The MOB

For the 2005 Burning Man Festival I led a team of six collaborators to create a kinetic sculpture project.

The MOB is an array of thirty seven reflective wind vanes. Each one is the same shape – a human sized version of the now universal bathroom pictogram created by Otto Aicher for the 1972 Olympics but with one arm raised. Thirty six of the wind vanes are arranged in a hexagonal array and one stands apart.

Because the lone wind vane has its axis of rotation mounted on the opposite side of the others, it always points in the exact opposite direction. The intent is to convey the hubris, courage and loneliness of standing out from a crowd.