Genie Bottle Update 2

The Genie Bottle, a Burning Man Honorarium Art Project is progressing. Marty Kenny designed all of the cutouts to be cut into the wood, and Paul Brown inserted them into this Solidworks rendering. If you click on the photo, you can see we also added some of our favorite math equations to be cut out of the wood. In the spirit of Arabesque art, we wanted to add some "calligraphy" and in the spirit of genie magic, what's more magical than beautiful mathematics? The math IS the genie!

Using Paul's computer model, Christy Burback and I made a little scale model out of card stock and tape.  It's about 1/18 of actual size. We cut out and traced the pieces using the specs from Paul Brown's design.  Here you can see Christy with her arm up inside the bottle.

While I am the lead artist on the Genie Bottle, for most of the tasks for designing the Genie Bottle, I've delegated them to other crew members.  I've been leading the designers and engineers towards a particular aesthetic for the overall piece, but like the cutouts for the wood and the lighting, other member of Struggletent are leading the efforts to design and build individual components.  The finished Genie Bottle and its burn will truly be the work of a group of people, my campmates of Struggletent.

The one component I'm designing are the tassels, although I won't build them all myself.  Fortunately, we have lots of helping hands.    My vision is to have a set of 10 large tassels and cording to hang inside the bottle for decoration.  This is my drawing for how I want them to look, more or less.  I haven't decided what color to paint the finials yet.

This is some of the wool we will be using.  This is about a pound of wool.  You can also see the wooden finial that Mike Ryan made for me.  It's got a hole drilled in the center, meaning it's a giant bead. Painted wooden finials like this will top each tassel, effectively turning them each into a big bushy mop with a handle.

Making these tassels requires dying a lot of wool, over 7 pounds of soft springy Merino. (In two dye pots, I can dye 3/4 of a pound at a time; so it's taking me days and days to dye it all!)  This is what the purple wool looks like in the dye pot before the dye has soaked in.

Finial Master Mike Ryan also did a practice burn of the bottle last week at a camp out.  You can watch the video of the burn here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qr6W50dggg
A structure like this will fit inside of the Genie Bottle and will be built inside of it on burn night, tentatively scheduled for Friday at Midnight.  "It is designed to be an anaerobic burn and has minimal oxygen, That's how the smoke is developed. Once a heat source reached a stoichometric point, it ignited."  That's why it shoots fire out the top.

While we're on Burning Man art, I thought I'd share some updates about Bat Country, our previous Burning Man Honorarium Art from 2008, 2009, and 2013.  First, we're published in The Washington Post this week in a slide show titled, "A New Way to Look at Math."  We're #7.

I also got some really nice photos from photographer George Post of Bat Country from 2013.

Here you can see the whole crew at the top as I hold up the very last ball to be attached at the apex.  THIS was a very exciting moment for me and the whole Struggletent crew, and I'm so pleased that George sent me a photo to commemorate it.

And here's a really stunning photo of Bat County and the Temple of Wholiness.

Thanks George Post.  And thank you for looking.
Here you can read Genie Bottle: Update 3.  Here you can see photos of the finished Genie Bottle at Burning Man.

Bat Country in the Press

Yesterday, was a very good day.  You see, yesterday, my name and my art were published in The Guardian Online Newspaper.  Apparently, the newspaper's online edition is the third most widely read in the world.  Anyway, Alex Bellos writes a column called Alex's Adventures in Numberland, where he wrote about a new book called, 50 Visions of Mathematics, and my art is one of the 50 photos in that book.  This book is published by Oxford University Press, which is the largest university press in the world, and the second-oldest.

The art of mine they published is Bat Country, the Sierpinski tetrahedron jungle gym that I created with Paul Brown and our Struggletent crew with help from Burning Man.  A big photo of Bat Country is in that book.  What's more, we're even on the cover!

Yup, my name and my Playa art are on The Gaurdian website, and on the cover of a OUP math book!

Yesterday was a very good day.

