Leonardo

Beaming ManAuthor(s): Russell WilcoxSource: Leonardo, Vol. 36, No. 5 (2003), p. 368Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577517 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 13:13

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The MIT Press and Leonardo are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toLeonardo.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:13:16 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BEAMING MAN Russell Wilcox, 190 El Cerrito Plaza #131, El Cerrito, CA 94530, U.S.A. E-mail: <rwilcox@jps.net>.

Received 20 April 2001.

Beaming Man (Fig. 20 and Color Plate A No. 2), a laser installation at Burning Man 2000, was the largest human fig- ure ever created. England's Cerne Abbas Giant is 180 ft tall and the Chilean Giant of Atacama, 393; Beam-

ing Man was 4,000 ft long and 2,000 ft wide, made of laser beams suspended 30 ft over the desert floor. To create him, we used three lasers, ten 30-ft antenna towers and an array of laser

optics and mechanical hardware. The human figure with his arms

raised above his head was a linear form of the Burning Man logo. The lasers formed a body within which other artworks were organs. The "Man" con-

cept was originated by Larry Harvey and city architect Rod Garrett, and I realized it while maintaining their aesthetic quality and content. I had built a 25-ft laser installation at Burning

Man 1999 called the Tetrahedron, where I developed the technical and artistic

approach that informed Beaming Man. Laser beams are an ideal medium for

large artworks since they create lines of

light that can be made arbitrarily long, limited only by the diameter of the beam and the quality of the optical components. Light beams have an ethereal quality-they are at once

perfectly straight and stable yet intangi- ble and transparent. While laser shows at the event scanned their beams across the sky, the Beaming Man lasers defined

stationary lines while quietly adding a touch of spacey surreality to the area around them.

Three solid-state green lasers (two 5- Watt and one 3-Watt) and optics assem- blies on the ground emitted beams that were sent up to the top of three "source towers." Mirrors at the tops of these towers directed some of the beams to

"target towers" 2,000 ft away, where

they were stopped by 4-ft-square white

panels. Other beams hit secondary mirrors on distant towers before being directed to a target. Aligning the beams to these widely separated mirrors and

targets required very stable structures, precision adjustments of the mirrors as well as special procedures that had to be developed during installation.

We hoped that some people would

fully explore the figure on foot or by vehicle, since this was the only way its true shape could be appreciated from the ground. This appreciation exercise

emphasized the importance of memory in imparting a sense of scale. Due to a laser beam's ethereality, it is impossible to judge one's distance from it, making estimation of Beaming Man's size delight- fully difficult. Some participants enjoyed the transformation of space wrought by this phenomenon and would continu-

ously look upward while riding bicycles under the beams. Near the Burning Man were two laser towers that glowed green from the ascending beams, adding com-

plementary forms and colors to the area.

Beaming Man showed that an other- wise delicate and precise laser installa- tion could withstand the rigors of the Black Rock City environment and that the medium of stationary laser beams can be both impressive and expressive, and worthy of continued exploration.

Fig. 20. Russell Wilcox, Beaming Man as if viewed from 600-ft altitude, computer graphic mock-up of laser installation, 2000. (? Russell Wilcox)

368 Artists' Statements

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:13:16 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions