This proposal was prepared for BM14 as a feasibility survey. Good concept, but difficult to execute from across the nation. Maybe next year.
Burning Man Art Grants Submission Form
GENERAL INFORMATION
First Name Marc
Last Name Wilson
Have you been to Burning Man?
Yes
Which years have you been to Burning Man?
1998-2007, 2010 (11 times)
Artwork Title
The Musical Chairs Project
Budget Grand Total USD $12,000
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Philosophical Statement
We
are proposing to stage the largest, Guinness-World-Record-setting game of musical chairs ever played,
incorporating at least 10,000 participants. It’s our feeling that this concept is
kindred to the soul of Burning Man itself: ephemeral, massively participatory, and
absurd. It’s our intention that this will be on a short list of things every citizen
of Black Rock City is going to remember from the 2014 event.
Physical Description
As
Friday afternoon grows late and the heat declines, PA systems in the camps
along Esplanade broadcast an
announcement most of the town has known to expect. They’d read about this in
the JRS. They were told about it at the Greeters’ Station, saw it in the
What/Where/When, and have heard it among the announcements all week on BMIR. A
lot of people have already brought chairs from their camps to watch Critical
Tits. Others come out with chairs in hand now.
In
rows on the playa just beyond Esplanade, thousands of participants set down
their chairs under the coordination of at least ten volunteers per block. (The
volunteers, identifiable by Musical Chair Project t-shirts, will have
unamplified megaphones, and be in communication with game headquarters using by
one walkie talkie per block). The game will proceed in multitudes of groupings
of ten chairs, leaving all major roadways open to the man, and situated to
avoid all playa art.
When
volunteers on each block have reported to the game director at BMIR (or other
BRC radio station) that the participants are in place and a headcount is complete,
the game begins. Music is performed live in the station by Postmodern Jukebox,
a New York-based jazz combo specializing in old-style covers of current pop
songs (Youtube hits well into the millions – see http://www.postmodernjukebox.com/).
At
the end of each game round, every block of 10 chairs loses one chair. One
important logistical detail is that the losing player in each round will take
his or her own chair back from the game at that point.
After
seven game rounds, a recombining occurs, where volunteers help each group of three
surviving players bring their chairs ten or twenty yards closer to the Man, and
place them into new 10-chair groupings. By the end of three of these
seven-round sets, the game will be reduced to fewer than 300 in all, collected
in a manageable game near the Man. Large art cars have been following the game as
it spatially contracts, and are broadcasting the radio instructions from their
sound systems (only as augmented by on-site speakers if necessary).
After
a final set of seven rounds, a winner is found (and gifted an appropriate,
as-yet-undetermined prize).
The entire process is expected to last between three and four hours (Note that the current Guinness-World-Record holding musical chairs game, conducted at the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore in 1989, comprised 8,238 participants and lasted three and a half hours. However, the scheme of aggressive chair subtractions described above is intended to help things move as briskly as possible.
The entire process is expected to last between three and four hours (Note that the current Guinness-World-Record holding musical chairs game, conducted at the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore in 1989, comprised 8,238 participants and lasted three and a half hours. However, the scheme of aggressive chair subtractions described above is intended to help things move as briskly as possible.
A
lot of organizational details will obviously be involved in this project. It will
bring together close to two hundred volunteers in all, and need the
participation of BMIR or another radio station, theme camps and art cars with
large sound systems, and detailed coordination with the Black Rock Rangers.
Volunteer training will take place pre-playa as well as shortly before the
game, covering everything from the geometrical scheme of the game to plans for
managing drunk or disorderly participants. Among the volunteers there will also
be an fixed “chain of command” for unambiguous judging of game results, and
quick transition through the game’s many stages.
Along
with the pre-game training session, a sweep of the playa will be made off of esplanade
to plant small wire flags, guiding the later placement of chairs. At the game
headquarters, which will temporarily be established at BMIR or other BRC radio
station, a sound engineer will be needed in addition to a game emcee, the band,
and a handful of other staff needed to receive and coordinate walkie-talkie
communications from the playa. An official Guinness judge will also be on hand.
BUDGET
Item
|
Quantity
|
Est. Cost
|
T-shirts
|
200
|
$3000
|
Walkie-Talkies
|
20
|
$700
|
Megaphones
|
200
|
$300
|
Art Chairs
|
16
|
$2000
|
Transportation
|
--
|
$1000
|
Volunteer recognition
|
--
|
$2000
|
Guinness representative fee &
travel
|
--
|
$3000*
|
Total
|
$12,000
|
Burning Man partially funds art projects. Where do you plan to gather
completion funds?
This
project plan is being developed with as much reliance as possible on gifting,
cooperation, and resource sharing, to keep the budget low. For whatever
remains, Kickstarter!
To
be successful, this project will need a great deal of publicity within the Burning
Man community, and a kickstarter campaign could actually prove to be a useful
vehicle to spread the word.
