Photos from Maker Faire setup

Here are some photos of giant sculptures being set up for Maker Faire, taking place this weekend in San Mateo. (Click on thumbnails for enlargement) Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Cpt. Tim

Umm. not really. The one is a tripod, the other is a spider. I don’t think anyone has a monopoly on either design.
Avram

Hey, Smonkey, some of us haven’t been to Burning Man and haven’t see these sculptures before.
Antinous

But we don’t live in his head, so we’re not real.
cha0tic

Hey Smonkey.

“Just because something is big and metal its not good art. Actually, usually that’s a dead givaway it sucks.”

You’re wrong. The biggest big thing made of metal that I ever saw was probably the Fourth Rail bridge. It was fucking good art (strictly it’s probably engineering rather than art, but that’s just an opinion) There was absolutely no suckage about it whatsoever.

The Angel of the North is pretty awesome and the Eiffel tower is quite neat too.
Takuan

just stay away from the ten legged image for it is Sacred
Antinous

We have a lot (like dozens) of giant junk metal sculptures here. There’s a guy who just makes them for fun. His family has about an acre in the Movie Colony and it’s covered with these things. At Christmas, they deck them with 30,000,000 strings of lights and turn it into an Addamsesque winter wonderland. Think junk metal Santa Claus playing macabre music on a flying organ in a sled drawn by reindeer with working headlights for faces.
palafox

those huge metal sculptures (all three of the pictures on the announce page) were actually built for a new-agey performance of “The Odyssey” at the Oakland Fire Arts Festival last summer. they were made by a artists working at The Crucible, a metalsmithing workshop accross the street from West Oakland BART station. It’s odd that the three featured photos for the Maker’s fair are of objects that were made for something else that my parents dragged me to.
clueless in brooklyn

That giant thing better have been made by Louise Bourgeois or it’s a knock off. http://beth.hohertz.org/miscpix/NationalGalleryOfCanada002-MamanByLouiseBourgeois-Sept23.jpg
smonkey

Oh yay!

More ways to show the world how crap the art is at burningman.

Don’t get me wrong, I friggin’ love burningman, but things like those giant metal people do _NOT_ deserve to be shown over and over again.

This is one way Make magazine, maker faire and burningman…oh burningman… are missing something. Just because something is big and metal its not good art. Actually, usually that’s a dead givaway it sucks.
Kennric

Very Burning Man-esque. I assume there is a lot of overlap?

Nice work. Strange not to see the giant metal sculptures spouting flame.
Cpt. Tim

that martian tripod looking thing was sitting outside my friends apt. in oakland for a few weeks.
isis

Whether or not you like the pieces in the pictures, its good to have correct information.
To that end:

The giant metal figures were part of a large scale installation, Crude Awakening, which was at Burning Man 07. The makers of those are Karen Cusolito and Dan Das Mann, and a crew of some 100+ people.
Four of them were loaned to the Crucible for their fire arts festival last summer. Although the Crucible is wonderful, Dan and Karen don’t work for them- they have their own giant warehouse. 3 of the 8 figures will are at Maker Faire this weekend- one will be running flame effects.

The tripod thing is a piece by Michael Christian, which made its debut in Burning Man 06, and has appeared at several events since then.

-full disclosure: I worked on the Crude Awakening piece, and I love giant (and small, medium and large) metal art. But I think everyone is entitled to not like things.