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Ongoing Projects

Intersection-San Diego is currently working on project to build Intersection Portals between San Diego, Florida and Cuba and between San Diego and Tijuana. If you are interesting in being involved in any of these projects, please contact us.

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San Diego Gallery Stroll

San Diego, February, 2006

In February, Intersection-San Diego installed Intersection Portals connecting two galleries in downtown San Diego for an all day art event. Some pictures are here.

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The All-Seeing Eye

Burning Man, August 2005

In collaboration with a highly motivated team of artists from San Diego, we created a magical All-Seeing Eye in the heart of center camp to celebrate this year's Burning Man theme of "Psyche"(link). On the outside, the All-Seeing Eye appeared as a huge, but otherwise anatomically correct, eye. When participants entered its dark red interior and looked out through the Eye's magic lens they saw far away to another strange and fantastical location... the FurGloo.

The Intersection Project teamed up with an outstanding group of artists from Orange County, California to bring you the FurGloo...

Wandering the circle road around Center Camp, participants would come upon the entrance to a mysterious sealed dome. Inside, they found themselves in a fur-filled igloo, a surrealistically fuzzy world of fun and madness beyond the wildest imagination. Cooled during the day and heated at night, the FurGloo provided a haven where partying travelers could and interact with visitors far away in the the All Seeing Eye.

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San Diego Decompression - October 2004 (photos)

In October the Intersection Project was invited to San Diego by Jones and Neil of the San Diego Burning Man group to set up an Intersection at the San Diego group's post-Burning Man Decompression party, Fuego de los Muertos (link)

Neil aka Dr. Random did a fantastic job of designing a setup that fit beautifully into the high desert oak forest where the Decompression party was held. Instead of the single video link that we had at Burning Man, Neil envisioned a Space Bar at the center of the event that contained video portals to both end of the party. The Space Bar was a beautiful, silver colored half-moon shaped swooping bar that Neil had dumpster dived from the back of an industrial display company just a few hours before it was to be destroyed.

We installed the Space Bar under an ancient oak tree near the main camping area. Partygoers at Space Bar could interact with people at both ends of the party via two, bi-directional video portals. One portal was installed by the Fahrenheit 451 bar in the Mystic Art Grove and the other was on top of Dr. Random's giant red Art Car RV known as the 'Hedon. Also on top of the 'Hedon, another artist named Ben had installed a peanut butter tasting bar with Ritz crackers and some 40 different kinds of peanut butter.

Dr. Random outfitted the Space Bar with an electronic drink dispensing system serving his famous Quasar juice. The drink dispenser was wired to another one of the portals and to get a drink, people in the Space Bar had to convince someone at the other end of the video link to push a big red industrial button.

The party went off fantastically and the Intersection portals were a big hit. People had a great time interacting with people at the other locations. It was also a treat to collaborate with Neil and we are looking forward to working on more projects together in the future.

Credits: Special thanks go most of all to Jones and Neil for hosting the Intersection in San Diego. Big thanks also to Greg for donating the DV cameras for the portals, Ben for the Peanut Butter bar and Bill Leslie (link) for the amazing lights that added such a great flair to the Space Bar and the Mystic Art Grove. A big thanks also goes to all the great folks that took care of me and fed me when I showed up in San Diego with nothing but a sleeping bag, a few costumes and 150 pounds of electronics gear. And finally, thanks to all the participants who had so much fun and made the installation such a success.

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Burning Man, August 2004 (photos)

Concept:
American living rooms are usually arranged around the television. Although we gather in our homes to communicate and interact with our friends, our attention is physically directed to the television at the center of the room. It is ironic that we so often get together to watch Reality shows on TV, somehow seeking in others' television-tracked lives some sense of connection or community.

At Burning Man we will be creating two small living rooms, each with an old reclining chair or couch, a coffee table, lamp and an old television. The living rooms will be located at disparate regions of the playa. The video-feed from a small camera on each of the televisions will be displayed on the TV in the other living room. Rather than seeing artificially produced lives on their televisions, the people in each living room will see just another living room with regular people with whom they can communicate. A primary goal of this project is to get people to think about how social interaction is so often mediated through our television and the physical design of our spaces. We would also like people to have the experience of interacting and participating in a situation in which they are normally passive.

Funding:
Many thanks to the Black Rock Arts Foundation (link) for fully funding this project.

Implementation:
With the financial support of the Black Rock Arts Foundation and the hard work of many people, the Burning Man Intersection Project was a great success. We would particularly like to thank the staff of the Black Rock Arts Foundation for their enthusiastic support and the hard working anthropologists of the Mind Shaft Society (link) for all of their help on the playa. We would also like to thank Kathi Kuntz and Stephanie Earls for their patience and tireless work helping to design and build the project. Stay tuned for more info and pictures of the installation.

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Educational Work

Experiential Education With Realms of Inquiry, Salt Lake City, Utah

In the fall of 2004 we began collaboration with students at Realms of Inquiry, an alternative school in Salt Lake City. As part of their "new technologies" class, we worked on laying the groundwork to set up Intersections between schools around the world.

If you are interested in finding out more about this part of the project, getting your school involved or in helping to develop curricula that incorporate video interaction between classrooms, please contact us (link).