One of our favorite things about the Word Play Cafe team is that there are members from multiple camps within the BLD Village. We are excited to be collaborating as a village to bring this unique and timely project to Burning Man. We know that pandemic has stoked an interest in word games for new players as well as offering both new and veteran fans of these games innovative puzzles, like Wordle, to engage the mind and connect with other players online. We look forward to creating a physical space for these games at Burning Man where word players can mingle in person!
Though our project is new, our dome has a storied history. The dome made its Burning Man premier in 2000 as part of the Black Light Village. This village was a series of camps, each with different themes. All the camps were decorated with structures that would illuminate in wonderful colors when lit at night with blacklight. This was before LEDs were commonplace so this set up created a special visual effect. This village did not end up as a permanent installation but the dome continued to visit the playa on a regular basis. It has been home to projects including the Love Project, Operation Desert Snuggle, and Attention Camp. It was even considered by a camp needing a dome for circus acts.
Eventually, the dome went into hibernation and was not seen in Black Rock City for many years, but it poked its head out again in 2018 as a spa treatment room. Pandemic led to even more years of rest, but now this dome is ready to get dusty again as the home of the Word Play Cafe.
Having access to a 30ft dome is only the beginning of creating our space. The real challenge is to actually build the structure so we decided to come out from behind our zoom screens for the first Word Play Cafe offsite, a test build of the dome structure. We are lucky to be friends with some fellow burners with a giant backyard and they agreed to host us for the day. Alas, EKE, one of our core team members, could not join us due to COVID. We did our best throughout the day to capture on video everything we could so that they would have a solid road map when they are leading the dome build on playa.
A crucial step in any large dome build is transportation. We have a 4V dome with a payload of over 700 pounds including 250 struts and hardware to connect 91 vertices. We started our day ‘heavy’ donning our work gloves and loading all the bundles and hardware into a truck. We quickly found that the best way to do this was lining up in a daisy chain running from the storage space into the truck to minimize the number of people needing to deadlift the bundles.
With a couple stops at hardware stores to get some missing parts, we rallied at our buildsite where we were greeted by two fantastic domemasters: Jason Fisher who was part of the original Black Light Village team and Howard Cohen, a seasoned dome builder and BLD resident.
Unfortunately, when we went to unload the truck we hit our first speed bump. The truck bed was covered with a moopy mess of red flakes that had come off the red struts. Luckily EMU offered to repaint over the red struts with a clear coat. This is easier than sourcing the exact paint that was used before and will significantly lessen the MOOP from our project. The other colors do not seem to flake.
Building a geodesic dome requires an immense level of precision. A single mistake, if not caught immediately, could result in the need to tear down hours of work to replace a mistaken strut depending on how far along you are when the mistake is discovered.
More than anything else, this is where the black light history of the dome acted as a guiding light for our build. Because each strut type was painted a different color we did not need to squint to find the carving in each piece telling us which part it was. Even better, Burners from the original build had taken the black and white instructions and traced over them with corresponding colors so we could easily refer to the different struts by color. This also helped us visualize the complex patterns in each section.
As we got started our dome masters gave us two pieces of tactical advice. First, during a build, the joints need plasticity so it is important not to tighten any screws beyond a couple of turns until the structure is up. Related to this, we were told to “rattle the frame” throughout the build to make sure the struts fall back into their desired place (moving the dome closer to its final shape with every strut added) rather than drooping down because of gravity. If the joints were too tight, this redistribution of weight could not occur and eventually the struts would no longer be possible to join.
The second lesson was about the direction of the struts. Though on first glance it may seem as if they can be placed in either direction, each strut has a very subtle curve inward. These curves must bend in towards the center of the dome. After some work, we got our first layer done!
We also learned that “holder upper” will also be a needed volunteer position as supporting the heavy structure to keep it in place while someone fastens the bolts will be required.
Things started to get a little dicey as we approached the second layer. First, the pattern quickly got more complex. QA checks comparing the build with the charts will be required on a continual basis. During our build on playa, we will likely need one or two volunteers with exceptional attention to detail to be our Quality Assurance engineers. Additionally height quickly became a limiting factor. Our team is pretty tall overall but we needed every inch of TSK’s reach (he is 6’3”) to secure the second layer. As we were doing this, we all agreed that our build would require hard hats for anyone in or around the dome. A slip could be dangerous to those on the bottom holding ladders or using their weight to support the dome.
This is also when it also became clear that we had become the victims of our own poor planning. We were dehydrated, dirty and hungry. We’d been working for hours with no breaks and had not planned breaks for food, water or rest. Hungry + Hot makes a build team a little bit grumpy, especially when Door Dash messes up the order. This period was as key to our test build as getting familiar with the struts and joints. It’s been a while since we’ve been to the playa and it will be much less forgiving out there than in a friend’s backyard. Water, Shade and H.A.L.T. (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) breaks will be key to a happy build in Black Rock City.
With food in our bellies, we thought we’d give the third layer a try but ultimately decided it would not be safe to proceed without hard hats, more ladders and a bigger crew. We carefully took the dome down, strut by strut and put it back in the piles they started the morning in.
Though we did not finish the build, we were able to get a good sense of what the challenges will be, and familiarize ourselves with the mechanics of the build and the team dynamics that will be required to create our projects home. We also had a lot of fun getting to know each other better in person. We even recruited a new friend!
Update: June 26: We solved the red paint moop issue!
2 Responses
Does the same build up team also have to strike…? Or is the strike team a different set of volunteers. ?
Hi Le Yah Moonstar,
Thanks for the question!
The build and strike team can be a different set of volunteers. I know that some folks won’t be available early but will be available later, especially since strike time is “during the event” when most people expect to be around, and build time is before the event when not everyone will be able to come early.