The Mechabolic: Physical Specifics

The Mechabolic creature will be a large sculpture of mixed materials, environments and processes. The sculpture will be much a walkthrough stage set and fun house interactive experience, as it is a discrete object for aesthetic and sensual consideration.

We expect it to measure somewhere around 120 feet in length, 20 feet in width and 15-25 feet tall. The sections of the body will be premade on skids and containerized, with the superstructure formed through a combination of hoop and stretched cloth construction, as well as transparent inflatables. Various cantankerous machines, stainless steel tank processors, clear process plumbing, V-8 dragster engines, wood chippers, fleshy surfaces, flowers, storage bladders, etc etc etc, will fill out the spaces. A weird fantastical mash up of hot rod chrome fetishism with exploded innards, insides made outsides, fleshy biological anatomy.

The current plan is to make the creature mobile, but we are also considering doing it as a stationary installation. The original notion was a stationary installation, but Dann Davis and Michael Christian, the leaders of the creature conceptualization, design and building, really want to make it move. This does make sense, of course, as scavenging animals move to their food, not have their food brought to them. Details on the locomotion scenario are a the end below in a separate section.

Whether we make it mobile or stationary in the end, the basic assembly of organs and materials to make the superstructure remain the same, so we are not formally committing to one of the other quite yet. The main difference, obviously, is that the mobile version will need a much more complicated floor/belly, and related locomotion system. The materials and budget items that relate to the locomotion are easily separated from the current proposal if we eventually decide against the moving version.

The creature is divided into 3 separate section, roughly cooresponding to the head/neck, chest, and abdomen. The biological organs and processes in each of these body cavities informs the arrangement of fuel processing and combustion equipment in the creature. The creature is exploring the machine parallels to BOTH digest and respiration, with some added allusions to the plant and microbial worlds that are related to each.

The technologies we are engaging towards these ends are gasification, anerobic digestion and terra preta bio char sequestration. Gasification processes the dry biomass to fuel. Digestion processes the wet biomass to fuel. And terra preta uses the byproduct of each to sequester carbon as a soil enhancing fertilizer. The combination will allow us to convert various types of trash at the event into fuel for both mobility and fire effects, and do so ultimately do so in a carbon NEGATIVE footprint. (for more information on newly developing scenarios of terra preta, see the summary here. A longer academic paper is here.

Solid waste biomass in dry form is available on the playa as waste wood (both participant and dpw), paper trash (both participant and project), coffee grounds from the center café, and surely more we have yet to realize. Wet waste biomass is most likely food scrap from both camps and the commissary. We will not be digesting or contending the poo in the Johnny on the Spots. Human manure take about one month to digest, so it is not possible over the period of the event to do too much with it.

Here's the specifics of the three main "cavities":

1. Head: fuel/food preparation and standardization (i.e. chewing). Machines will include a wood chipper, paper shredder and pellet mill and wet food mascerator. The products of these processed waste streams will be conveyed to the abdomen by clear transport
pipes and/or conveyer belts. The chipped and pelleted dry biomass will be stored in a "fuel pile" and made available for art cars with wood gas conversions.

2. Chest- The chest will re-render the "Breathing/Burning" of carbohydrates/hydrocarbons to carbon dioxide through a double lung V-8 engine inflatable orchid terrarium, large scale vertical fire effect with V-8 driven wind slip stream, and bio char fertilizer/sequestration.

The "terrariums" somewhat mix the respiration of plants, (inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen) with animal respiration (inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide). The lungs are wrapped around the center blown V-8 hot rod motor, with the dragster style exhaust "zoomies" wrapping around the lungs like ribs and/or blood vessels. Additional "blue blood vessels" will branch off the ceiling in the terrariums, with the main trunk going to the intake of the V-8. With the exhaust zoomies in red and the intake "blood vessels" in blue, the central V-8 will "breathe" with the aesthetics of its biological parallel.

The "terrariums" will be enterable environments, where participants can wander and relax, enjoying a collection of orchids and ferns, set over a floor of black biochar.

