Read more: 10 Wild Art Cars From Burning Man – Popular Mechanics

The Nautilus

The 9000-pound Nautilus is inspired by Jules Verne’s submarine from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Its base is a 2005 Eagle TT8 diesel airport tug with four-wheel drive.

Californians Christopher and Amber Marie Bently conceived the idea; Sean Orlando & Five Ton Crane, creators of art sculptures in the San Francisco Bay area, built it. The Nautilus is 25 feet long and 12 feet tall and made of laser-welded steel with decorative rivets lining the hull. The engine and steering controls are on the “bridge” of the machine. The Nautilus features surround sound, a library, a map room, and a full bar.

Saturday Feb. 18th

Five Ton Crane (represented by Alan Rorie, David Shulman, and Sean Orlando) will share their retro-futuristic large installation projects, such as their Raygun Gothic Rocket

All activities and workshops run from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm and are on a first-come, first-serve basis.

A collaboration between the Exploratorium, MAKE Magazine, and Pixar Animation Studios, Open MAKE is a monthly program highlighting the tools, techniques, and ingenuity of local Makers. Visitors are invited to participate in tinkering and making activities inside the Tinkering Studio, where Makers from around the Bay Area will share their work. In addition, Dale Dougherty, founder and editor of MAKE Magazine, will interview Featured Makers in the McBean Theater.

This month’s theme will be time. Five Featured Makers will be interviewed in the McBean Theater between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., talking about their work and process, and taking questions from the audience.

Apogee Photography

The Nautilus submarine from Oakland North on Vimeo.

Deep in West Oakland, a collective of artists called Five Ton Crane (5TC) is hard at work tuning up their submarine. Although it doesn’t go underwater, there seems to be little else this lifesize vessel can’t do—it even defends its perimeters with a water spear gun and bumps tunes from its built-in iPad technology. It’s structured with all the romantic details of retro-futurism–that is, modeling art after old school design, and then amplifying it with futuristic technology. When the artists, who recently returned from Burning Man, need to take a break, they head inside the sub to a spot they’ve dubbed “the make-out room” and sip from a vintage bottle in the mini-bar.

“We aim to be, rather than to seem,” said Sean Orlando, one of the lead artists of the Nautilus, who says his favorite spot is in the captain’s chair. “It’s important for us, with these large projects, that they remain immersive and interactive, and that people can climb around in them, drive around in them.”

This is the third large-scale installation Five Ton Crane has made. In 2007 they constructed a Tree House, and in 2009 they built the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, which is currently on display along San Francisco’s Embarcadero waterfront. The group gets its funding from private donations, and the staff are volunteers, making their childhood dreams of tree houses, rockets, and submarines a reality.

“All the things that people see in print but actually can’t imagine—we flesh them out,” Five Ton Crane artist Jay Kravitz said. “We make big toys for adults to play with.”

Designed in 2007 as an art installation for the Burning Man festival in  Black Rock City, Nev., the home and 40-foot metal tree it sits in were  created almost entirely from recycled and reclaimed materials by 60 volunteers in Oakland, Calif. (Five Ton Crane Arts Group)

Created “to explore the relationship between our rapidly changing  natural world and the persistent human drive to connect with it and one  another,” the 15-by-12-foot home cost approximately $60,000 to construct  and contains a wood-burning stove to keep it warm, a telescope for  bird-watching, and a steam calliope for creating music. The surrounding  metal “tree” is equipped with LED lights in the branches (giving it a  post-apocalyptic firefly effect) as well as a steam generator for spooky  effects at night.

While the Tree House doesn’t have a kitchen or bathroom, it does have an  amazingly Jules Verne-ian interior complete with stained glass windows  and Tim Burton-esque furniture. Both the house and tree have taken up permanent residence at Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Del.

Click HERE for the full article

The Steampunk Tree House, Delaware