See the full post on the official SF Gov Site

San Francisco, CA—Mayor Gavin Newsom today joined the Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF) and the Port of San Francisco to celebrate the unveiling of Raygun Gothic Rocketship, a 40-foot-tall sculpture created by a team of Bay Area artists lead by Sean Orlando, Nathaniel Taylor, and David Shulman. The Rocketship, poised as if to board passengers for a typical run to a nearby stellar destination, will remain at the Pier 14 Tidal Plaza, at the base of Mission Street, on the Embarcadero for a 14-month temporary exhibition.

The 40-foot-tall artwork offers a retro-futuristic, highly-stylized vision of space travel circa 1930’s-1940’s science fiction and is the latest in a series of temporary public art exhibitions sponsored by BRAF to enliven and activate public spaces. The sculpture will be accompanied by a companion piece, the Rocket Stop designed by Alan Rorie, which tells the story of the Rocketship’s exploits, providing route, schedule and other information. The installation will be illuminated for nighttime viewing.

“We are very proud to have the work of local artists of this caliber represented along San Francisco’s iconic waterfront,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom. “Sean, Nathaniel, and David’s Raygun Gothic Rocketship is an important piece of our City’s strong temporary public art program that adds an important vibrancy and a vitality to our public spaces.”

“We at the Port are charged with creating opportunities for residents and visitors alike to connect with San Francisco’s spectacular waterfront,” said Port Executive Director Monique Moyer. “As the third in a series of large-scale sculptures to be installed temporarily at Pier 14, we are confident that this compelling piece will engage people and enhance their experience of the area. Pier 14 provides a fitting and fantastic backdrop for this whimsical work of art.”

To find out more about this project visit: www.blackrockarts.org/projects/raygun-gothic-rocket

Photograph by Steve Rhodes from flickr

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Back to the Future with Raygun Gothic Rocketship

Next door to the Amtrak train station on the San Francisco waterfront, a 40-foot retro rocket sculpture has been created by Five Ton Crane, a group of Burning Man associated artists for a year-long installation, and it’s stunningly playful.

The artists Sean Orlando, Nathaniel Taylor, and David Shulman (above), along with a crew of over 60 volunteers, originally created the sculpture for the 2009 Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Red Rock Desert.

In the desert, you could walk inside the rocket as if you really were going to take off, but insurance and permit considerations made that impossible along the San Francisco waterfront.

Accordingly, a kiosk was designed by Alan Rorie, displaying the daily intergalactic schedule for the Raygun Gothic Rocketship.

The retro rocket’s placement next to the Amtrak station is an unintended bit of irony since rail travel is experiencing a back to the future moment right now, although the United States is falling behind the rest of the world in that arena with each passing day.

Maybe that’s why the kiosk designer insisted that “Earth” was a “Local” stop.

I was taking a train on Friday morning, just before the rocketship’s official installation, and talked to a European tourist family who were going to Los Angeles via an Amtrak train to Bakersfield followed by a bus ride to downtown LA. When they asked me what they were getting into, I replied, “It’s very, very old-fashioned and slow. Pretend you’re in a Hollywood movie from the 1940s and you should have a good time.”

The European patriarch talked about how his family was on their way home from a trip to Shanghai. “Ten years ago China had no modern rail infrastructure. Now they have high-speed trains going at 270MPH everywhere. It’s amazing.”

Meanwhile, in California, it is taking forever to start building a modern railway system while the state chokes on its own exhaust. I wish the Rocket Gothic Raygun artists were in charge.

San Francisco, August 6, 2010 – The Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF) and the Port of San Francisco will celebrate the opening on August 6th at 3:00 PM at Pier 14, of an iconic, large-scale sculpture created by a team of Bay Area artists lead by Sean Orlando, Nathaniel Taylor, and David Shulman. This 40-foot-tall artwork, the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, offers a retro-futuristic, highly-stylized vision of space travel circa 1930’s-1940’s science fiction and is the latest in a series of temporary public art exhibitions sponsored by BRAF with the aim of enlivening and activating public spaces.

