On August 20th, we received the following request for any plans or sketches of the rocketship that we would be willing to share.

I am thinking of trying to build a small wooden (six foot tall) version with
my 11 year old to teach him about construction.
Are there any plans or dimensional specs that could give us a start on
planning.  We could scale accordingly.

-Phil Battat

We were intrigued… so we sent Phil and his son the following plans:

Well… Phil and his son Andrew have been busy and it is now my turn to be impressed and inspired.

We received an email from Phil today with a photo of their little RGR inspired “project”. This father and son team studied our blueprints and re-created our 40′ tall steel and aluminum retro- futuristic  rocketship… out of wood… in only ten days!

Nice work Phil and Andrew! Cool lookin rocketship ya got there…

Thank you… I am truly humbled…

-Sean Orlando

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.”

KRON 4 Interview at Makers Faire 2010

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.

Eye-catching: The 40-foot, 8-ton sculpture “Raygun Gothic Rocketship” is slated to be installed along San Francisco’s waterfront in August where the “Crouching Spider” piece once stood.

SAN FRANCISCO — It won’t fly anybody to the moon, but a retro-themed rocket ship planned for The Embarcadero will recall a time when Americans romanticized the unlikely pursuit of space colonization.

“Raygun Gothic Rocketship” — a striking 40-foot, 8-ton sculpture — is scheduled to be installed along San Francisco’s waterfront in August.

The re-creation of early 20th-century science-fiction fantasies was installed in San Mateo this year for the Maker Faire.

The public art installation is planned to remain in place for 14 months near Mission Street at Pier 14, the former site of the similarly striking sculpture “Crouching Spider.”

The site has been devoid of a major public art piece since artist Louise Bourgeois’ 10-foot bronze arachnid was removed in April 2009. It had crouched creepily in place at the location for 17 months.

The new installation is the work of dozens of Bay Area artists collaborating as Five Ton Crane.

“The Raygun Gothic Rocketship is a rococo retro-futurist future-rustic vernacular between yesterday’s tomorrow and the future that never was,” the group wrote on the project’s website. “A critical kitsch somewhere between The Moons of Mongo & Manga Nouveau.”

Sean Orlando, one of three lead artists who worked on the sculpture, said the piece was inspired by 1930s and ’40s science fiction.

“We modeled the spaceship as if it was built in 1944,” Orlando said. “Back then, the human race was optimistic about traveling in space and living in space. We wanted to try to capture that.”

The artists plan to weatherproof the sculpture before it’s put into place to withstand more than a year of bombardment by sun and salty air, according to Orlando.

“We have to modify it, weatherproof it and make sure everything is water-tight,” he said.

The San Francisco-based Black Rock Arts Foundation plans to spend nearly $50,000 to install, maintain and remove the sculpture, Port of San Francisco documents show.

The Port plans to contribute $15,000 and pay $185 a month in electricity bills needed to illuminate the unusual object.

NOTE: Installation is pending approval from the Port Project Review Meeting scheduled for June 8th, 2010