Backstage

Sara had the idea of making a 'sperm pod' backstage. Each pod would produce 30 or so sperm of their pod's material (hay, cans, wrapped chicken wire, fabric, yarn, etc) and then the individual sperm would be used to create one large installation climbing up or swirling around or moving through the backstage area.

Poetry

What the Audience Brings:
A picture of themselves, their favorite line from a poem or song

Project:
We intend to make spiral of poles. We will tie string from pole to pole, creating the form of a shell like labyrinth in string. We will then clip pieces of fabric in a line along the ropes, creating an airy and light façade to the garden.

Audience Involvement:
The premise of the project is that the labyrinth starts out as translucent, white, light, airy, and blank. Audience members will write words, letters, or thoughts on the fabric and form sentences and interweaving narratives. Audience members would also be invited to include pictures, clippings – whatever they feel compelled to add to the labyrinth. By the end of the festival, the recently pristine shell will be filled with the voices and hands of the people who briefly inhabited it.

Materials:
1. Poles. Metal, or Wood
2. Rope
3. Clothespins
4. White Fabric
5. Scissors
6. Markers
7. Tools

Outer Orbit

What the Audience Brings:
Answer the Question: Is Pluto a planet?

Project:
We will build a galactic war zone, complete with ships, robots, specimen collectors, planets, and space armor. This pod was extremely successful last year and we plan to continue it and make it better.

Audience Participation:
The audience will be invited to create their own armor and characters and fight for survival in the galactic war zone. This can be as low tech as making a tin foil sword or as intense as building their own space army.

Materials:
1. Paint (Spray or)
2. Chicken Wire and Pallet Wrap for Planets
3. Rope
4. Garbage
5. Tin Foil
6. Interesting waste
7. Wood and tools

Mask Pod

Project:
This pod will be focused on making and wearing masks. In the week before the festival begins, pod artists will erect a circle of wide poles to hang masks on, build a large central plywood cubicle with 4 distinct faces, and make as many masks as possible to hang. During the concerts, the pod will become a mask making station.

Audience Participation:
People can make their own masks to wear or for the totem poles, take premade ones, or add to the giant central mask idol.

Materials:
1. Cardboard
2. Paint
3. Yarn
4. Glitter
5. Glue
6. Feathers
7. Fabric
6. Wood and Tools
7. Poles
8. Tables

Notes:
there is an iconic central figure that could be given specific valence (e.g. each face represents a carnal direction or basic element), if we have enough materials we should be able to make plenty an impact, the masks would be hemispherical or flat and cardboard based, probably held on by sewing elastic (maybe that should be added to the materials list), and hung on the poles by... nails? too dangerous? we could get hooks maybe...

Brain Pod

Project:
We want to build a giant brain into which a small group of people could enter. The outside would be a chicken wire frame covered with wrinkled sheets and signs or symbols (like a giant eyeball) indicating the different areas. On the inside, things get crazy! The ceiling and "walls" are covered in black fabric or trash bags onto which are painted neurons and synapses. Different color-coded pathways indicating different senses (i.e. how music is experienced) are made with blinking Christmas lights.



Audience Participation:
Participants can walk in and around the structure, experiencing both the grey outside and interactive inside. They will be able to "turn on" different pathways and learn in a very abstract way how the brain works. We'll pose a few questions on the outside, like "What does your brain look like?" or "What does Bonnaroo taste like?" and have people respond with any media they see fit on the white outside of the brain, so that by the end, what was once a white surface is covered with people's interpretations of their own minds.



Materials:
1. Structural posts
2. Chicken wire

3. Christmas lights

4. Garbage bags

5. Spray paint

6. White or grey sheets

Yarn Pod (updated)

Rationale:
Working with yarn in 2006 was successful for several reasons. It meets all the practical requirements of the project environment – it’s cheap, durable and infinitely pliable. It bonds to itself easily and accumulates quickly, and it’s striking when it does. But while the first attempt at this installation was a great discovery and succeeded in attracting and growing from crowd participation, we all agree it was only the first experiment with something that ultimately had much more potential. It wasn’t finished when we took it down.
Based on our observations the first time through, we want to redesign the project with a more controlled, better curated and even more dramatic result in mind. Last year the entire space just exploded at a certain point, and a lot of the more intricate work we’d done beforehand was swallowed whole in the process. We want to produce more prominent features to establish the space and preserve them throughout. We want to build a bigger, more structurally sound skeleton for the yarn to give the space more of a stable shape. We have new ideas for lighting effects at night.
Arriving this time with a group of working concepts already drawn up and a specific grasp of what we’ll be making we can pick up where we left off and take it miles further.

Working principles for 2007:
The work we do before the festival this year will follow a specific theme to establish the space. Each corner of the plot will include a representation of a different phase in a cycle: conception, civilization, Armageddon and natural reclamation. These focal points won’t be literal renderings as much as a clearly defined conceptual framework governing variation in technique from phase to phase. Each side of the plot between corners and the center will be left for crowd participation to fill the transition between regions.
Brief description of each phase:
• Conception – a narrative representation of in-utero biological growth.
• Civilization – A dense, organized build-up of structural and geometric concepts demonstrating ingenuity in design and architecture.
• Armageddon – Illustration of structural disintegration in the presence of excessive energy through increasingly chaotic and violent technique.
• Reclamation – Organic, floral growth emulating patterns that occur in nature.
Consideration will be given to appropriate color in each phase.

