Mark Verge, Elastic Park's chief dinosaur designer, took first place in the large sculpture competition at Twist & Shout 2010 in Chicago with this life size spinosaurus.

Last month I sent out a note asking everyone to vote online so that Elastic Park could receive a Pepsi Refresh grant. Thanks so much to all of you that helped.  It almost worked.  We were pretty high up in the ranks for a while and ended in 22nd place. Out of 204 entries, that’s not too shabby. And we were high enough that our entry was automatically resubmitted for March. We were close enough, I know we can make the top ten this month to get this show on the road. I have to admit, I was ready to let the whole thing drop just a few hours ago when I learned we didn’t win in February.  But the huge number of votes so far today has already pushed us into the top ten.

The Pepsi voting site is set up to allow (encourage?) people to vote for their ten favorite projects on a daily basis. That means we need as many people as possible to vote every day. A number of people asked last month for daily reminders to go vote. We’ve set up a  mailing list for people that want that daily reminder. I will not send a reminder to my regular mailing list since I don’t want to annoy everyone.  If you want to vote for Elastic Park and would like a daily reminder, please write to me directly or visit the sign-up page. If, and only if, you sign up for it, you’ll get a reminder once a day that it’s time to vote.  We’ll keep you informed on where we’re standing and any interesting dino updates we can give you.

A special thanks to the Pioneer Balloon Company and Glue Dots for their support in getting this thing going. If there are any other businesses that would like to jump in and help us out, we’d greatly appreciate the support.

Vote for Elastic Park right now.

Get daily dino jokes, pictures, and reminders to vote.

Other recent stuff

I just returned last week from the annual balloon twisting convention, Twist & Shout.  This year it took place in Chicago and WGN was on site.  I got to talk a bit on the air about Elastic Park, but there was a much more amusing television moment than that.  Eleven entertainers woke up early in the morning to climb inside of balloons for the camera. Ten did it successfully.  Watch the clip and see for yourself the craziness in a hotel full of balloon artists, clowns, and magicians. (This isn’t actually the clip from WGN but from another camera that was running at the same time.)

Go to the WGN site and look for “Balloon Convention” to see the clip that aired.

Mini triceratops made with a few twisted Qualatex balloons and a few Glue Dots to help out.

Thanks to everyone that’s been helping us in trying to get a Pepsi Refresh grant. We’ve got a little over three more weeks to keep the votes going. It’s been fun to see so many people rally behind us. In fact, we have two big partners that I need to thank for all of their support, both in this campaign to get the grant and in the products that make these projects possible. Pioneer Balloon Company (Qualatex Balloons) and Glue Dots International. I’m excited to have both of them pushing for us. And to make things better, they’ve both announced new things that I’ll be using. I haven’t gotten any of the new Glue Dots Dot N’ Go dispensers yet, but I’ve been wanting a convenient dispenser for these things forever. Right now I’m just buying the big industrial boxes of dots. We use that many of them on the big projects that I suppose the industrial boxes aren’t a bad thing.  But something small to carry in my balloon bag will be nice. On the Qualatex front, my order of mocha and blush 321s just arrived.  Yeah!

We’re doing reasonably well on the campaign to get the grant, but still a bit behind where we need to be. Over 200 projects appear in our category and we’ve been holding our own, hovering just below the top ten.  Unfortunately, we need to be in the top ten at the end of the month.  With just a little more of a push, we can move up a couple of spots.

So thanks to the community that’s always been there for me.  All of the BalloonHQ members and guests have been doing an enormous amount of work in pushing this. Please, keep voting on a daily basis.

Of course, I realized yesterday how silly it was to just be calling people, tweeting and asking for votes when the whole point of this was to make an art project possible. The fact is, the phone calls, tweets and requests for support were stopping me from actually creating art. When that idea struck me, I forced myself to take a break from my desk and actually create something new. It’s small and fairly simple, and far from the 30-foot long version of this cretaceous creature that Elastic Park will show, but it is a dinosaur. I’ve spent so much time over the last few months on plans for the big exhibit, I never actually stopped to make any small dinosaurs.  So, here we are.  A cute little triceratops. A few heart balloons, a few twists, and I felt much more relaxed. I have to remember, I left my life as a programmer because art made me feel so free and relaxed. Gotta focus on doing more art.

