Bruce Bender, aka Uncle Jonah
931 Revere Road, Marshall, NC 28753
(828) 656-2465 bbenderdotcom@hotmail.com
KETCHUP!
When asked to embody “what is America” in a single event, item, or set of ideas, one thing clearly stands tall above all the rest. This thing, this uniquely American creation, is ketchup.
Ketchup. The simple condiment that is not so simple. Decades of savory sauce experimentation through the 19th century ultimately yielded the 100% true blue red-blooded born in the USA version of modern day ketchup. Like America, the flavor of ketchup is a complex melting pot of the sweetness and mouthfeel of east Asian fish sauce wedded to the acidity and sourness of traditional European pickled condiments. The result has been as impactful as American culture itself – a melting pot of cultures which at its best produces something both delicious and affordable, something which people of all nations, all creeds, and all persuasions embrace. Ketchup appeals to both kings and commoners, dictators and the demos. Almost everyone on planet earth loves ketchup, just as almost everyone on earth loves the highest ideals of America.
While the word “Freedom” is frequently bandied about for political gain, the reality is that America is an incredibly free place. The scope of human activity in America is, compared with much of the world, astonishingly open. It is this very openness to experimentation that has facilitated immense innovation by Americans and America. Americans have long been leaders (though not always the leader) in human endeavors of technological, artistic, and political innovation.
Ketchup embodies this openness, this freedom to experiment and create in that it is a delicious savory sauce that is readily available to be used on just about anything. Ketchup can be used “as is” on a thousand dishes, and ketchup itself can be modified in a thousand ways prior to its employment on or within a dish. Chemists refer to water as the universal solvent; in the culinary world this universal sauce is ketchup.
America is not a physical place, it is an idea. From its inception, America has embraced the universal family of all humanity. It was and remains a great experiment in the question of whether and how different peoples, religions, languages and cultures can co-exist peaceably for the betterment of them all.
In short, America is ketchup. Born from a mixture of cultures, the resulting blend is amenable to all while claiming superiority over none. We were born as a mix, we continue to blend, and so long as individual peoples around the globe muster the fortitude to innovate, both ketchup and the idea of America will shine as a beacon for untold future generations to come.
Want fries with that?
KETCHUP!
The physical piece is a gigantic scale version of the classic Heinz
ketchup bottle. KETCHUP! is modeled after the Heinz bottle mainly
because of its signature shape. Like Absolut Vodka or Jack Daniels
Kentucky Bourbon, the Heinz bottle shape resonates as an instantly
recognizable bottle of ketchup.
Armature
The KETCHUP! piece will have a 10’ diameter internal floor
space and stand 31’6” tall. The armature derives from
yurt construction – a collapsible lattice frame wall for the
bottom (cylindrical) portion and a separate latticework for the
upper, truncated cone section of the KETCHUP! piece. 5/16”
Aircraft cable (9,600 lb. test strength) is used at the connection
between the top of the cylinder and the bottom of the cone and
functions structurally as a tension ring.
A second tension ring lies on the ground at the base of the piece.
This ring is fashioned from layered arcs of plywood 4” wide and
3” in height forming a 10’ diameter circle. The lattice
wall abuts and is bolted to the interior face of this plywood ring.
The ring anchors to the playa with eight ground-screw anchors each
bored 66” subsoil.
A third ring, also constructed of layered plywood arcs and measuring
4” wide and 3” tall, will be placed where the top of the
cylinder meets the bottom of the truncated cone. This ring is bolted
onto the exterior surface of the two lattices. Structurally, this
ring will function primarily as a compression ring, though it also
adds tensile strength to this critical connection.
Owing to the high wind conditions which inevitably arise on the
playa, as well as the odd height to width ratio of the piece, sixteen
additional cables (not normally used in yurt construction) will run
from the underside of the bottle cap down to the ground anchors.
These cables will run diagonally rather than vertically, basket-like,
to compensate for lateral stresses and torsion incurred by windload.