Beer Can City

What the Audience Brings:
Empty Cans

Project:
We will create a city out of beer cans. There will be ‘buildings’ of various size and structures. We will construct the town hall of our city, which will be the center of the skyline, before everyone arrives.

Audience Participation:
The audience will be encouraged to build their own structures. They can create buildings to stand in line with ours, or they could make cars, trucks, plane, or helicopters. We will have created the basic structure of the city, and they will populate it.

Materials:
1. Beer Cans
2. Glue/ Glue Gun

• time before map layed out in plan city grid, some scale of city, have put in place holding structures, varied can facades
• do some drawings

Hay, Hay, Haaaaaay!

Project:
We will create an environment that becomes completely submerged in hay. Building off last years experience, we will create giant alien hay snails, snakes, and amoebas that nest and overtake their pod.

Audience Participation:
The audience will be invited participate in hay games and make hay figures and creatures

Materials:
1. Hay
2. Wire
3. Wire Cutters
4. Rebar
5. Tools

Zoo Pod

What the Audience Brings:
Duct tape

Project:
We will make strange, hybrid, fantasy creatures out of scrap materials, cans, bottles, waste, and paint. We will make large creatures that the audience can interact with and move around. Some of the more dangerous creatures will be caged, while those with a more benevolent spirit will wander around. We will name them and post statistics about them.

Audience Interaction:
The audience will interact with the creatures we make and make creatures of their own to add to the menagerie of the Human Zoo.

Materials:
1. Fabric (very large peices)
2. Nails, glue guns, duct tape
3. Chicken wite, wire cutters
4. Wood and tools
5. large quantites of throw away items, cheap things

Jellyfish

Pod Overview:
Our group plans to bring the ocean to the fields of Bonnaroo. We will construct a canopy of billowing blue fabric that resembles the waves of the ocean surface. Once you dive below the fun begins! Bobbing along the ceiling are jellyfish made from plastic bags and yarn which are illuminated from within by LEDs. On the ocean floor, you will find a treasure chest glowing with gold pirate’s booty and a variety of ocean creatures. There will be an opportunity for people (maybe even Sting!) to place a message in a bottle. We aim to create a visually and mentally stimulating pod that will encourage festival goers to not only interact with it but also escape into it.

Pre-Festival Construction:
Materials:
Stakes (wood or PVC), 7-8 ft.
Rope
Fabric (sheets and tarp)
Water Bottles
Miscellaneous items for ocean floor
Spraypaint
Hot Glue
The canopy will be constructed before the festival begins. The entire structure will be a 20ft x 20ft square. The center stake will be 7 foot and the four outer stakes will be 6 foot. Using the auger we will drill holes to secure the stakes in the ground. Rope will be run from the center stake to the outer stakes and then crossed to create a spiderweb effect. This design will be used to support strips of fabric and tarp. The fabric will be draped so that it billows and moves with the wind. Empty water bottles will be strung and hung from the ceiling to create a permeable “water curtain” effect around the perimeter of the structure (this is not drawn in the diagram). The bottles will make the structure appear to be an enclosed box of water, with floating jellyfish suspended inside. The treasure chest, oversized bottle, and ocean creatures will be constructed from materials found at the Bonnaroo site or local stores.

Audience Participation:
Materials:
Plastic bags (grocery or garbage)
Water bottles
Yarn
Clear packing tape
Fishing line or string
LEDs (already ordered)
Paper
Pens/markers
Festival goers will be invited to use their plastic bags, and some provided by us, to create jellyfish. They will be decorated with yarn and ripped bags (which create surprisingly realistic looking tentacles) before being hung from the canopy using tape and string. A pod member will assist with adding an LED to give the jellies extra life. The other activity will be the “message in a bottle.” An oversized bottle with two large holes will allow participants to write a message and/or read those of others. And finally, festival goers can contribute their empty water bottles to fill up the “water” around the structure, giving it an overall fish-tank feel.

Fabric Pod

Spread the Fabric

What the Audience Brings:
Old rags and clothes

Project:
We plan to build wooden structural elements (stylized trees, archways, or just poles) and start to rip fabric up and tie it together, creating a maze of fabric that grows and changes shape and character as more pieces and elements are added.

Audience Involvement:
The success of the project is dependant on the audience involvement and excitement about it. They are called on to activate the space, add their personal fabric to it, and to tie more pieces into the overall structure that pulls the piece in new directions and changes the form of the preexisting ties. They are creating a maze of the fabric of their own lives and energizing the overall structure.

Materials:
1. Tools
2. Wood
3. Fabric

* maybe do all red, maybe do two different colors – pockets of solid color, pockets of quilt

Light Bright Pod

Light Bright

What the Audience Brings:
Empty Poland Spring Bottles (with caps)

Project:
We plan to have one large, obalisque like structure made from Poland Spring Bottles filled with water and colored die. This structure will be completed by the time the audience arrives. It will serve as a beacon and example – it will be lit from the inside and people would be able to hang out inside it.

Around the central structure we will have smaller, pyramid frames made from wood and chicken wire where people can make their own colored bottles and insert them into the framework, like a light bright.

Audience involvement:
People will be invited to mix their own colors and create their own mosaic patterns in the structure we provide

Materials:
1. Tools
2. Poland Spring Bottles
3. Water
4. Food Coloring
5. Wood
5. Chicken Wire
6. Hardcore Staple or Nail Gun


* walls and walkways to be audience participatory