Of course, always wanting to get things right, I finished this and then wondered if I picked the right color for my little triceratops. After all, there was just a paper published (well, at least one that I just read about) on dino colors. At long last, it seems that we have real scientific clues as to the coloring of  the prehistoric dinosaurs. I may have to do a little more research before some five-year-old points out my errant creation. At least I know most five-year-olds will take a little time to get up to speed on the new color information since most of them aren’t reading the New York Times. But who knows. They put some pretty cool things in the Weekly Reader these days and dinosaurs are always a hot topic among kids.  Maybe I don’t have much of a head start on them.

Don’t forget to vote daily for Elastic Park, the multi-thousand-square-foot dinosaur exhibition made entirely out of balloons.

Read more about Elastic Park.

Vote for us to get $50,000 in funding to launch this traveling show.

Pepsi recently announced their intent to give away over a million dollars a month for community projects.  The public will determine where the money goes. All you have to do is visit the Pepsi site to cast your vote. Each person is allowed to vote every day during the voting period (February 1-28, 2010). Please vote and spread the word. The more people we get to support the project, the better our chance of launching this national touring show.  After voting, please ask your friends to do the same.

If you missed it before, here’s the summary:

Elastic Park is an exhibit, featuring a unique blend of art, pre-history, and pop culture. The multi-thousand-square-foot, interactive exhibit (scalable to fit available space) was inspired by Michael Crichton’s popular novel, Jurassic Park.

Balloons are the medium used to create the exhibit. The unusual medium draws a very diverse crowd both for the construction phase and the display phase. This is important since all large scale Airigami creations are community-based art projects. Community members are invited to participate in the 100,000 balloon creation, working alongside an international crew of skilled artists.

Visitors will walk among the creatures of the Triassic through Cretaceous periods, as described in Crichton’s work. An audio tour with custom music and actor’s voices will guide everyone through, describing the creatures, the art, and telling the story.

Like all major Airigami projects, Elastic Park is about the community. It would be cool if it was just an artistic display.  But we’re taking it much further.  We’re inviting the public to take part in the construction as well. So once we get the funding, we’re going to be asking all of you to join in and help turn our plans into the most incredible dinosaur exhibition seen in the last 65 million years.

While things can certainly change, we expect the first stop on this tour to be Exploration Place in Wichita, KS. This is a fantastic science museum with just the right family-friendly atmosphere for us to work in.

Thanks for your help. We’re looking forward to, once again, populating the planet with pre-historic dinosaurs.

Instructions for voting: Visit http://www.refresheverything.com/ElasticPark. If you don’t see the “vote for this idea” button on the page, you may have to sign in. There’s a link on the bottom of the page to sign in or to register with the site.  When the page refreshes, there will be a big white “vote for this idea” bottom on the top right side of the page. (You shouldn’t have to jump through any extra hoops to vote.  You should be able to just see the vote button when you visit the page and then you should be able to just sign in when you click on it, but a number of people have reported that the site behaves very inconsistently.)

A concept drawing of a snowman snowball fight

It’s been an interesting year.  I participated in a couple of fashion shows, completed the Fine Art Masterworks series I had been working on with the creation of Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. and I spoke at TEDxRochester about large scale projects and where I hope to go with them in the future.

It’s time for the last Airigami project of 2009, and I’m excited that it’s going to be a public project.  It will be fairly small scale compared to some of the others, and that means the focus this time around will be on interacting with the crowd.  If you’re in Rochester, NY, stop by the Riverside Convention Center between 6:30 and 9:30 PM on New Year’s Eve. During that time, I’ll be building a sculpture with your suggestions. I have a plan and there are pieces I’ll definitely do, but the overall piece will change, based on feedback from the crowd. So Start thinking now about what you’d put into a snowman snowball fight.