Math Anxiety Camp: An emotional art piece

For the last few years, I have been attending a festival in the middle of the Nevada desert called the Burning Man Art Festival, where tens of thousands of artists and revelers join together each summer to celebrate art while camping in some of the harshest conditions in the US.  One of the peculiar features of Burning Man is that groups of people band together into "theme camps" which offer free gifts in the form of art, music, food, drinks, experiences, and other life pleasures and fancies to almost anybody who stops by.  Many of the gifts come with the touch of a prankster, designed to shock and amuse. Last year, we created the idea of Math Anxiety Camp, where we would give people math problems in an attempt to provoke math anxiety.  Burning Man has a culture of gift giving, and we joked, "Math anxiety: It's our gift."

because math matters

Great art provokes emotions.  This is a reason why music is so popular and powerful.  Music provokes intense emotions in listeners.  Have you ever cried to a love song? I have.  Now, I have never seen a piece of artwork that was designed specifically to provoke math anxiety.  So I created Math Anxiety Camp with the help of my camp mates.  For Burning Man 2013, we wrote a short book of 38 math problems, and I designed a sticker so we could hand out awards to those who achieved math anxiety.

Math Anxiety Camp Achievement Award

My campmates and I drilled unsuspecting Burning Man attendees (i.e., burners) with our math problems in the hopes of provoking the emotion of math anxiety for the sake of art.  We did all of the things you're not supposed to do as a good math teacher, like telling our examinees, "You should already know this," "You should have learned this last year," and "Work faster! Faster, faster, FASTER!"  When participants got wrong answers, we made loud buzzer noises.  The purpose was not to focus on the math, but to focus on experiencing and emphasizing the emotion of math anxiety.

Those who are tardy don't get a fruit cup (Thank you Kimberly Laabs)

Vi Hart and I wrote the book of the math problems together with several features in mind.

Vi and me sitting on Bat Country

All of our math problems were designed to be actual math problems that have at least one right answer (some have more).  Topics included arithmetic, combinatorics, geometry, calculus, and logic. Problems ranged in difficulty from trivially easy (e.g., "Name a number that is 3.") to tricky (e.g., "Name a triangle with two right angles.") but all were chosen to be simple enough that most of our subjects would at least understand the question, even if they couldn't solve the problem.   Some problems were designed to be funny.  We included several classic, well studied math problems that are known to confuse people.  Most of the problems have multiple choice answers, and the distracters (incorrect wrong answers) were designed to be funny or deliberately confusing or deceiving.  We included lots of "All of the above" and "None of the above" options because of their cringe value. We added scenarios relevant to the art festival, and where the characters were in mortal danger.

My campmates eagerly distributed math problems, books, and awards throughout the festival.  I was pleasantly surprised at how many people engaged in the project.  We handed out nearly 500 achievement award stickers and almost 20 math books to specific people who wanted to own a copy.  I listened to and heard about several people who read the entire book, thoroughly musing over each the 38 problems.  Some were math teachers, married to math teachers, physicists, geologists, engineers, and others who just enjoy the satisfaction of solving a good math problem.  Here is a PDF copy of the 2013 Math Anxiety Math Book if you'd like to take a look.  This version is edited to make it more suitable for a general audience.

Ethan Port brought a whole suitcase of math books, and Paul McGlaughlin painted us a sign for the front of our camp so that passers by would know we were there and what we had to offer.  As one young man biked past, we overheard, "Math Anxiety Camp!  That's TERRIFYING!"  So of course, we invited him in to share our problems and win an achievement award.

Camp Sign
Photo by Daniel Thornton

When people asked us about our sign, they often confused us with "Math Camp at BRC", a different theme camp that touts themselves as "a safe place for mathematics." We were the opposite: an unsafe place for mathematics.  We were there to give problems, not solve them. "Our problems are your problems," and, "We have so many problems, we'll give you some!"  I saw people tense up instantly when they heard these statements.  Although we gave them lots of problems to solve, and many people successfully solved them, my favorite part always was watching their anxiety transition into laughter when they were presented with anxiety achievement awards.

Paul painted half of the sign with chalkboard paint so we could write a new problem each day. We left chalk by the board, and many of the problems were solved by the next morning.

