Collective takes interactive art to Burning Man

Collective takes interactive art to Burning Man. An artist rendering of the Heart Machine, a massive functional interactive sculpture created by a group of Toronto artists, which will be set up in Nevada's Black Rock Desert for the Burning Man Festival. Staff photo/ERIN HATFIELD

She deals with multi-million dollar projects by day, but at night, for the past few months, she ventured to a warehouse near Dupont Street and Lansdowne Avenue where she and a collective of somewhat closeted artists called Site3 worked away at a massive interactive art project.

Irving, who is in her 30s and lives in Parkdale, is the concept artist behind The Heart Machine, a community art project currently found in Nevada at this year's famed Burning Man Project, which is described as annual experiment dedicated to self-expression and self-reliance.

Inspired by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the classic silent film about workers and owners, The Heart Machine is a massive art piece 60-feet in diameter. In the middle is a "heart" - 10 by six-feet and four-feet tall. Sprouting out of the ground, 25-feet out in each direction are 14-foot tall arteries.

"The idea is that it is kind of buried in the ground, we don't know where it came from or how long it has been there, but it is this heart machine that we need to run the city," Irving said.

There are nerve sensors on the arteries that change colour when you touch them.

"You can imagine the arteries are flowing through the ground... and popping out of the ground and diving back in," Irving said.

When five people touch a nerve at the same time it sets off two 20-foot flames out of the sculpture.

"Then if 20 people get together and touch all the sensors, you can give the machine a heart attack," she said. "In that sense, all of the fire will start going around and around in a circle slowly then faster until it all explodes at once."

The artists who run this piece are called the "Order of the Machinists" and have to take care of this heart in order for it to continue running.

Irving and collaborators from Site3, an arts collective of about 20 people, are the "Order of the Machinists", 16 of whom are attending Burning Man.

"We will be dressed up like the old Fritz Lang Metropolis workers with blue coveralls and look like we are part of making the machine work," Irving said.

Site3 is made up of furniture makers, an architect, engineer, management consultant, musician, a professor from the Ontario College of Art and Design and students.

"This is a community project, so lots of people came in with different ideas," Irving said. "With an art piece, often there is this compulsion to be protective of it, so I have worked really hard to bring people's ideas into it."

Irving said she has been attending Burning Man for about 10 years and had helped out with other art projects, but had always been driven to do her own project.

She likens the festival to jumping into a canvas, like Alice in Wonderland, and becoming part of living art.

Irving made the application to Burning Man and was gifted an art grant of about $6,800 to purchase all the propane needed to run the heart machine while they are at Burning Man, and also the logistical support they needed to dig the trenches in the desert needed to set up the art. The Heart Machine is Ontario's first official project to receive honorarium art status from Burning Man, according to Irving.

The cost of this project is in the area of $22,000, on top of the grant. It cost about $6,000 to ship the massive art installment. The group is fundraising to cover most of the cost and they have set up a PayPal account on the website http://site3.ca

"Burning Man is an experience you can't really find outside of the desert," Irving said. "Everything is highly interactive, you are encouraged to touch things and participate."

The Site3 group was creative with materials and sourced out off cuts, cast offs from construction sites and worked out distributor access to discounts. It's both mechanical and organic in its composition using all manner of materials, from burlap to metal and culvert piping.

2010 Burning Man festival runs from Aug. 30 until Sept. 6 in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.

Irving said after this project is complete, she is going to start working on bringing a free three-day art festival to Toronto Island.

"We want to take a lot of the really good things about Burning Man and bring it to Toronto," she said.

She is working with the people who put on the Figment Project on Governors Island in New York Harbor.

"Unlike Nuit Blanch or other festivals, we don't want any corporate sponsorship," she said. "And we want to encourage local artists to bring something out."

The aim to do a small version next summer, after holding a meeting to drum up interest and volunteers.