The V-8 driven propeller, cowling and wind stream will extend out the top of the creature using a somewhat flexible steel and fabric sock. This is the "trachea", where the engine and pyro effect respirate the made fuel into a swirling vortex of exhalation- which we might call the "throat of fire". Fire effects in the throat of fire will include typical ICP-type pressurized liquid flamethrowers, and continuous and burst flow gaseous fuels.

3. Abdomen- The abdomen will contain the gasification, liquefaction and digestion processors to make fuel for both the onboard engines as well as all fire effects. The Mechabolic will only "burn" fuel it makes from trash at the event. Zero purchased petroleum products will be used.

Real time gaseous fuel production for the engines and liquefaction processes will happen via a downdraft gasifier. This will be skidded with the associated cylone filter, cooling unit and dry gas filter.

A second and much larger updraft gasifier will make gaseous fuel for the wind slip stream fire effect. This will burn with a clean blue flame, in a manner similar to the images here, but at much larger scale.

A third skid will hold various process tanks to support Fischer Tropsch liquefaction of the gasifier gas to a mixed gasoline/diesel product fuel. We are choosing to use the FT process, as do many DIY liquefaction efforts, as it is the only liquefaction process that can operate at atmospheric pressures, thus avoiding the difficulty and safety issues of negotiating fuel transactions under both pressure and heat.

A fourth skid will hold the anerobic digester and inflatable bladder storage, wound into an intestine like shape. Waste wet biomass food scrapes, unlike manures, allow for fast digestion processes, going from solid to methane gas in one to two days. The product gas will fuel the central fire effects, as well as an "eternal flame" at the anus of the creature.

All these components will be modular and containerized, so the resulting "sculpture" is made reasonably easy for transport and show in future venues. A major goal of this project is to exit out the end with a collection of containerized alt fuel "demonstration untis", ready for storage, transport and "roll right off the trailer" use in future contexts, both art and engineering.

Locomotion Scenarios:

Ideally we want the Mechabolic to move so as to "scavenge" for its food/fuel. Early designs considered building the creature as a sort of wheeled train, but the amount of axles, wheels, linkages, drive shafts, bearings, etc etc to do as such is daunting. the vehicle undercarriage alone could easily take up too much of the project time and effort.

So currently we are exploring the possibility of just giving it a flat belly and making it slither. Or in other words, drag it, REALLY really slow, using a track catepillar tractor built into the front of the mechabolic animal to pull it.

This would be rather interesting we think. No one has yet built anything between a stationary installation and an art car on the playa to date. No really slow moving objects that are neither stationary installation nor large rolling people conveyance, but rather a barely moving object with no visible wheels or discernable movement.

It would be a tolerable amount of work to make a snake scale belly sort of thing out of tiled sheet steel. 4' x 8' sheets, all nearly identical, each with a hole in the front and an attach pin at the back. Then lay them out tiled and and overlapped, from front to back. The lip overlap at the front of each one, as well as the tremendously large surface area would give plenty of flotation. (see here) Or do the belly as three larger plates, cooresponding to the three "cavities" of the creature, and form them with radii at the joints so the creature can turn. (see here)

Either form would not dig into the playa, given the huge flotation surface. The pressure on the playa would actually be much less than wheeled vehicles. And as the floor is solid and the beast is moving in inches per minute, not miles per hour, there would be almost zero dust. Also, stepping on and off the mechabolic would have no vertical elevation change, which would be interesting. The digestive/respirative "walk through" would be on the belly on the ground essentially.

Maybe we could come up with a path for it to follow over the week. Make about one playa crossing each day, so it is "installed" somewhere different each night. Maybe do a winding path from keyhole to trash fence, leaving a "slime trail" behind it, in the shape of a gigantic "small intestine". Well actually, that wouldn't work, as the trail would disappear in minutes from foot traffic. But still, it would kinda work.

I can slide a 20,000lb container building with my big forklift, riding only on sharp corners. So a tracked Catepillar D-6 or so would surely pull 30,000 lbs of perfectly flat steel and sculptural curiosities across the playa. But quantative modeling, as well as on site testing early in the project, would surely be needed before committing to this scenario and planning/building accordingly.

So in summary, it would be great if we could make it move, as animals move to scavenge for their food. But such is not a prerequisite for the project to be successful. The project can work well in either a stationary or mobile form. We can discuss and develop each scenario in more detail as we progress here.