Urban planning for art, post-playa
N/A
Describe changes to the piece needed to make its placement possible
N/A
Sound Component
Game
instructions and music should be disseminated over BMIR, or other on-playa
radio station. Speakers will of course be needed to relay the broadcast to game
participants. But the use of speakers/generators brought to BRC for the
dedicated purpose of this project will be
avoided as creatively as possible.
In
the game’s first stages, we will seek to reach out to Esplanade theme camps
well before the event to enlist their cooperating in tuning their sound systems
to BMIR during The game. Participants will also be encouraged to bring boom
boxes to the game along with their chairs (everything helps). As the game
proceeds to mid-playa, and at the endgame near the Man, the participation of
sound-system-equipped art cars will be enlisted to help relay the radio feed.
How will you illuminate your artwork?
We
would like to create 16 “art chairs” and place them near a lamplighter post
ata corner of each Esplanade
intersection during the week. The chairs’ purpose would be to advertise the
game during the week, and to be eye-catching enough to be an attractive part of
the endgame at the Man
Since
these art chairs would be the only truly physical element of the project,
they’re all that would need illumination. But they should be set near lamplighter
posts in order to cover for this.
Safety
The
risks of the game should be low, but our emceeing messages will gently but
persistently remind participants that the game’s for fun – nobody wants to
break someone else’s chair, after all – so please don’t play rough. If any
conflict does break out – or in the unlikely event of an injury (perhaps an
ankle sprain) – volunteers will be in constant walkie-talkie contact with game
headquarters, to relay a message on to the appropriate BRC authority.
Interactivity
This
participatory art event will directly include a substantial percentage of the
town’s citizenry – and will also require cooperation from BMIR, Esplanade theme
camps, and art car proprietors. This art event is literally nothing *but* the
interaction of its participants
Dimensions (height/length/width, in feet)
Beginning
with the circumference of the Esplanade, and contracting over the course of one
to two hours into a crowd gathered at the Man.
Materials
16
art chairs, 20 walkie-talkies, 200 t-shirts, and 200 unamplified/”toy”
megaphones
PROJECT PLAN AND BUILD SCHEDULE
Project Plan Upload
Start Build Date (if awarded a grant)
Outreach period, communicating with
BRC departments, theme camps, DMV: March – July
Volunteer gathering(s), August
Do you have adequate crew identified?
(Will need to list the “leadership
team” of this project, since the grant application isn’t supposed to ask for
tickets as part of the budget, but a determination whether to hand over a few
tickets with the grant will be made based on the count of our “leadership
team”.)
Support Crew, list roles and skills needed
(Will start slotting in these names
before submitting application this weekend. Marc Wilson, Ariela Morgenstern,
Elisabeth Millican, Philip T. Nails, Adam Kubota, and…?)
Pre-Playa construction schedule (Stage#, Start, End, Note)
On-Playa construction schedule (Stage#, Start, End, Note)
·
Placement
of art chairs, pre-event
·
Volunteer
meetings, probably one early in the week – Tuesday night – and another Thursday
·
Flag
placement, day of event
·
Game
from… approximately 6-9pm?
Transportation to Playa
Will need a truck for the art chairs.
Or take the concept of art chairs out of the project
LEAVE NO TRACE PLANNING
LNT plan
Chairs
will be brought to the game and taken away by participants. There is ample
opportunity for confusion with so many chairs being brought out to the playa
(the mass misplacement of bicycles during the Temple Burn in years past comes
to mind). But one of the rules our volunteers and the game emcee will be most
clear about, is that when a person loses a round of the game, he or she must
take back his or her own chair. That is to say – at the beginning of a game
round, one chair is naturally taken away before the music cue starts. At the
end of the round, the losing player probably won’t happen to be the owner of
the chair that had already been removed. So, he or she will need to trade that
chair with one of the other players in order to get back the chair they brought
to the game.
ARTWORK UTILIZING FIRE
N/A
Does your proposed artwork utilize pyrotechnics?
No
--Prepared February 2014; not submitted.
***
SUBMITTED TO GUINNESS:
Claim Title: Largest game of musical chairs - single venue
Country: United States
City/Town/Village: Black Rock City
Date of attempt:
Record Details: I am coordinating a game of musical
chairs comprising a minimum of 10,000 participants at this year's Burning Man
festival in Nevada (Aug. 25 - Sep. 1). We are assembling a team of at least 200
volunteers to position all game participants and collect a head count.
Instructions and musical cues for the game will be broadcast live over one of
the temporary radio stations which is in operation during the festival, and
relayed throughout the game by audio speakers. Participants in the game will
voluntarily appear from among attendees of Burning Man, in response to
extensive promotion of this event, and will supply their own chairs. The reason
for this project is just that it seems like something that could and should go
on at Burning Man - also, the pool of 70,000 Burning Man attendees we will have
to draw on makes the previous record breakable (8,238 set in 1989 in China).
Media: Media will include extensive video and photographic documentation at
the event to be edited later and shared online.
* Estimated.
Currently reaching out to Guinness for more information on their fees and
requirements.
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