The Rocketship, poised as if to board passengers for a typical run to a nearby stellar destination, will remain at the Pier 14 Tidal Plaza, at the base of Mission Street, on San Francisco’s Embarcadero for a 14-month temporary exhibition. The sculpture will be accompanied by a companion piece, the Rocket Stop designed by Alan Rorie, which tells the story of the Rocketship’s exploits, providing route, schedule and other information. The installation will be illuminated for nighttime viewing.

According to Port of SF Executive Director, Monique Moyers, “We at the Port are charged with creating opportunities for residents and visitors alike to connect with San Francisco’s spectacular waterfront. As the third in a series of large-scale sculptures to be installed temporarily at Pier 14, we are confident that this compelling piece will engage people and enhance their experience of the area. Pier 14 provides a fitting and fantastic backdrop for this whimsical work of art.”

More than 70 artists and makers participated in the creation of the Raygun Gothic Rocketship under the auspices of Five Ton Crane, a collective of Bay Area artists and inventors (fivetoncrane.org). Lead artist Sean Orlando observed, “It’s remarkable what creative heights people can reach when they work together. The whole idea behind Five Ton Crane is that artists working in concert can accomplish so much more than any one person could working alone. The Raygun Gothic Rocketship project is a perfect example of that idea in action.”

I conceived of the Tree House in 2007 as a creative and collaborative large-scale group installation experiment within the Oakland arts community. Kinetic Steam Works provided the steam and the Tree House Crew provided the inspiration.

Here are some photos of the completed piece at its new home at the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Delaware.

The Raygun Gothic Rocketship has been successfully installed and is “standing by,” ready for the 2010 Makers Faire weekend. Our gantry tower has been erected and the explosive bolts on the escape hatch are armed!

We are all systems go…!
The RGR is more than just a shiny outer hull… and so we wanted to give you a brief glimpse of what you’ll find inside. To begin, here’s a post by one of the lead artists on the RGR project, David Shulman, talking about our deployable on-board rocket (probe)launcher.

SeanO

How to Launch a Rocket… from a Raygun Gothic Rocketship
by David Shulman

Every rocketship needs a rocket launcher, right?! In case you want to launch a probe? Or need to fire a space torpedo? Since my friends and I were already building a rocketship, I decided that we needed to build a rocket launcher too. The fact that I’ve never built a kinetic mechanism before should not be a deterrent, right?! I thought long and hard about what qualities it should have. Something that can be activated from inside; a launch platform that deploys from the side of the ship; a clear blast shield that allows you to witness the launch, and a mirrored outer hull cover that lets you follow the ascent. My friend John Hollis and I started to scheme.

The first iteration was a temporary success; driven by a linear actuator following a curved path and operating a lever, it extended an aluminum tray out of the body of the main ship, and electrically fired an Estes rocket. I said it was a temporary success, because after five days of use, it failed (granted, it was Burningman) – the actuator ceased to function, although the firing mechanism still worked. (We could, and therefore did, continue to launch rockets for several more days.)

We got back to the shop, only to discover that the actuator was fine – a simple toggle switch had suffered an internal failure. No matter – the Mark II was destined to be better, anyway. We planned to swap the linear actuator for a rack and pinion gear, as it would reduce the space needed, which on a spaceship is always helpful.

The Mark II.a (reployed at Yuri’s Night, at NASA Ames Research Center) worked OK, but we found that the rack and pinion actually needed to be perfectly aligned and spaced to work smoothly. Who would’ve thought?! With the Mark II.b (this weekend’s Maker Faire), we added limit switches, to stop the motor when the tray hit the end of its travel, to prevent burn out.

In the shop, it all worked – we tested it thoroughly, and found no problems after a dozen cycles. Imagine my consternation when, trying to test-launch a probe to measure wind direction on the midway yesterday. — it didn’t work! I toggled “extend” and it would not go. But when I tried “retract,” I had no problem?

I could not figure it out. Everything checked out, there were no shorts, (other than the ones I inadvertently caused ), all the switches were working, but I could not find the problem.

