that Fred is made of, consists of seven evenly spaced circles that can extrapolate infinitely while maintaining a perfect hexagonal form. It is regarded in most religions both ancient and current as a symbol of unity, peace, and life, and can be found all over the world as early as the 5th century AD. Well, my partner Chris happens to pretty much be a genius, and recognized that by connecting these circles at the points where they meet, one would have a very strong, yet flexible planar structure to work with. We decided we wanted to build an arched throughway with the “Canopy of Life” hanging meaningfully above all who walk under it.

This all sounds easy enough to pull off, but it really did not end up being so, and I knew it wouldn’t. The circumstances of creating for this festival were such that there were many unknowns in our build-plan leading all the way up until the moment we began construction. Being located over 1,000 miles from the festival site was one of the biggest hurdles we had to work around. Due to limited budget, and this distance, we were left to work with options that involved hanging our piece, rather than hauling and building a free-standing structure for it. This led to a chain reaction of unfortunate variables that resulted in a very difficult set-up phase for Fred. We were left to the mercy of the position of the trees in the area, which we didn’t know until we got there, for our hanging points. Well, low-and-behold, there were not trees in favorable positions to hang this way, and we were left to improvise. Thanks to many helping hands (including Shannon of MCP, and our personal team Andrew Craig and Henry Flynn) we were able to rig a structure that survived the festival using a mix of hanging and ground support systems. Hanging Fred was the most stressful night of the setup. Chris was up in trees at 3 AM trying to wrestle wires at extreme tension into their place while we guided Fred from below. At one point we had the piece in place and were pushing the last stabilizing column into position when one of the hanging wire points snapped, leaving us desperately back at square one. The tension and stress of this moment was palpable. We had all but given up, but knew that the job had to be done. These were some of the moments from the week that I will never forget. I was reminded that you can only get so far by yourself… In work, and in life in general, you NEED friends and collaborators to help you get where you want to be, and visa versa. Never forget this mutual reliability, it is one of life’s truths that smacked me in the face this past week. Fred eventually made it into his resting position later that night. We originally wanted him to arch over the pathway, but he ended up taking on a more organic looking, wavy form, which I think ended up suiting him much better. He was painted with top-quality UV-reactive paint, and was rigged with blinking EL-wire that emphasized the connecting points that this sacred shape makes and gave the piece a quite noticeable heartbeat. I am so proud of what Fred ended up being and representing. It quite literally felt like we had created a living object. The connections made by the hoops and El-wire reminded me of the interconnectivity of our fragile life to that of those around us. If anybody in our audience had even an inkling of this feeling while looking up at Fred, I would consider this install a flying success.

Lots of Painting

The Buildout

Having completed Fred, the only thing we had left hanging over our heads was the tunnel of lights. It was the last day of set-up, but really we only had a matter of hours before festival attendees would be arriving. We had no structure to work off to build the tunnel… Only temporary fencing on one side of the path, and nothing on the other. Things were looking bleak as the hours ticked away, then finally we got approval to have the fencing guys drive 10 ft poles at 20ft intervals on the empty side of the path. We then supplemented the fenced side with 10ft pieces of PVC that gave us the structure we needed on both sides to begin building. A couple 500ft lengths of airplane wire, countless strings of LED berry lights, and a day of dedicated labour from my team later we were stringing up the last few light strands as festival goers poured in. At the time we were a little bit sour about having to complete this extra piece for setup, but I’m so glad we were able to deliver on it. It had been planned for a certain vendor, AuroraVizion, to be able to provide an interactive experience for their product. AuroraVizion sells light refracting glasses that multiply or transform each point of light while you are looking through them. The result is a beautiful rainbow-geometric field of vision when wearing them and looking at interesting light sources. The tunnel was meant to be an awesome way to promote their glasses. I met the owner of AuroraVizion who turned out to be a really nice guy. I am glad we were able to deliver the Tunnel of Lights for him, because at times it didn’t seem like it was going to happen.

Tunnel of Lights Entrance

Tunnel of Lights

A photo through the glasses

The feeling of completing set-up for Camp Bisco, and being able to enjoy the festival for a few days before break-down was indescribable. It was a situation where our team poured everything we had into creating something special, and the rewarding feeling that resulted from it was fully worth it. I want to give a special thanks to my partner Chris Berends, our team Andrew Craig and Henry Flynn, MCP Presents for the opportunity, specifically Kevin Earle and Shannon, Funktion Forms for killing it with the tensile fabrics in the space, and finally Chad and his boys at Roof Axis for bringing it with the lights. Also thanks to anyone at Camp Bisco 11 who took the time to look up and enjoy all of our hard work!

Fred and Chris