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The Mechabolic: Clean Up (and its relation to set up)

The Mechabolic will be a containerized installation to the greatest extent possible. We are planning this project in a manner so that it will survive in usable forms for future contexts, Burning Man related and otherwise. We are therefore avoiding "loose part" on-site builds wherever possible.

All creature organs and processes will be self-contained, modular units, either skidded on container floors, or skidded on custom platforms, sized for easy fit inside a standard shipping container. Similarly, all superstructure and locomotion items will be designed and fabricated for easy containerizationl. We intend to make all Mechabolic components to fit into two 40' containers, Russian Doll style. And do so with each module still assembled, allowing for easy individual module demonstration in future contexts, without having to rebuild the entire installation from scratch.

This containerization strategy was the original motivation for the container based Shipyard art/build facility. Following the very painful "stuff everywhere and always in pieces" nature of the stock puppets, I decided that i would never build another large art project except in a manner that it could be easily stored and transported in shipping contianers. No rented box trucks filled to the rafters with a million loose parts, all ending up as a dusty rusty pile in your shop the following winter. Containers allow for transport and storage in the same structure, with forklift trasfer between the two modes, no loading and unloading required.

Over the ensuing years, this formula elaborated into an intention to also use the container itself as the foundation for the artwork. The shipping container as the sculpture, as the transport, as the storage. However, given our need for organic "non-square" shapes in the Mechabolic, I doubt we will be able to use containers in raw form for the organs. But skidding each organ and having it easily fork into and out of a container, assembled and ready to go, is nearly as good.

A containerized building and transport strategy will create a desert set up involving next to zero on site immaculate building. All components will arrive "pre-assembled" and only need to be set in place for a forklift and snap plumbed together. The superstructure will require more "by piece" assembly of the hoops and cloth, but all these pieces just slide into fixture "poles holes" and the cloth is stretched like a shade awning.

Likewise, this modular building strategy will make take down and clean up more of an effort of "truck loading" than object disassembly and loose part chasing.

To expediate set up, maintenance and take down, we propose trucking the Shipyard forklift to the desert for the combined use of the Mechabolic, Neverwas Haul and Serpent Mother projects. The current DPW formal scheduling and "DPW only operators" make quick adjustments and fixes of unexpected problems very difficult to handle in an efficient manner. It is difficult to schedule problems and fixes, and when clear long engagements are needed, DPW equipment is often stretched between several differnent projects and needs to break in the middle of long projects to go tend to other needs. We therefore think it would be a good investment to have our own forklift for discretionary use, 24/7. I will offer my 15,000lb capacity forklift free of charge for use by these three projects, but request money to haul it there and back.

As for direct clean up, I believe the most important strategy is to have clear up front agreements on responsibilities, as well as publically stated "can't leave before x date" mutual understandings. Each sub project leader in the Mechabolic will have to agree to remain in the desert until the entire project is back in the contianers, the site picked clean and magnet broomed, with a final walk line survey. No individual decisions that clean up is "done", and it is ok to leave now because the person is tired. All the project leaders have to stay until we can all sign off on the clean up effort together.

Trash at the end should be a non-issue, as the Mechabolic eats trash for its food/fuel. The only real expected "discard" is the charash byproduct of gasification, which we will use for terra preta fertilizer in the lung terrariums. After the event, we want to leave this fertilizer for a local agricultural use, where the charash carbon will be sequestered by the plow and transformed into fuel for the next crop, not released as methane, nitrous oxide and CO2 during rotting, as would have otherwise happened had the original trash just gone to the dump.

Completing the biomass cycle in this manner, the Mechabolic project will operate with a quantifyable green house gas NEGATIVE footprint. The total Mechabolic effort will remove more CO2 and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than it will emit through powering itself and its fire efforts. Such is the real and interesting "clean up" that the Mechabolic project will bring to the desert this year.

The thoughful burning of things through gasification, is very different than the regular burning of things through open combustion.