These cables run between the latticework armature and skin of the
piece, remaining invisible from the outside and not interfering with
the interior space.
Skin and illumination
The skin of KETCHUP! is made of red “Fibermax 94”
sailcloth – essentially Dacron on steroids. This material is
employed because it is extraordinarily tear-resistant and impermeable
to wind, meaning that wind will flow around the curved shape of
KETCHUP! rather than into it. The skin will be made up of two large
pieces of sewn Fibermax, one wrapping the cylinder and the other
wrapping the truncated cone. Fibermax is diaphanous, allowing for
placement of lights internally for illumination.
The lighting for illumination is to be 12VDC LED’s embedded in
the top face of the plywood ground ring (lights facing up, parallel
to the skin of the cylinder), embedded in the underside of the bottle
cap compression hub (facing down, parallel to the skin of the cone),
and embedded in the third ring of plywood at the cone/cylinder
junction. The LED’s in this third ring would be aimed both
upwards into the cone section and downwards into the cylindrical
section. See Images 3 & 4.
The employment of 111 evenly spaced light sources (18 on bottle cap
compression hub, 31 on ground ring, 62 on cone/cylinder connection
ring), with each light source comprised of 16 bundled LED’s,
should render a fairly even, diffuse glow of internal illumination to
the KETCHUP! piece. Embedding the LED’s in the plywood rings
stabilizes them and reduces likelihood of breakage.
The aesthetic aim is to have the entire piece glow evenly, rather
than having spotty, patchwork illumination from within. The lights
are shining “along” the skin rather than “against”
the skin to diffuse the light and keep the interior space of the
sculpture open for use. In terms of illumination, the skin of the
piece is a giant lampshade illuminated from within by 1776 evenly
distributed LED’s.
Sound
Several hundred announcements from the “Ketsup Advisory Board”
of Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion”
will be loaded onto an iPod and played at a fairly low volume on a
continual loop. The sound space is intended to extend no more then
forty or fifty feet from KETCHUP! out into the immediate environs.
This sound is not intended to compete with or overpower sound
emanating from any other installation or camp, it is intended merely
as a warm and gentle envelope of ketchup-ness. Sound will play 24/7.
Placement Request
I request that KETCHUP! be placed as the centerpiece of the 4:30
plaza. The “label” (doorway) would face the man, a la
“Eggchair.”. This should put the doorway in the lee of
the prevailing afternoon winds. I realize that being the centerpiece
of a plaza is a fairly prime location, but the scale and luminescence
of the piece would serve well as a focal point. If no plaza spot is
available, I’m okay with that. It is, however, important that
KETCHUP! be sited somewhere in a high traffic area without being too
close to a high volume sound system, which would overwhelm the
deliberately low-key Ketsup Advisory Board soundtrack and make our
fry cooks grumpy.
Interactivity
The non-physical component of KETCHUP! is experimenting with ways of
increasing human interactivity, and is the most important component
of the installation. The basic level is giving away food, but doing
so in enormous quantites tends to commodify the experience. In order
to de-commodify human interaction as much as possible, participants
unassociated with the core KETCHUP! crew are actively encouraged to
become fry cooks. These people will have the greatest depth of
experience relating to the installation, but fry cooks represent a
minute fraction that KETCHUP! aims to reach.
The primary method of de-commodification is to gift an uncooked,
unchopped potato with every order of finished fries. People are
encouraged to regift that raw potato to someone else and send them
back to KETCHUP! to turn the raw potato into a hot fresh tasty snack.
The portability and durability of a raw potato allows the reach of
KETCHUP! to extend city wide rather than remaining local to the
installation. This potato regifting is the element of KETCHUP! that
is wholly de-commodified. The regifting can take place anywhere, at
any time, for any reason. Aside from “gifter” and
“recipient,” the roles emerging from potato regifting are
unique to each individual exchange. The fry cook(s) that hand the
colored gift potato might or might not impart a mission to the
potato: “give this to someone wearing wings” or “give
this to someone who is lying down” or “give this to
someone that you love” or. . . . .???? Who knows.
Gift potatoes will be color coded by dipping in food dye. Red on
Monday, Orange on Tuesday, Yellow on Wednesday, Green on Thursday,
Blue on Friday, Indigo on Saturday, Violet on Sunday. As regifted
potatoes return to the installation for frying, the potato color,
regift time and location will be recorded. (I will be seeking help
from volunteers via the volunteer desk at Playa Info to help record
this data, and ultimately if the data were sporadic or entirely
uncollected, the basic functionality of KETCHUP! would be
unaffected.)
Post-event, the data derived will be collated into a time-lapse
animation demonstrating the travels of the potatoes across BRC. The
resulting animation should be visually interesting by itself, but
will also serve as a rough analog of how potatoes, ideas, stories,
experiences, etc. travel back and forth across BRC. In a fairly
rudimentary and incomplete way, this data will illuminate degrees of
interconnectivity among the citizens of BRC.
Additional items/assistance:
Via Black Rock City:
1 burn barrel through DPW to burn fry paper
Many “census” volunteers to help record potato gifting patterns
A link or shout out on BM website encouraging people to bring potatoes
Hopefully I can re-fill propane tanks on site during the event?
That I either have or can get which do not need funding include:
Everything for the sound component (Ipod, wires, batteries, old car speakers)
Propane tanks, regulator, fire extinguishers
Folding tables, ladders for erection/dismantling
China cat and filters for fry grease
Water buckets/coolers, soap, bleach etc for hand washing station
Hats, gloves to comply w/ sanitation code
In
addition, I’ll host a couple get-togethers here during
construction to fundraise, and more importantly to help with the
work. I’ll put a shout out for people to bring bags of raw
potatoes to the event and donate them at KETCHUP! but I have no way
to know for certain how many potatoes this will bring. Throughout
the fabrication process, I’ll be looking for cheaper sourcing
of materials, so long as they do not compromise the structural
integrity of the sculpture or food safety concerns.
Crew
Although I am relying on assistance from others, the completion of
the sculptural component lies ultimately on my shoulders. I have
prior experience with every aspect required to build KETCHUP! The
main unexplored territory for me in terms of material use and
fabrication rests in the degree of precision required for a properly
illuminated piece. KETCHUP! represents weaving together elements of
prior projects into a far more complex whole.
My wife, Katherine, is my biggest support crew. Her main experience
lies in architectural design, as well as large scale sculptural
design/fabrication/installation experience with 3 dimensional fabric
sculpture. Much help from her in fitting and sewing the skin, and
she is also very good at patting me on the knee and saying “there
,
there, sweetie.”
John Cocula will help mainly with the sound and light aspects of the
piece. Last year he brought a mobile photo booth to BRC, powered by
12VDC employing lights, sound, computer imaging and photo processing.
John is also the tech guy post-event to make the computer animation.
George Cooper will assist mainly in fabrication of the armature. He
is a carpenter and neighbor with a full woodshop (which I do not
have) and a desire to participate in the madness.
Mike Maung and Becky Stember are artists. Mike builds hot air
balloons, owns a construction business and designs and builds the
effigy for Ka Pilina, the Hawaiian Regional.
On-playa crew
Core crew onsite will consist of Katherine, John, Becky and Mike.
My aim is to design/build KETCHUP! in such a way that it will take a
minimum crew of 4 people 5 hours to erect, but this is quite
optimistic. I intend to drag many more people into the process. A
guy I met in college who now lives in Knoxville that *might* make it
out to BRC for his first time, and I’m open (desperate!) to
anyone else joining up either pre-event or on playa.
The aspect of KETCHUP! that will demand a lot of unskilled labor is
physically serving fries during the event. This aspect is intended
to be far more open and participatory than the construction and
installation process of the sculpture.
I’ll mainly be camping with and enlisting the aid of people
through the Hawai’ians of Ka Pilina as core crew and serving
staff. This core staff should comprise around 20-30 people and will
cover at least one of the two fry cook positions at all times. These
people will be “trained” in terms of safe food
preparation, how to shut things down quickly in the event of an
emergency, etc.
I’ll bring 100+ paper chef’s hats as a “uniform”
and entice complete strangers at the event to run KETCHUP! for as
long as they wish. No one will be expected to slave away an entire
evening, all will be offered the opportunity to slave away a handful
of hours. The only requirement is a good ‘tude and a desire to
gift french fries. Also no open sores or cuts on hands, as per
health dept. regulations.
A main goal is to have no less than 50 random people serve as fry
cooks. These are people that I have never met before, people that
have never heard of KETCHUP! These are the immigrants who have come
to Black Rock City for reasons unique to themselves. These are
people who are not necessarily involved in any other project, theme
camp, or artwork on the playa. Some of these people will be
attending Burning Man for the first time and won’t realize that
they’re participating until they are in the midst of doing so.
Feeding people feels good, and it’s simply the right thing to
do. The opportunity to actively participate as a full and equal
citizen of Black Rock City regardless of race, color, or creed should
be extended equally to all. This is the essence of KETCHUP!, Burning
Man, and of the American Dream.
Pre-event fabrication timeline
Several aspects of
fabrication will be occurring in parallel, especially the skin and
“label” going on in Boston while the armature begins in
NC.
March: Fabricate wood portion of armature. 2x4’s
drilled and ripped into slats for lattice body. Slats are then
sanded and stained. Mark, cut, screw+glue plywood arcs to form 3
segmented circles, leaving interior channels for sound and light
wiring. Sand and stain.
April: Cut and finish aircraft cables to proper lengths. Host
“nut party” to assemble slats into lattices and erect the
basic armature of KETCHUP! Post-party, begin fitting the skin to the
armature. This process includes attaching snap-fittings to both the
armature and the sailcloth.
May: Construct the label-shaped doorframe and integrate
seamlessly into lattice wall of cylinder. A bit involved as the
doorframe is curved rather than flat, and connections need to be
found and made between the lattice wall and the doorframe keeping in
mind that the doorframe itself is structurally integral to the
sculpture as a whole. This will probably be the most technically
challenging aspect of the armature.
The cylinder portion of the skin will require modification at this
point as well. After doorframe has been fabricated and integrated
into the lattice wall of the cylinder, a hole will need to be cut in
the main skin to open the doorway. The perimeter of this hole then
needs to be serged and reinforced with patches on the sewing machine,
then finished with snap-fittings to match fittings on the doorframe.
This portion of the process will involve a great deal of fitting,
measuring, modifying, and re-fitting. It will probably drag on into
June. Fortunately, I have an interior space large enough to
accommodate leaving the cylinder erected throughout this process.
June: Layout and fabrication of wording on 2 labels, both
door and top of bottle neck.
May - July: (ongoing) Integrate lighting and sound into piece.
The sound is easy, but placement of the lighting needs to be fairly
exact to achieve diffuse glow rather than spots of luminescence.
Lighting in cone section will be tricky, as all lights need to be
angled to parallel the skin of the cone, which is non-vertical. Main
trial and error portion will revolve around the doorframe. Final
field installment to be made by end of July.
August: Round up the posse, gather the gear, pack the trailer
and head west.
On-Playa schedule
Wednesday: Arrive, check in, find KETCHUP! location and pitch
camp.
Friday: Erection of sculpture should take 6-8 hours in zero
to moderate wind.
Send truck and trailer back to civilization to collect
perishables.
Saturday: Install batteries, fryers, propane, table, potatoes,
chopper, etc.
Sunday: “Extra” time budgeted in case of sustained
windy conditions and to repair/finish everything that has gone awry
thus far. Final light and sound checks, fire up the fryers, toast
the ketchup gods, piece should be “turn-key” by sun-down.
Monday: Actively recruit volunteer/participants to help staff
the installation; game on at sundown.
Daily: A.M. Ground Sweep. Night time fry production.
2nd Monday: Break down structure,
final ground sweep. Checkout @ Artery.
