Dino Galaxy

When we put together Starfield Galaxy for Lucidity Festival 2014, I noticed that the Starfield lasers we used etched out  the shape of a parked white SUV in the most interesting way. It looked as though it was made of nothing but slowly moving dots of green light. I thought I’d like to capitalize on this effect for the next Lucidity Festival. The theme was Kindred Quest: A looking back at where we come from. To me that meant “Evolution” and the idea that we are related to every living thing on our planet. So why not make Dinosaurs – three big ones and cpver them with lasers!

Architect Justin Harmon and myself put our heads together to devise the best and quickest way to create them. We settled on oversized versions of the little, wooden dinosaurs we all constructed as kids; the kind that slot themselves together. Originally, I wanted to use left over coroplast, a durable but thin type of plastic sheeting, but Justin assured me that they’d be too flimsy and proportionally wrong. Instead, we selected 2 inch thick, honeycomb cardboard.

Honeycomb cardboard is a strange material. It’s really nothing more than paper and glue made into big sheets. This created some interesting problems, such as how will it support itself and how do we keep it from blowing to pieces in the wind? With technical knowledge from Ross Kirk and Kym Cochran and help from Bryan Snyder and Rob Grant, we cut out and made all three: an allosaurus, Fluffy, who was so tall you could walk under his pelvis, Pebbles, the Styracasaurus, a triceratops lookalike, and Bambi, the baby bronto.

Assembling Bambi the Bronto – Photo by Jonathan Smith

Under the steady hand of rigger Chris Berg, we suspended them by fishing line from three tall trees at the festival ground then aimed a box full of lasers at them, courtesy of Bruce Beeley of Lasersandlights.com. Wow! It was one of those projects that, when it gets stuck in your head, you have to make it just so you can see it.

Bambi the Bronto – Photo by Jonathan Smith

Pebbles the Styracasaurus – Photo by Jonathan Smith

Fluffikins the Allosaurus – Photo by Jonathan Smith

Fluffikins at night – Photo by Jonathan Smith