Question of the Day
Photo by Daniel Thornton

In addition to working independently, Math Anxiety Camp also joined forces with Camp UFOm and the Civil Defense Camp.  UFOm provided an "interblastive foam experience" where participants performed foam art.  UFOm was so popular, that the Civil Defense crew was enlisted to conduct drills on the revelers in an attempt to slow down the line of entry into UFOm and deter all but the most dedicated from entering. 

Civil Defense Bunker, Tent and Ropes Course

Burners were subjected to drills including physical exams such as a rope course, running laps, push-ups, jumping jacks, rolling in the dust, and games of duck-duck-goose.  There were also oral exams on outdated American civil defense literature from the 1940s, and people were drilled with math problems from the Math Anxiety Camp Math Book.

Civil Defense Drills: Photo by Ben Harper

A little background on the Math Anxiety Camp project:  I am a former teacher of mathematics, and the idea of provoking math anxiety on purpose is simply ridiculous to me.  I spent many years of my life trying just about anything to minimize, or at least reduce math anxiety in my students because students who are too anxious don't perform well in school.  Math anxiety makes people hate math and avoid it.  Wanting people to love math and engage, I read many papers on math anxiety, attended lectures on the subject, wrote worksheets and led discussions in my classrooms that were designed to reduce my students' anxiety.  It seemed to be an ever-present problem in my classrooms of college students, many of whom had learned to fear math from a very young age, typically spawned from negative interaction with their teachers and parents.  I was often surprised at how quickly some of my students were to state their disdain for mathematics publicly, even though they were studying for professions that would require them to do mathematics regularly, like engineering or teaching children.

My experiences as a math teacher showed me just how common math anxiety really is and how intensely some people suffer from it.  Some people will go to great lengths to avoid math at all costs just to avoid the anxiety that goes with it, and this makes me sad.  But outside of the context of teaching, it seems that math anxiety is an emotion that is rarely discussed in depth, especially in the art world.  Creating math anxiety in a novel context devoid of high-stakes consequences seemed like a good way, a safe way for people to confront their negative emotions about math.

Math has been a theme for me and my camp mates already at Burning Man.  This year, Math Anxiety Camp was also an art support theme camp, building Bat Country, a Sierpinski tetrahedron jungle gym.  Here you can see Bat Country this year on the night of the Man burn.

Bat Country
Photo by Daniel Thornton

 Here is Bat Country with the Rainbow Bridge art car.

Bat Country and the Rainbow Bridge

Significantly, we were not able to elicit math anxiety in all of our subjects.  Many participants easily and eagerly solved our math problems without anxiety.  It's not terribly surprising that burners were quick to engage in the idea of Math Anxiety Camp.  My sense is that burners are more mathematically literate than the average American population, which probably correlates with the maker attitude of the festival participants.  In addition to Math Camp at BRC, there is a thriving tradition of beautiful mathematical art at Burning Man.  My favorite returning piece this year is the honorarium art project Zonotopia and The Quasicrystalline Conjunction by Rob Bell

Zonotopia and The Quasicrystalline Conjunction

The mathematics behind these "pavilions" is polar rhombizonahedra, one of my all time favorite mathematical structures.  I've been watching this series of inhabitable structures evolve, changing from year to year, but still maintaining its same aesthetic and mathematical essense.  This portion below was the new addition to the set for 2013.  The panels have a lot more details than most of the older forms made in earlier years. Beautiful. 

My favorite new piece of mathematical art this year is the honorarium art project, The Penrose Triangle by Blake Courter and Blake Courtney. 

The Penrose Triangle

 This triangle looks very different from different perspectives.

The Penrose Triangle

Unfortunately, I missed a shot of the triangle in perfect perspective where all of the lines look straight, but this one is pretty close.

The Penrose Triangle

Fortunately, I climbed up to the top of this triangle and successfully climbed back down without killing myself. Burning Man always has a plethora of climbable objects, and I love to watch the acrobats and other "monkeys" climb and hang off these piece.  However, I rarely climb anything at Burning Man, which is a little ironic since I brought my own jungle gym (see Bat Country above).  Although I don't generally suffer from math anxiety, I do suffer from a fear of heights (or high anxiety), but I don't really want to talk about that emotion.

Pavel Curtis sent me this link.

