SPECIAL THE FIRE MAKERS
Gregory Hayes
Playing with Fire
Meet makers who are not afraid to turn up the heat.
Jon Sarriugarte and Kyrsten Mate are a Bay Area maker couple whose creativity knows no bounds, as evidenced by their stunning Serpent Twins 50-foot kinetic mobile sculptures on this issue’s cover. They’ve exhibited projects at Maker Faire Bay Area since 2006 along with their daughter Zolie, now 8, who has grown up with the Faire. Jon recently gave us insight into the inspiration and tech specs for the Twins.
Gregory Hayes
What was the inspiration behind the Serpent Twins? At Burning Man (BM) 2010, we met some people from Northern Europe who wanted us to build a car for their festival. They have lots of water at the festival and I started thinking about a serpent powered by a jet ski. I remembered the factory down the street in West Oakland was throwing out green 55-gallon drums, which would work great for the body.
Kyrsten and I discussed it on our way home from BM, but by then we knew the Europe trip was underfunded, and our discussions turned to BM ground-based cars. I searched for months for the right base vehicle and finally came across two electric Taylor-Dunns. We had bounced back and forth from LED blinky body to steel and fire, and came up with the idea to do both! Yin and yang, his and hers, old school and new. Glad we did both.
Tell us your design process from concept to creation. We started with concept drawings done by Tansy Brooks and myself. Kyrsten found and compiled historical pictures and images, and over the span of several months, distilled the look we wanted. For the head and body, no shop drawings were made. We worked off the concept sketches, made life-sized cardboard models, and mocked up the head in pipe cleaners! Once the basic shapes were done, Kyrsten made paper patterns for the sheet metal, which were then transferred to steel and shaped by hammer and stump to fit our frame.
The body barrels were the most challenging, as every one was unique. What we thought would be an easy production line turned into 20 one-off trailers. The tail was sketched out on a napkin for our crewmates Toast [Jeffrey McGrew] and Jillian [Northrup] from Because We Can. Toast modeled it in CAD, I had my local metal supplier cut it on their plasma cutter, and in less than a week Toast and Jillian had the tails done just in time for Burning Man.
How long did they take to build? We call our crew the Empire of Dirt. This team, headed up by Kyrsten and myself, has many wonderful and talented people with skills in electrical engineering, welding, gaming, film, software, design, carpentry, arts, smithing, auto, and more. Without these people, their input, time, expertise, funds, and love for building, these creatures would not be here. I can’t think of a better family to work and play with!
I want people to really understand how much goes into a project like this. It took a little over four months over the summer with a crew of 40 people to build the Serpent Twins. We had a team making the head, barrel, and fins, converting and wiring the tow motor/head, and a team building the LED lighting and controls. All of these teams came together in the last weeks as the various pieces came out of the spray booth and final assembly took place. We have gone back now every summer to upgrade the lighting and repair various problems.
What’s under the hood? We used a Taylor-Dunn as the base vehicle. It’s a 24-volt electric tow motor originally from the NUMMI auto plant. We have 400 amphours of batteries with a backup generator in the tail and a 50-amp spine of power that runs the length of the beast. Propane is stored in the second barrel in the black serpent and feeds the head for the fireball generator that shoots a ball of flame 20+ feet. A 400-amp car stereo and 18" subwoofer with dual three-way speakers make the beast roar to life when one of Kyrsten’s custom serpent sounds is played.
The 15,000 RGB LEDs are controlled by a BeagleBoard in the head that talks to the custom “Serpent Charmer” PSoC boards designed by Keith Johnson though a WIZnet card. Each barrel acts as an individual network device pulling its code out as the packets pass by, refreshing and sending the rest to the remaining barrels. The math-based patterns are controlled from the cockpit though a MIDI controller with drum pads and knobs. We are able to choose from a variety of patterns and manipulate their speed, color, and pop flashes throughout the body.
This year the code team added a tablet interface, and we are currently designing a UI to teach kids and adult how math-based graphics work. This UI will allow the user to play with the numbers and see the changes they make right on the serpent. If you’re interested in helping, the code can be found at serpenttwins.com.
Being a husband and wife creative team, what is your collaboration process like? It’s challenging to keep our crew together, give our daughter the attention she wants, keep a house, work full time, and find spare time to do projects. Kyrsten works for Skywalker Sound cutting and mixing movie sound and I have my own company, Form & Reform (formandreform.com), where I design lighting for home and restaurants, and I now have several dozen custom lights at Restoration Hardware. As hard as it is to make the time, once we’re in full swing the creative juice flows, and as you can see we make some wonderful things together.
Does your daughter Zolie help with the builds? She has, and she continues to be more and more a full-fledged team member. She brings love and understanding to the meetings, introduced hand raising and talking in turns, and comes up with simple, fun ideas. She does some metalwork, including pounding out the fins on the Twins. You will find her in the shop with us most weekends working with someone and being very involved with our projects. She enjoys the crowds and performing as well.
Gunther Kirsch, Gregory Hayes (bottom)