Black Rock Desert, Northern Nevada - The question, What would grow on playa soil if anything could, was answered by a garden of carbon fiber flowers, dusty but glistening, simultaneously black and white by day, lit up in color and fire at night.  Flowers whispering in fire, twisty and mysterious, some human height, some towering above, larger than our walkaday life.

The brutal desert forces, wind and dust, made their best exertions to push down these delicate sprouts, but could not match their strength or grace.  When not an intense blustering whiteout, the blazing sun beat down on stem and bloom but were simply absorbed.  And from that energy soaked up came night music.  A blanket wash of sound, greeted desert comers of goggle, dread and blink.  The swatches of showcase color and flicks of flame echoed gradients across black fabric petals stiffened to a form.

Photos by: JasonUnbound

People were people, evolving humans, humane to themselves, to each other, finding respite from the jungle, a patch of peace.  Some were married in this place, some joked or at least smiled, some wanted to know how, some wanted to give gifts.  We got the biggest gift of all.  Thank you.

Carbon Garden lit up in beautiful fire reflected and shimmering off glossy black carbon fiber flowers. All stems are placed on our flower patch bases and ready to be lifted on to the Symbiosis stage at Sand by the Ton.

The party is tonight from 4pm-4am. Go to http://www.thebigartexperience.com for tickets.

Carbon Fiber Gear posted the second in a series of 3 guest blogs by False Profit Labs about the making of Carbon Garden. Come for the carbon fiber flowers that shoot fire, stay for the many super cool items made out of carbon fiber.
http://www.carbonfibergear.com/carbon-fiber-garden-series-part-2-10-foot-tall-carbon-fiber-flowers-that-shoot-3-feet-of-fire/

Carbon fiber fabrication
We’re not masters of making precision-molded carbon fiber parts.  But we are totally masters at stretching, sculpting and folding the material into really cool looking flowers with beautiful finish inside and out, with interfaces to connect to the stems.

Whit and Brett with Carbon Garden prototype flower and sign

Our process is quick and repeatable, laying the carbon fiber over custom molds that we’ve copied with a vacuum former, or just some beach balls.

Aldo and Sarah work in the garage flower nursery

Erik Walker has been leading the charge here with Brett Levine, MaryAnn Hulsman, Eric Nguyen, Jascha Sohl-Dickstein, Mark Abel, Matt Silvey, Tony Godshall, Sandy Martino, Sara Chieco, Sarah Oitzinger, Aldo Franciscolo, Andy Lee, and Gia Alam.  We are reinforcing 11 blooms, making more, and getting ready to install LiveSpark Flame Elements.

Using the ShopBot CNC Router down at TechShop we can cut precision drawings into beautiful glossy carbon fiber sheets.  We just ordered a diamond end mill that will make for even faster and cleaner edges.  Andy Lee and Erik Walker on CAD are building models for new geometric petals and metal part drawings ready for the CNC plasma cutter and sheet metal brake.

We’re experimenting with carbon fiber threads and sleeves to make “grass” and other interesting flower shapes and stems.

Making carbon fiber "grass"

Interaction and Music
Mary is building Max/MSP software to control flower fire behavior.  Bash is building a sensor array to detect when people enter and leave the garden.  The flowers will have two modes: one for when no people are around and another when people enter.  JD is writing original music that is really zen and blissed out.  The music will be triggered dynamically and layered with other sounds for five channels of audio (one for each flower patch).

Mary develops interaction software

Stems!

Whit Bissell, Ian Baker and Nicole Aptekar are working in the blacksmith shop at The Crucible on steel stems.  They have been taught to use the forge, bending tools and power hammers by Chris a master blacksmith and teacher there. The results are stunning.  Beautifully textured steel pipes, bent into organic curves.  They have already made 24 4′ stems and are planning to build 8 more 10′ stems out of even larger diameter pipe.

Whit, Ian and Nicole working in the blacksmith shop

The largest power hammer moves a 100LB weight up and down, smashing the red hot steel pipe. Fun danger.

