Dance Dance Immolation was a much-loved cornerstone of the fire art community. It was commonly referred to as “Dance Dance Revolution, with flamethrowers pointed at you” and it truly lived up to that description. DDI started in 2005 with Ian Baker, Morley John, Matt Blackwell, and Jonathan Stray. It quickly added more and more people. Over the next few years it created a large family. It spawned the Interpretive Arson group, which grew up into what is now known as Ardent Heavy Industries. It created new relationships, killed a few, singed some body hair, and delighted thousands of people. It also tormented us with horrible J-Pop that we secretly loved.

Dance Dance Immolation had a good run, with 12 runs over its 8 year life span:
* Burning Man 2005, 2006, 2007, 2013
* Fire Arts Festival 2005, 2006, 2007
* NIMBY Circus in 2005
* Our only private event in 2006
* The DDI Media Circus in 2007, an attempt to get some good videos and photos of the piece
* How To Destroy the Universe in 2007
* Denmark’s Smukfest in 2009

Dance Dance Immolation is survived by 2pir, Syzygryd, and the latest addition, the Ardent Mobile Cloud Platform. In lieu of donations, we kindly request you work on your own fire art piece in remembrance.

Dance Dance Immolation is officially in the Guinness Book of World Records: Gamer’s Edition for the “Hottest Video Game”. You can check out our full color spread online, complete with photo (original photo by Kristen Ankiewicz) of a player getting blasted with fire.

Interpretive Arson can now proudly say that we are an international, award winning, record setting fire art group.

There was quite a bit of photos and video taken of Dance Dance Immolation while we were in Denmark for Smukfest earlier this year.
Allan, the Skanderborg Festival Photographer, got some great shots of DDI during our run in Denmark at Smukfest. I highly recommend viewing the panorama shots on a wide screen monitor:
[nggallery id=1]

There’s also pictures of DDI and Interpretive Arson’s Danish adventures from Ian:

As well as Ed:

The Denmark crew has arrived at Smukfest and we spent a jet-lagged day setting up Dance Dance Immolation on a raft. Yes, a raft! Ian setup his camera to take an awesome time-lapse video of the setup process:

DDI Smukfest Setup Timelapse from Interpretive Arson on Vimeo.

The break in the middle where everyone disappears is lunch (though you can see Nicole coming back to check on it while we’re all gone, because she’s like that). The blue tarps went on when it began to drizzle. The video ends just as Ian and Jonathan are walking the inspectors from the Danish Technological Institute through the system (with their 12 year old daughter!) They approved us, though they tell us they need to see our test run Tuesday night. Just to be sure, you understand.

BEST FLAMIN’ FUN

Kids, really, don’t try this at home. Don’t hook up your two-player Dance Dance Revolution game to a row of flamethrowers. Don’t rig said game to blast your dance competitior with a faceful of fire in front of an adoring crowd if they miss a step. Don’t invest in enough propane to fuel a small jet, a flaming movie screen for projecting all those awkward dance moves onto, and a booming sound system to play all the Japanese bubblegum techno you could ever hope to hear. Leave the setup to Interpretive Arson, whose Dance Dance Immolation game has wowed participants and spectators alike from Black Rock City to Oaktown — and will scorch Denmark’s footsies this fall. Do, however, seek out these intrepid firestarters, and don a giant silver fireproof suit with a Robby the Robot hood. Do the hippie shake to the mellifluous tones of Fatboy Slim and Smile.dk, and prepare yourself to get flamed, both figuratively and literally.

This is as real as it gets! Right now DDI is on a boat sailing across the Atlantic ocean on its way to Denmark for Smukfest. In fact it’s that boat you see above! Our container is enjoying the luxuries of the Sealand Eagle during this journey. Here’s some info on the boat:

Vessel Name: SEA LAND EAGLE
Call Sign: WKAE
Year Built: 1997
Ship Builder: Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. (aka IHI) (Official Site)
Length: 900.3ft

Fun fact: IHI developed the world’s largest floating LPG production, storage, and offloading facility: Sanha LPG-FPSO.

Want to track the boat across the ocean? Sailwx.info has a cool ship tracker. Here’s the Sealand Eagle

Sealand Eagle photo by braniffelectra

Since this will be Interpretive Arson’s first oversea voyage, the container had to be christened. Jonathan had the honor of smashing the ceremonial champagne (a bottle from 1995 celebrating the release of Adobe Pagemaker 6) across the “bow”.