"The Deep" - D.C.'s Sonic Jellyfish Art Car

What good is a Burner Art Car without being sexy? And what good is a deep ocean themed art car without mermaids?

Exactly. Our resident artist is sculpting some great mermaid forms for the art car. Definitely safe for work, unless your work place has something against vaguely human looking chicken wire forms...

Using a "female" mannequin as the mold form. Add that with some chicken wire, and you've got this!

We're using pvc covered chicken wire, and a lot of elbow grease to sculpt and shape the form.

One of the main requirement of the Burn is to make your mutant vehicle NOT look like a normal vehicle. To do that takes art. So one of our artists has literally been at it like a mad obsessed creating some fantastic deep ocean forms of for the car, using foam rubber, chicken wire, and craft store fabrics.

What's she's creating looks like something out a kelp forest reef mish mash.

Here's the before.

And here's the continuing after:

The artists are hard at work...

So, after several incarnations, we settled on this concept of the Deep.

... as opposed to the original concept, which was this:

... due to the conditions of Black Rock Desert. Wind powered vehicles are banned from Burning Man because of a bunch of incidents years ago where a vehicle couldn't stop and mowed down several people.

For added safety, our seamstress is going to add wind slits to cut down at least half of the surface area of the bell.

But the hardest part of the project so far is the bell.

Which we built out of PEX tubing.

The results weren't half bad.

That's me standing with it.

• Expensive
• They bend too much, which makes sense when you're landing a big fish. But not for what we're doing.

So we went with a greener, local, and when properly made into a composite fiberglass, far stronger alternative. That's timber bamboo. And here in the Washington D.C. area, bamboo grows everywhere. We cut the bamboo poles nearby Rockcreek Park. There's a crap load of bamboo growing around here, so my buddy and I figured we'd do a public service and remove some of it, as it's considered an invasive species.

Next, we had to mount it to the frame of the golf cart. For that, we used deep sea fishing rod holders with stainless steel mounts.

And then it was time for the moment of truth.

Now, while the bamboo performed well, while it's GREEN, when it dries that's a whole other story. Bamboo is Nature's Carbon Fiber. And it is very strong, with a strength to weight ratio that's already stronger than steel. But, even though it will maintain its strength while dry, especially longitudinally, lattitude wise it's not as strong. That's where we'll combine the natural strength of bamboo with fiberglass and epoxy resin to create a mast that's several orders of magnitude stronger than steel.

It's been a long hard slog building this thing, and we're almost there. But in the meantime, here's a video explaining the D.C.'s the Deep Art Car.

And you can see more about our crowd funding campaign for it here.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-deep-dc-s-dancing-jellyfish-chariot#/story