Tuesday: Final packing and departure from Black Rock Desert.
Leave No Trace
KETCHUP!
will have zero lasting impact on the playa. The main extent of its
temporary physical impact will be two-fold.
Fries will be
served in paper baggies, and after eating the fries, the baggies
become MOOP. MOOP alleviation comes in the form of a burn barrel,
located a few feet away from the main KETCHUP! installation. Every
serving of fries will be accompanied by verbal
encouragement/instruction to burn the discarded paper cone in the
burn bottle. It will be assumed that french fry eaters are
completely ignorant of LNT ethics. This education is an inherent
element of the overall piece, and congruous with the ethos of the
culture.
Only YOU can sustain a fire!!!
A small amount of
fry grease will inevitably be splattered or spilled from the fryers
onto the ground. Fry grease balls up when contacting playa.
Periodically during the event, and very, very thoroughly at the end
of the event, the ground inside the KETCHUP! bottle will be raked to
gather all greaseballs for disposal offsite in landfill. Nobody
likes a greaseball.
Outside
the main KETCHUP! bottle, there will be zero spillage of fry grease.
There will inevitably be a modicum of spilled or discarded french
fries and random glops of ketchup. These fries and ketchup will be
swept every morning by people wearing bamboo hats, using bamboo
rakes, wearing bamboo “uniforms”, working in a
contemplative, zen-like manner. The refuse retrieved by the
International Bamboo Workers of the World will be packed out of the
event while the space surrounding the main KETCHUP! piece will be
raked into quasi-concentric patterns reminiscent of a zen rock
garden. By encouraging people to throw their spent paper fry cones
into the nearby burn bottle, it is hoped that people will consume
their fries in close proximity to reduce the likelihood of people
wandering off a few blocks down the way and dropping their cones and
or fries on the ground.
Aside from these two main impacts, the installation and
deconstruction of the KETCHUP! sculpture will have zero impact.
Eight ground screw anchors will be sunk into the playa, but other
than this the sculpture sits on top of the ground and will neither
decompose nor shred in the wind.
The bridge between matter and spirit is matter becoming spirit. MOOP
is the devolution of spirit (intended utility) into base materiality
(unintentional garbage). MOOP is not merely a physical nuisance, it
represents the antithesis of ephemeralizing matter into mind.
Education is the key to eliminating MOOP. Verbal education with each
fry cone and the visual education inherent every morning in watching
or participating in a daily MOOP raking contribute towards educating
people about the central importance of Leaving No Trace both on-playa
and in the world at large.
IMAGE 1: Flattened View; Structural. Truncated cone (top), Cylinder (bottom).
Gray lines represent
wooden lattice. Blue lines represent cables. Armature is in two
sections, the lower being cylindrical, the upper a truncated cone.
Each drawing represents 31.4 foot width, 15’9” height.
Total height = 31’6”, total diameter = 10’.
IMAGE 2: Neck Label Detail
I’m guessing that there are 17 regional burns at this point.
IMAGE 3: Illumination Ring Detail, Section
Cast resin employed to
anchor LED bulbs to ring, as well as forming a single “lense”
across the exposed surface of the 16 LED bulbs for easier cleaning.
Playa dust loves the nooks and crannies between individual LED bulbs,
rapidly compromising luminosity.
IMAGE 4: Illumination Ring, Ground
IMAGE 5: Main Label Detail
This label is also the
doorway of the piece. During daylight hours, the label is in place,
meaning that the installation is “closed.” At night, the
bottom half of the label is rolled up so that KETCHUP! can function
as a fry shack. When “open,” BURNZ – TATER FRIED
will still be visible. The reason the label is rolled up rather than
being completely removed is in case of sudden wind blowing into the
doorway, the label can be quickly rolled down and fastened to the
doorframe to prevent the piece from acting as a giant wind sail.
Do y’all consider
Burningman to have begun in 1986? The gross weight would be the
actual weight of the sculpture. 147 Kilos is just a guess, at this
point.