Shane Evans
Robot Resurrection welcomes fair-goers to “The Greatest Show and Tell on Earth.”
Shane Evans describes Robot Resurrection, his 28-foot-tall, 2,000-pound fire-breathing robot, as both sculpture and entertainment.
Evans created the robot from eight large pieces of reused airplane parts. Every 30 minutes, he climbs inside the torso/cockpit to animate the robot’s arm and head with mechanical controls. The robot’s body lights up as it shoots fire from its hands and mouth.
“Most of what we throw away can be fixed,” Evans says. “It can have a second life. The robot is so large, it draws attention and raises attention for recyclability and repurposing things.”
Robot Resurrection is one of nine national acts to be featured at the Madison Mini Maker Faire on May 13. The Maker Faire, a traveling road show from Maker Media, is billed as “The Greatest Show and Tell on Earth,” and will also feature local makers.
It’s a family-friendly celebration of the maker movement, which is made up of individuals who create their own products, using everything from centuries-old skills like blacksmithing and woodworking to high-tech computer skills and can even extend to shenanigans such as drone gaming.
“Drone gaming is still primarily a do-it-yourself hobby,” says Gregg Novosad, founder of GoDroneX. Drones can be built at home, and the pilot must have technical knowledge to maintain and repair the machine. GoDroneX will be bringing 2-ounce, 70-millimeter, radio-controlled multiloader aircrafts to the fair.
The company will also host an entertainment called Drone Clan Wars. Two teams of experienced pilots will fly the drones through an obstacle course devised like a videogame with beginning, intermediate and advanced levels of play. The drones collect points by touching pads at the center of the arena. They are equipped with video piloting, which allows the human pilots to wear goggles and see the race course from the drone’s point of view. Spectators are able to follow the video piloting via television screens that also display animated graphics.
GoDroneX may not look like a do-it-yourself project, but it is.
Maker Faires are “more STEAM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics] than STEM,” says Heather Sabin, tourism coordinator at Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, site of the Madison event.
Maker Faires emphasize hands-on engagement. “It’s a place where people show what they are making and share what they are learning,” says Sabin.
Nancy Judd, founder of Recycle Runway, is bringing her traveling exhibition of eco-couture fashion sculptures made of trash and will lead one of the hands-on workshops.
Judd’s fashion sculptures will include the Caution Dress, created from caution tape recovered from the sides of roads and sewn into a vintage-style sundress; the Aluminum Drop Dress, a 1920s retro flapper frock made from a used shower curtain and embellished with teardrops and circles cut from aluminum cans; and a faux fur coat, made from cassette and video tape looped to create the fur and a secondhand prom dress as the lining.
Her workshop participants will cut up and repurpose old T-shirts into such new items as hats, skirts and dog toys. T-shirts are “a great lens [to look] at the impact of consumerism, both socially and environmentally,” Judd says. “Just one T-shirt has such a huge environmental impact, and when we look at the ubiquitousness of T-shirts specifically — and they’re throwaway things. That’s really just the tip of the iceberg of all the things we consume that go through the same process.”
Watch out! It’s the Caution Dress from Recycle Runway.
Peter Krsko, current artist-in-residence at UW-Madison, will lead a hands-on community art project.
Originally from Slovakia, Krsko has a Ph.D. in biophysics and material science, which provides a framework for his art examining natural phenomena: “What do bubbles look like inside foam?” Krsko says. “Bubbles are spherical only if they are surrounded by air. When they come into proximity to other bubbles, their whole meeting point becomes a flat point. They turn into multifaceted, geometric shapes.”
Krsko will provide wooden sticks, glue guns and pliers for participants to build a collaborative model of bubble foam. The interactive project is modeled after his art piece “Inner Foam,” a metal sculpture that represents a geometric study of flexible cells. It is currently installed in the Discovery Building at UW-Madison and will be on display at Monona Terrace.
“It’s a great opportunity to use art for educational purposes, to teach science in a very engaging and fun, playful way,” says Krsko. By building the collaborative sculpture, participants will be able to see how the shape of each bubble depends on the shape of neighboring bubbles.
Arc Attack, described as part rock concert and part science experiment, will have on hand two custom-engineered, hand-built Tesla coils that throw out electrical arcs up to 12 feet long. Nick Ferry will present woodworking demonstrations, and Cardboard Teck Instantute will demo its “PinBox 3000,” a tabletop pinball system made of recycled cardboard.
Local makers include cast iron artworkers from FeLion Studios and mosaic artists from Backyard Mosaic Women’s Project. Jesse Ransom will also bring his bike hacking station.
Advance tickets for the fair are $10/adults and $5/kids 5-11 (kids under 5 are free); tickets at the door are $15/$8. See more info and ticket portal at madison.makerfaire.com.
