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About this project

ANIMUS Arts Collective www.animusart.com

The Honey Trap made a debut at the PEX Summer Festival, just one of the many incredible art installations that PEX (http://www.thephiladelphiaexperiment.org) awarded grants to. Here are some of images from the event. Below two images by Ted Stein, www.tedstein.com dsc_0305dsc_0303Here is the Honey Trap as of June: the-honey-trap-progess the-honey-trap-progress-1

THE HONEY TRAP is an 86 foot long Fibonacci Spiral, which is based on the Golden Ratio, a mathematical proportion found everywhere in the architecture of nature. The Honey Trap is composed of stacked interlocking hexagons, which refers to the bees who live in their own metropolis, and upon whom we depend to pollinate our crops. The project attempts to view what man does as a logical, natural, and connected extension of what nature does. The project embodies the interrelationship of math, art, science, life, and community. Standing 21 feet tall at its highest point, The Honey Trap is like a city on a hill overlooking the playa. At night, each cell is lit with participant-controlled twinkling LEDs, and a six foot neighboring flower serves to remind us that we must be harmonious with nature to be so with ourselves. The project will be burned after The Man on Saturday.

The two central themes of "The Honey Trap" are the merits and disadvantages of big cities, as well as the inherent relationships between architecture and nature.   Whereas some might consider a metropolis unnatural, "The Honey Trap"  attempts to represent the similarities between what we humans do as a population, and an instance of a metropolis in the animal world.  We find the most identifiable features of a metropolis to be population and architecture.

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The overall composition of "The Honey Trap" is a Fibonacci spiral.  In mathematics, this spiral is based on a sequence of numbers known as the Golden Ratio.  These numbers appear everywhere in nature: the leaf arrangement in plants, the pattern of the florets in a flower,  a single cell, a grain of wheat, a hive of bees, and even our own faces and bodies.  This same shape is found in much classical architecture, such as The Pantheon and The Great Mosque of Kairouan.   Fibonacci numbers are a fascinating conceptual pivot point between the architecture of nature and the architecture of man.

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The structure is made out of interlocking honeycombs, and each individual cell of the honeycomb is large enough to hold one seated person.   This will visually frame each person much like a person is framed in a window.  It's a reference to what one sees, when looking across the way, into buildings in a big city.  With the visual isolation of each individual in their honeycomb cell, we hope to draw upon the feelings of alienation one can get living in a buzzing metropolis.  Simultaneously, and conversely, the cells being stacked together are an allusion to the coming together of individuals.  They represent the literal and figurative "building up" of a city, a society, and a community.  There is a sweetness to big city life, a sweetness that can inevitably make it hard to leave, thus: "The Honey Trap".
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Lastly, we propose to create a 6 foot flower inside the spiral.  To contrast to the simple solidity and mathematical arrangement of the wooden honeycomb cells, this flower will be organic, ornate, and visually delicate.  With it, we attempt to add an element of discovery upon approaching the piece.   Extrapolating on the theme, this flower, this element of grace, is both the by-product and the life-source of the bee and we hope it might be seen as a metaphor for things like art and culture.  Our metropolises make incredible things of beauty which are, in turn, what make beautiful metropolises thrive.

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Capitalizing on the theme of Metropolis, ANIMUS plans to build the "The Honey Trap" in three sections.  We will bring each section to separate Burning Man regional festival throughout the spring/summer of 2010.   At each festival, the participants will be encouraged to help stain the wood, from shades of honey yellow to brown, thus providing a prolonged, collective, interactive experience.    The project will be the culmination of many people, from many different cities, coming together to make this giant work of art.  We will work with the individual festivals to raise funds for transporting the project to and from site locations.
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Completed, "The Honey Trap" is completely climbable.  Each cell will provide a comfortable place for a person to sit, with the cells toward the top of the artwork providing a place to look out over open playa.  At the eye of the spiral the cells are close enough together that groups of people can talk to each other.

plan

At night, each cell will have it's own LED light source.  These lights will be hooked up to a 16 channel sequencer that will allow participants, from nearby controls, to alter the speed, order, and duration that each cell is lit.  In addition, they will simultaneously be able to control the color and sparkle of the flower.  The result will be a color changing flower amidst a twinkling city of lights.

elevation

Our goal is to burn "The Honey Trap" at the end of the festival, providing a peaceful site  for a communal gathering. The LED light sources would be removed and we will remove the flower and bring it back to New York.  The flower would be displayed at the NYC Decom, viscerally and visually connecting Decom to the grand event inthe desert.

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90
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$5,655
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Funding Successful

This project successfully raised its funding goal on July 19, 2010.

Pledge $20 or more

7 Backers

By donating $20, you are sponsoring a Honey Trap Board. You will be able to decorate your board by coming into our studio and working with the artists or you can give us a quote and the artists will decorate your board for you.

Pledge $30 or more

45 Backers

By donating $30 you receive a custom ANIMUS Honey Trap Mirror Plexi Necklace. You can choose from two designs, either the Honey Trap Flower or Honey Trap Fibonacci Spiral, and choose from three colors, Regular Mirror, Teal Mirror and Deep Red Mirror.

Pledge $60 or more

3 Backers

By donating $60 you receive a Honey Trap necklace and a signed 8 x 10 photo of any ANIMUS project of your choosing.

Pledge $100 or more

16 Backers

By donating $100, you sponsor a whole cell, you get ALL SIX BOARDS that make up the hexagon to decorate as you please. And since each hexagon is large enough to hold a seated person, the cell you sponosor is essentially “your seat”. You all get a Honey Trap Mirror Plexi Necklace of your choice.

Pledge $200 or more

6 Backers

By donating $200, you sponsor a whole cell, which we will CUSTOM engrave with your name or short message into the wood. You also get TWO Honey Trap Mirror Plexi Necklaces of your choosing.

Pledge $500 or more

1 Backer

By donating $500, you sponsor a whole cell which we will custom engrave, you will receive two free Honey Trap Necklaces and Dinner with the Artists on or off the playa.

Pledge $1,000 or more

0 Backers

By donating $1,000, you sponsor a whole cell which we will custom engrave, you will receive two free Honey Trap Necklaces and you have you can help Light the Honey Trap on Fire!!!!

Project By

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ANIMUS

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The ANIMUS ARTS COLLECTIVE is group of three NYC artists –Preston Dane, Annie Vainchenker and David Ort–who create large-scale, interactive public and private works, both for New York City and for festivals around the country. This year, ANIMUS successfully completed four large temporary installations located on Governor’s Island, Liberty State Park, Upper West Side and Nevada. Each piece was uniquely different in style, materials, theme and exposure. Their work has been featured in WOR 710 AM, Time Magazine and TimeOut New York Online.

  1. animusart.com
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