About this project

UPDATE: While we are 100% funded, we appreciate any additional funding you can contribute toward our original goal of $8500. We also want to let you know a special turn of events that happened at our last harp work party: We have decided to dedicate the Portal to the memory of long-time burner, Tom Kennedy, whose brother is on our team and has been instrumental in the design of the wind harps. Tom Kennedy apparently is the guy who brought the first art car to the playa, and his brother is a long-time friend and collaborator of the Portal creators. He will be attending the burn for the first time this year, with his 16 year-old son, who is also helping us build the Portal. Obviously, dedicating the Portal to Tom is very meaningful to them, and we hope it will be to lots of other burners who knew Tom as well.
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The Portal, officially known as the "Aeolian Pyrophonic Hall and Whispering Wall" is a sound installation that will grace the Black Rock Desert in early September. Partially funded by the Burning Man organization through their honorarium grant program, our group needs additional funds to help bring this project to life on the playa. Any money above our goal helps us add more notes to the fire organ.

The Portal is a lacy structure that hosts continuous sound installation - harps played by the wind (and also by participants), a whispering wall, where the citizens of Black Rock City may write their hopes, secrets and dreams onto a scroll that is whispered into a microphone inside the hall. The whispers are repeated at random throughout the week on a network of hidden speakers.

The Portal will host nightly performances of stilt walkers and musicians playing an organ that is powered by fire. A wash of flame licks the edges of each organ tube, and participants join in the fun by pulling on dangling levers that rush a jet of burning propane into each tube, creating eerie, musical sounds.

The fire organs are scheduled to appear at other art festivals before and after the burn. The Portal structure will be burnt at the end of the week of the Burning Man festival, in a grand ritual performance involving stilt walkers in costumes that match the structure. The scroll from the whispering wall will be ceremoniously burnt at the temple burn on Sunday evening.

Our grant from Burning Man pays for most of the materials we need to build our structure. But there are other expenses involved in pulling off the project well. We need to add money to our budget to help pay for lighting to make the project visible, beautiful and safe at night, additional fuel for the fire organ performances, the costs of transporting our project and tools to the playa, materials to make the costumes for our final performance, and additional pipes and valves for the organ, which have proven to be more expensive than we anticipated.

Project location: Portland, OR

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Project By

Capra J'neva

Portland, OR

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Capra J'neva is a multimedia performance and installation artist whose work and music has toured globally. She is a product designer who works to create environmental solutions that are more compelling and fun than existing products in the marketplace. She says hello to random strangers in the street, and thinks that's probably her most important contribution to humanity.

1. firebulb.com
2. sonicinema.com