Finally, I thought to check the default on the limit switches. Sure enough, the outer limit switch was wired backwards! I have no idea how we tested successfully in the shop – but at 5:30 PM on Wednesday of set-up week – I had it! It went something like this:

• Estes Alpha II, with an A6-3 engine, racked and ready for launch.
• Deploy the launch assembly.
• Arm the ignition system.
• Ask a passerby to tell me (from outside the ship) which direction my probe goes.
• 3, 2, 1…
• Launch!

And the results?
The good news: a successful test launch!
The bad news.: an offering to the rocket gods.

(If you find the lost rocket, or any other we might launch over the weekend, bring it back to us, and come straight to the head of the line! Or, if you can explain what allowed us to test successfully in the shop, then find a problem in the field, you get to launch one!)

photo by Zachary Wasserman

The Five Ton Crane Arts Group proudly announces…!
the historic, permanent installation of…!
the beloved Steampunk Tree House!

Click here for more info

This iconic, fully immersive work of art was the first epic creation by the Oakland based arts group Five Ton Crane. First exhibited at the 2007 Burning Man festival in Nevada, it went on to capture imaginations all over the world!

This June 2010 the Tree House will plant it’s permanent roots on the East Coast. Visitors can once again clamber up the trunk, peer through the spyglass, look out over the balcony, work the brass levers of the Triaparator, flap the kinetic wings of the vulture and wonder at the story behind this mysterious habitation that they have stumbled upon.

This is the first time in the history of Burning Man that a large-scale sculpture of this type, originally funded for the playa, has been permanently installed … anywhere!

But… this historic event will not happen without your help!

]]> http://www.engineeredartworks.com/2010/04/help-plant-a-tree-house/feed/ 0 http://www.engineeredartworks.com/2010/03/the-raygun-gothic-rocketship-featured-on-the-nasa-ames-website/ http://www.engineeredartworks.com/2010/03/the-raygun-gothic-rocketship-featured-on-the-nasa-ames-website/#comments Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:39:41 +0000 admin http://www.engineeredartworks.com/?p=107 Click HERE for the full story

A 40-foot high rocket from the future and a 20-foot tall bird with its head and wings on fire will light up on Saturday, April 10, 2010 at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Is this a science experiment gone awry? No, it’s all part of Yuri’s Night.

Yuri’s Night is a world space party that commemorates the anniversary of the first human spaceflight, by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961 and the first space shuttle mission 20 years later. An estimated 10,000 people are expected to attend the Bay Area celebration from noon to midnight.

During this “mash-up” of music, dance, technology, art and space, two large-scale art installations that previously have been exhibited at the Burning Man Festival will be displayed: the “Raygun Gothic Rocketship” and “Angel of the Apocalypse.”

What these two giant sculptures share in common is that they both were built by dozens of team members collectively working together.

Sean Orlando, one of three lead artists for “Raygun Gothic Rocketship,” said the effort required the work of 85 artists, engineers, fabricators, scientists and computer engineers. “One of the remarkable things about this group of people is how few issues there are,” said Orlando. “When it comes to actual work and the design process, it truly is very collaborative.”

The retro-futuristic rocket stands four stories high, weighs 3,500 pounds and requires a crane with a 40-foot, 5-ton installation capability. The structure is divided into three sections: a life sciences bio lab, engineering room, crew quarters and a command module. Interior details include “alien specimens” in the life sciences bio lab, a zero gravity bed and a deployable rocket launcher.

“We’re sci-fi geeks who like to play with machines and tools,” said lead artist David Shulman. “Our inspiration was from the 1930s through early 1950s when technology was within sight, but the reality of what it would entail or the Cold War pessimism had not set in yet.”

The term, “Raygun Gothic” is an artistic style coined by science fiction author William Gibson. Orlando said the name refers to how people in the past imagined the future.

“We’re thrilled to be able to bring it to a NASA facility and share it with people who are interested in space exploration—both the serious side and the fun side,” said Orlando.

Click HERE for the full story