If you can’t make it on New Year’s Eve, don’t worry.  We’ll have plenty more in store for 2010, from school assembly programs to more large scale projects. We’ve been booking private events as well. And no promises yet, but my goal is to bring Balloon Manor and Elastic Park back.  So many people wrote to me this year asking for them that I know it’s worth the effort.

Kelly's proposed flying cupcake sculpture.

A couple weeks ago, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) , announced a project to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet. And they’re using balloons to do it.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways.  (from http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/)

Almost 18 years ago, I started an online community, BalloonHQ, that unites thousands of balloon artists from around the world. These days, the projects that get most of my attention are those that involve large communities in giant, interactive sculptures. How could I ignore this challenge created by DARPA? There’s no way a single person can possibly find ten weather balloons placed around the continental US without the help of many others. Upon hearing about the project, I posted a note on BalloonHQ.com asking for support to pull this off.  And now that DARPA has clarified some of the details of the challenge (DARPA network challenge FAQ), I’m turning to all of you that read my blog for assistance.

What do you need to do to participate?

This is easy. There’s no way to know where the red balloons will be.  There may be one in your city, but you can’t really plan for it.  All you can do is keep your eyes open on December 5, 2009.  If you see one, you can report it back to me. The balloons will only be available for a maximum of nine hours that day, weather permitting. The balloons may be released a day later if weather or some other interference is encountered.

All official network challenge balloons will be accompanied by officials with credentials that can verify that the balloon is part of the challenge. All of the balloons will also be in places that are easily accessible.  An exact location is needed to identify the balloon. If you see one, jot down GPS coordinates or an address, or a cross street, or something that gets us coordinates within one arc minute of the balloon’s location.

Why should you help?

This should be a fun experiment. It will require the attentiveness of a lot of people and therefore a lot of people should be able to enjoy the fruits of a completed project. DARPA is offering a $40,000 prize to the first individual that reports the locations of all the balloons (or the largest number of them). The money should go toward a community project that everyone can enjoy. It should be a project in the spirit of the challenge. It should unite people across the country, celebrating the Internet, social media, and balloon art. Kelly Cheatle proposed a flying birthday cupcake made of balloons. I’m all for that. The $40K will go to covering the cost of creating the sculpture and housing the participating artists in the project. A good example of the project I have in mind would be the Fantastic Flying Octopus from a few years ago (as seen in the video below).

Let’s give this a shot and see if we can win this challenge. It’s not the winning that’s important. It’s doing something cool with the award that everyone can enjoy. Please help make this happen.

There's so much to think about when attending a TED conference.

TEDxRochester 2009 has come and gone. It was a huge honor to be invited to be a presenter.  I’ve been downloading TED Talk podcasts for a while now. I frequently find myself excitedly sharing some random bit of information I learned from the latest talk I had on my iPod. Now, I was given a chance to present.  I’ve shared a stage with many different people, but this was the first time I was on a stage with presenters as varied as a chemist and museum curators.

With each talk, my mind wandered into ways I may be able to collaborate on projects with each speaker. After all, TED is about sharing, learning, crossing disciplines, and developing new directions for advancement. I couldn’t help but wonder how I could combine the dance and movement taught by Thomas Warfield with balloon puppetry, or how my form of play fits with that of Scott Eberle’s at the Strong National Museum of Play. I thought about how the community building stuff I’ve done with my balloons would fit with the work of life coach Luis Martinez. And I couldn’t help but wonder if Todd Krauss’s work with nanotechnology held the answer to the question of how to keep a balloon inflated indefinitely. (I also wondered for a bit if I’d actually want to see a balloon last forever.)

Thanks to Tony Karakashian, Amanda Doherty, and Gary Jacobs for putting on the event. I couldn’t help but notice the way they each answered the question of, “will you do this again?” Each gave a very definite “yes.” But they had that look in their eyes that said they knew they must be crazy for wanting to do it, but that they felt a definite need to keep this going.  It’s a lot of work, and they directed the focus to their presenters, so they got little attention for their effort. I hope everyone attending took the time to learn something about the people behind the event.