Events
We are slated to bring 20 flowers to American Steel for Sand by the Ton on July 11: http://www.headlesspoint.com/sand, where not so coincidentally False Profit will be DJing on the Symbiosis stage with our flowers.  July 15-18 we move our flowers down the street in Oakland to the Fire Arts Festival.  We leave for Burning Man on August 29.

On June 12, the Isle of Man TTGXP motorcycle race, the world’s first carbon free grand prix.  Montano will be riding San Francisco’s own Mission Motors electric motorcycle, the fastest production electric sport bike in the world.

Mission One

In collaboration with Mission Motors, False Profit Labs is a leading sponsor of Tom Montano riding the Mission One.  “With a top speed of 150 mph, a 150-mile range and unparalleled access to torque, the Mission One surpasses the performance figures of other production electric motorcycles and gives chase to gas-powered incumbents.“

Tom Montano

Catch up on latest breaking race news.
Read more about our racer and Mission Motors.

When exploring a new medium, my tendency is to compare it to known territory, maybe to have some ideas in mind about what’s possible, what would be interesting, to desire control over chaos. For Carbon Garden, our research took the form of visits to botanical gardens, conservatory of flowers, nature walks, science museums, and lots of google image searches for flowers of all varieties. Next came classes in carbon fiber layup, interviews of everyone and anyone who had worked with it before, and of course YouTube video searches like the one about making carbon fiber cellos.

As we started experimenting with the medium itself, a vast array of uncharted territory began to evidence itself: epoxy type, cure time and temperature, carbon fabric weave and weight, mold release whether peel ply, spray, wax or mylar.  Any different combination of these possibilities would lead to very different results, most of them very unflower-like.  Plus it’s difficult, time consuming and quite expensive to just play around with these materials.  You’d think, contact the experts, they’ll know what to do.  But even people who make many strong and beautiful structures from carbon fiber usually aren’t making things enough like ours to say exactly what we should do.

Little by little we’ve edged our way toward a satisfying petal building technique including compound curves, surface details, reasonable strength, and impressively, a smooth matte finish with that beautiful grain looking sharp on both sides.  So good, we have successfully gained control over a wily new medium.  The problem is we have not let it breathe.

What I mean is that in our desire to master our technique with this material, we forgot to ask the question, “What does the carbon fiber want?”  I mean this in no sappy anthropomorphic way, and no I haven’t been sniffing the epoxy (on purpose).  As I have come to play with this black fabric that wets out to a stretchy skin with its own qualities and behaviors, little intimations of its own nature have surfaced.

I now see that the frayed edges I had thoroughly taped and held together, when laid up with epoxy turn into delicate plantlike spines.  I now see that techniques more akin to clothing design work to build three dimensional self-wrapping structures, like black hole models of space-time.  The bizarre and quirky qualities of this medium are starting to express themselves, and tell us what kind of art to make.

A handheld carbon fiber black hole.

I don’t know where exactly this will lead, but I’m shedding my preconceived notions and allowing the medium to show me.  My failure will only be not to listen closely enough to what it’s saying.  And if I’m lucky when it’s quiet I hope to become close enough friends that it’s willing to share its deepest secrets.

We’re fully underway with carbon fiber flower petal production.  In addition we’ll start bending and hammering steel stems in the forge pretty soon, and we’ve got decent mechanical designs for the interfaces to hold petals, leaves and stems together.  On the flame effect side, our Flame Elements now have built in ultrasonic rangefinders that auto shutoff if people get too close.  The garden is laid out  to allow good participant flow but prevent cars from driving in there.

Here are some renderings by Andy Lee showing how a simple petal shape can be repeated and attached at different points to create a wide variety of flowers.

Any opinions or ideas you’d like to pass to us?  Also, if anyone knows people who are interested in learning how to lay up carbon fiber, we’re getting pretty good at it these days and always welcome visitors to the shop.  False Profit Labs workshop days are Wednesdays from 6-10pm and Saturdays from 1-5pm in San Francisco.  Early versions of Carbon Garden will appear at the American Steel opening party and Fire Arts Festival in July.  Email: brett at false dash profit dot com if you want to get involved.

Rendering of Carbon Garden at Burning Man by Erik Walker