Flying Tentacle Monster

The Flying Tentacle Monster was a collaboration between Janet Hansen and Brett Spivey, and was installed in the Black Rock Desert at Burning Man in August 2013.

The design blends a variety of our favorite tricks:

• relatively easy-to-assemble structure that could be packed smaller for easier transport
• durable enough to withstand harsh playa dust, wind, and rain conditions (challenging, but we survived)
• expandable monster “head” made from an articulated plastic Hoberman sphere with animated LEDs at the vertices (RGB pointing outward, UV pointing inward)
• custom sheer fabric cover over the head
• flexible translucent tubes diffusing light from internal strips of RGB LED pixels (the tentacles), with mapped animated patterns
• UV-reactive glowing “eggs” being incubated at the tips of the tentacles, with twinkling UV light sources

Overall, the structure is about 8 feet tall, and the upper sphere is 3 feet in diameter.

video

The clip below demonstrates some of the animated patterns for this piece.