Buellton, California
The Ember Field – Walk into Wildfire at the Buellton Rec. Center
Ethan Turpin, of the Burn Cycle Project, hired The Environment Makers, once again, to help design and make the latest, large, three-screen, immersive installation of Wildfire. Each, in its turn, has had its challenges and the exhibition we collectively concocted for Buellton, California, was no exception.
We planned on setting it up in an inside basketball court at the Buellton Rec Center. In the center of the court, was an enormous, cartoon logo of their mascot, a bulldog. It didn’t go with the ambiance we intended to create and needed to be hidden. We opted to cover it, and much of the surrounding floor, with 1100 square feet of mulch. This gave more of an impression of being in a forest and meant that we could also project embers onto it to make it look as though a fire had just rolled through. To this, we added actual burned branches and logs that were also projection mapped. The results proved to be incredibly realistic.
The show was opened by the Mayor of Buellton and was a resounding success.
