And relatedly, Jonathan also has some interesting reflections on fire art over on his blog.

As usual, we’ve been working on improving 2pir. A while back Ian and Nicole came up with the idea of taking it out to the playa to run for the 4th of July, which provided an excellent opportunity to fix up some lingering issues. There was some last minute scrambling to get things in working order, but we managed to haul it out to the Black Rock Desert. On Friday, we set everything up and started to test, but the new ignition system wasn’t working as expected. We downgraded to super-janky igniters (i.e. wicks soaked in lamp oil.) They weren’t nearly as pretty as the nichrome wire, but they worked for a couple of hours as we played late into the night. Saturday was much more successful. We reverted to a refined version of our igniters from the Maker Faire, which ended up being the best ignition system so far for 2pir. We invited several people to spin fire, flags, or swing whatever they wanted around as we pumped music out of our sound system. Those who chose to jump on the platform and perform had a blast, and were quite entertaining for everyone standing around the perimeter.

Evan took some great pictures
Ed got a couple of videos

2pir was a hit at Maker Faire. We had person after person asking us when we were going to start running all day long. And had crowds gathering off and on all night long. We really started running around 8pm and our 500lbs of propane lasted just the right amount of time until shutdown at 10pm. We were able to give several people a chance on the platform and enjoyed how everyone interacted with the sensors and fire in their own way. Some highlights of the evening? The mother who swung her kid around, Jake swinging Kai (and everyone else) around, the girl with the umbrella and boots, and of course tons of kids including one with an appropriate shirt.

That’s not to say we weren’t without the normal hiccups that go along with every performance. Igniter issues, wind, and what may be a dead sensor caused some delays. If you were one of the ones that sat and waited for us to sort things out, thank you for sticking it out!

For those keeping track of how 2pir ran (since it’s a growing and changing piece), this time we ran with only the high flame effects, brand new (awesome) sensors, a brand new Soekris board running our perl script on Debian, a retro-fitted lowered platform, our brand new water pump, and of course lots of the good old propane.

If you missed us at Maker Faire, we’re sorry. It only made sense to have us run Saturday evening. But don’t worry, we’re hoping that Interpretive Arson will be back next year to blow your minds. A huge thanks to Maker Faire for being one of the easiest events to work with and giving us the opportunity to be a part of it.

A couple different blogs/newsites/etc mentioned 2pir:
Wired
c|net
geek gestalt

And of course lots of pictures and videos:
Daniel Garcia (photos)
Ed Hunsinger (photos & video)

If you have pictures, videos, or a link to an article about 2pir, please let us know so we can add it to the list.

We had a chance to run a full test on 2pir last night and surprisingly everything worked beautifully. The new sensors are awesome, as is the new water heater, and of course the flame effects still create ridiculous amounts of fire. Come see 2pir in action at the Maker Faire this Saturday. We’ll be running in the evening and will be letting people up on the platform to create their own fire.

Dan also created a nice photo montage set to music from last nights testing:

Recently, Sharp introduced new extra-long-range infrared proximity sensors that rock the house better, harder, faster, and yes, stronger than any sensors like it. We got a hold of a few for testing, and decided that it was a perfect opportunity to upgrade 2Ï€r! But we didn’t want to simply hack them in to our current setup! With the experience we’ve gained from running 2Ï€r at various events across the western US, we decided to go right back to the drawing board and rework the whole platform. It’s now shorter, sleeker, and incorporating a swanky design accent, as well as containing the glory of the new sensors.

The first step of a project like this is to draw it out, and recently at IA, we’ve taken to drawing everything out in CAD before buying any of the materials. This leads to a lot less waste, and helps to overcome some of the possible design challenges early on. As such, the last few weeks have had numerous meetings and work sessions to really hammer down what we want this thing to be.

I’m excited to share these images with everyone, so I’ve created a flickr set with all the various layers of the file separated out into individual images.

Enjoy!

Recently we sent Yuri’s Night a proposal to run 2Ï€r at their party. We haven’t heard back, but we’re hoping for the best! No matter what happens, we’ll definitely be at the party.

2pm-2am, Saturday April 12th, 2008.
NASA AMES Research Center, Moffett Field CA

Further details are available at their site, ynba.org.

Wish us luck!

Photo credit: Scott Beale – Laughing Squid