This undersea sculpture was part of Balloons Around the World and was on display at Barnes & Noble in Pittsford, NY. Participants in this project included Larry Moss, Kelly Cheatle, Karyn Dolan, Sheryl Watts, Amy John, Mary Ann Jakubowicz, Rose Hasan, Tim Bourke, Lois Sprague, Brent Chmura, John Barthelmes.

Before going to ArtPrize, I was asked what I’d do if I won.  I answered that I’d take a day off. Whether I won or not, I was fairly certain that  I’d have more than a few projects to work on as soon as I returned home, and more than a day off wasn’t going to happen.  Sure enough, by the time I settled in after the trip, the list of things I was already looking at doing was too long to manage, and since I didn’t win, I couldn’t hire staff to do it all for me. Well, I’ve been back for a couple weeks now, the list keeps growing, and I’ve been bad about updating the blog with recent happenings. So here are just a couple of quick notes.

Balloons Around the World just took place last week. This is the annual event where artists in different cities around the globe join in just for the sake of sharing the fun and wonder of balloons. The crew that was working with me in Rochester was fantastic. Everyone just dove in to the undersea project. I was grateful for all of their help, and as I looked at them, all I could think was, “with friends like these, who needs anemones?”

Balloon Engineer just went on sale at B&N. Larry's newest book, included in a kit with a pump and balloons, has instructions for ten famous landmarks, from Niagara Falls to the Great Sphinx.

What makes Balloons Around the World exciting for me is the interaction with the community. While we don’t get to build Balloon Manor  this year, BATW was still a way to do something in the local community that brought a number of artists and community members together. Anyone that knows me is familiar with my passion for community projects. These projects provide a way to share my art with a wide audience. They give me a way to see people that don’t otherwise think of themselves as artists get excited about art. They get people working together doing something they’ve never done before. Of course, I’m always looks for ways to take that into other communities.

With that interest in community art, I was thrilled to get an invitation to speak at TEDxRochester on the subject of community art. For those unfamiliar with TED, it’s an organization devoted to “Ideas worth spreading.” From conferences to downloadable talks, TED is about sharing ideas. The ideas don’t have to be limited to any particular area and talks aren’t meant to be just directed at any specific audience. The folks at TED have now made it possible for others to offer smaller, local, TED-like conferences, called “TEDx”. It may not be quite the same as the official TED conference, but it will be fun.  I’m excited about giving a TED Talk.

Random notes:

My work was recently featured in an article in The Wall Street Journal.

Mona T-shirt (front)

In a recent post to this blog, I mentioned a quote that I found about my work. I thought the quote was funny and needed to be shared, so I posted a phony T-shirt containing it.  To my surprise, a number of people wrote in asking if they could buy the shirt.  Not wanting to disappoint, I went ahead and made shirts which a number of people wore around Grand Rapids during ArtPrize.  I took it a bit further and made it a more artsy shirt. The quote, “Larry Moss is a hack. I see no dachshunds”  is found on the back. The front contains my rendition of the Mona Lisa. The shirt is available from the Airigami gift shop until I run out of them.

It’s been a long few days.  Thanks to everyone that’s been following the Venus project.  It’s been fun.  I’m looking forward to seeing what other artists  have done for ArtPrize.  But right now, I’m tired. If you’re in Grand Rapids, come see the final sculpture this week.  It will be around until the end of ArtPrize, but these are balloons.  You know how that goes.  They won’t look as sharp a week from now.

I’ll write more soon.  Right now, I’m going to sleep.

Photo by Jay Pike

One of the things that makes balloon art so unique is the speed in which it has to be created. Since the sculptures won’t last very long, you want to build everything in a short enough period of time that they last. And that means that the day before you open, there’s tons of pressure to finish everything. I’m really happy with where things are right now. It’s looking fantastic. I’m just tired.

Having the time lapse camera has been a blast.  I can’t believe the number of people that have checked in and watched throughout the day. A few people have even called us to comment on what we were doing at any given time. We love the feedback, so keep it coming. We decided to make it a little easier for people that haven’t watched at all to catch up. We took all of the photos from the first part of the build and assembled a video.

We’ll post another time lapse video in a few hours.