Bat Country: A Sierpinski Tetrahedron Jungle Gym

The mathematical sculpture that we made 6 years ago, Bat Country, has been selected as one of the 2013 Burning Man Honorarium Art Projects!  This will be the third time we will have brought the full sculpture to Burning Man.  We are honored in being selected given the number of art grant submissions this year.  Thanks to all who have participated in building Bat Country.

Bat Country is 21’ tall six-sided tetrahedron built from 384 aluminum baseball bats and 130 twelve-inch softballs.  The bats form the structure’s edges; there is one softball at each vertex.

Each edge of the structure measures 26’ in distance.

The structure is designed to be and intended to be climbed upon; ½” threaded steel rod runs through the axis of each bat.  These rods bolt to steel joining plates at each vertex.  This provides structural stability and facilitate transportation and on-site assembly.

The total structure weighs about 2500 lbs.  We placed a blue LED behind each of the 130 softballs. 

Here you can see Bat Country at an art car party at night.

A propane fireball really lights it up.

Mathematically, Bat Country is an example of a third-generation Sierpinski tetrahedron. Waclaw Sierpinski was a 20th century Polish mathematician who pioneered the field of fractal geometry; one of the two-dimensional fractals he described was the Sierpinski triangle. His triangle was one of the first shapes understood to demonstrate self-similarity: the property that its shape at any level is the same as its shape at its largest level. The Sierpinski tetrahedron is a three-dimensional shape realizing the same concept – a tetrahedron is a pyramid with a triangular base.

Bat Country represents the idea of self similarity; the full-scale installation is an assembly of 64 small tetrahedrons. To understand the Sierpinski tetrahedron, consider one tetrahedron, made with six bats, one for each edge, and four balls, one at each corner. With four such tetrahedrons you can assemble a first-generation Sierpinski tetrahedron (requiring 6x4 = 24 bats). If you combine four first-generation tetrahedrons, you get a second-generation tetrahedron (requiring 24x4 = 96 bats). If you combine four of these in turn, you get a third-generation tetrahedron (requiring 96x4 = 384 bats).  This is Bat Country, a third-generation Sierpinski tetrahedron.

It has 1 jumbo tetrahedron, the whole sculpture.  It has 4 large tetrahedrons, with 4 bats on each edge.  It has 4^2 = 16 medium tetrahedrons with 2 bats on each edge.  It has 4^3 = 64 small tetrahedrons made from 6 bats.

In all, there are 1 + 4 + 16 + 64 =  85 tetrahedrons across the 4 sizes.

The negative space between each tetrahedron forms a regular octahedron with eight triangular faces. The largest octahedron, in the center of the sculpture, is about 10’ high. This space, large enough for several people to stand in, serves as an inhabitable ‘room’ inside Bat Country. Self-similarly, four smaller octahedrons, one at the center of each second-generation tetrahedron, are each about 5’ high; there are also sixteen small octahedrons, one inside each of the first-generation tetrahedrons.

So far, we have assembled the full structure three times: The first time was a test build in South San Francisco, and the other two times were at Burning Man 2008 and 2009.

We build it from the bottom up.  It takes a lot of wrenches and hands to work them because this sculpture goes together with a whole lot of bolts.  There is a bolt on both ends of each bat, and 8 more that join 2 steel connectors together where the balls are.  2 x 384 + 8 x 127 = 1784 bolts. 

First we build the bottom layer with 3^4 = 81 bats.  

Then we add another 81 bats to make 27 little tetrahedrons.

Eventually, we get nine first generation Seirpinski tetrahedrons...

... and three second generation Siepinski tetrahedrons.  Then, we erect a scaffold and build the top quadrant on top of the other three.

This is the hard part.

The last bit goes up quickly.

This is some of our campmates and crew. 

This is Bat Country on the night of the Burn in 2009.

In 2010, we brought a quarter of Bat Country to the Playa to pitch at our camp.  I made some shade panels for it like this, and I plan on making a few more this year.  The panels not only provide shade, but make it more visible from a distance.

This is Paul Brown.  He is Bat Country's engineer.

Paul is also my partner.  Here we are together, Paul and me.

 This is me building Bat Country.

Bat Country was originally modeled after my 3 inch tall, beaded Sierpinski tetrahedrons like these.

Thanks for looking!