Love Burn Recap! What a hectic burn this was. Amazing, healing, emotional, and filled with head-scratching technical difficulties that prevented the Interactive Energy Ball from ever being displayed properly. I started writing a blog post from the playa on Saturday, but for the sake of concatenating the whole experience into a single finished statement, I’ll be transferring what I wrote there into this entry below. Enjoy.
A few months ago for Christmas (and as payment for busting my ass on a work project), my boss gifted me an 8K short-throw projector, a 72-inch retractable projector screen, and a surround-sound home theater speaker system. The aforementioned project involved eight 8K projectors and I never saw any of them in person (the project was set up overseas), but after seeing “MSRP $4,999.00” printed on the projector’s box, I assumed my boss purchased me the same high-end model we’d used with the project installation. I was ecstatic to finally have some real gear.
This projector and rest of the gear sat unused and untested in their boxes during the months leading up to Love Burn. In fact, I was a little scared by the idea of using my new fancy projector at the festival. Was it worth risking ruining such a nice piece of equipment by running it on the beach for several nights in a row? And what if something goes wrong? Would I have a backup plan? This fear drove me to research used ultra short-throw projectors on Facebook Marketplace and eBay.
There were zero ultra-short throw projectors for sale locally, but somehow, in a stroke of algorithmic magic, Facebook suggested a listing for only $650 (only $650?!!) that featured a nearly identical projector/screen/sound-system bundle to the one my boss had gifted me. Meanwhile, each of my item’s boxes listed an MSRP figure—Projector: $4,999.00. Screen: $799.99. Sound system: $4,600.00. Something didn’t add up. On one hand, I felt hurt that I’d been duped into believing my boss had purchased expensive equipment for me, yet on the other, I no longer felt apprehensive about using this cheap no-name equipment on the beach.
I told my friend-and-AV-expert Drew about my projector discovery and he asked me how big and what brand it was. After telling him it was actually a pretty small device, he warned me that a lot of no-name brands lie about the specs on their packaging. That was the last straw. Right after our call, on the afternoon of Monday, February 2nd, I finally decided to purchase an ultra short-throw projector—an Epson PowerLite 675W with zero (!) lamp hours for $200. The UPS shipping estimate was 2-4 days, meaning that at-worst, it’d arrive on Friday, February 6th; meaning that at-worst, I’d need to use my other projector for the first couple days of the festival.
On Wednesday, February 4th, the day before Love Burn, I finally tested the 8K short-throw projector my boss gifted me and, to my horror, learned that it was neither 8K nor short-throw. In a panic, I started brainstorming ideas for how I’d mount the projector so it could project onto my screen from further away, but after testing the projector’s keystone correction and seeing how blurry it made the non-centered areas of the screen, I accepted that using this fugazi projector for my installation was simply not going to happen.
I had to make due with what I had. I pivoted my energy toward prayers for my ultra-short throw to arrive in time and asked Drew to borrow his short-throw projector for a day in case mine didn’t. Good friend that he is, Drew agreed to lend his to me, but I could tell he wasn’t thrilled about the idea. Oh well. I hopped in my car and went to Virginia Key to scope my space and begin setup.
The spot allotted to me for my installation by the placement committee was near Boba’s Beach Bar. Luckily, I’m friendly with the crew at Boba’s and they gave me the leeway to decide exactly where I wanted to set up. There were multiple factors to consider:
- Visibility: How can I ensure my project isn’t hidden but also doesn’t get in anyone’s way?
- Space: Is there enough space for my gear, and, more importantly, for people to move and play behind the motion-tracking camera? Also, if I set up here, am I blocking any paths?
- Lighting: Are there lights nearby that might interfere with the projection or camera-tracking?
- Ease of setup: How easily can I mount my screen? Is there an accessible power line nearby?
After considering all these things, there was really only one good option.
There’s a path that opens from the main campground to the beach. This path leads to a fork. At the fork, head right and it takes you directly to Boba’s Beach Bar; head left, and it takes you to, um, some other art stuff that’s cool. At the fork itself are two palm trees. I chose to set up my installation right between them.
I hate to admit this since the nature in Virginia Beach Key Park is protected, but that Palm on the right required a bit of pruning since there were a bunch of low-hanging branches. I allegedly spent at least an hour gardening. Once I had the leaves cleared, I looped rope between the two trees and hung my projector screen from the rope using zip-ties. I fastened the bottom of my screen in place by looping a zip-tie from its bottom grip to a screw I drilled into a wood post that was already in the ground. Then, I added reinforcements by running zip-ties from the edges of the pole at the bottom of the screen to stakes I hammered into the ground (not pictured above). Even with all that, the screen still swayed when it got windy. Drew fixed this by moving the stakes from directly below the bottom edges of pole to further outwards so the zip-ties came down at an angle, changed my tie system from a pure vertical constraint into a guy-wire system, like how tents, antennas, and towers are stabilized. So simple, yet so perfect! I wish I would have thought of it myself.
On Thursday, I walked around and saw that several art projects weren’t yet finished being set up. Observing this, and learning my ultra-short throw projector wouldn’t be arriving until the next day, and not wanting to build karmic debt with Drew by using his projector, I decided to delay my project set up until Friday. I figured one more day of delay would add to the intrigue, if anything.
My projector arrived around noon on Friday. I went home almost immediately to grab it, because in Miami, timing the traffic patterns is everything. I was back in the park by 3:30. Still, since it was daytime and I didn’t see the need to prematurely introduce dust into my equipment, I decided to postpone setup until sundown.
That time came. Drew lent me a couple of milk crates to position the projector below the screen. It was my first time ever witnessing an ultra short-throw in action and I was blown away. Well, I had to fumble through some menus to flip the projection orientation, but it fit the screen well enough without any keystoning. To my pleasure, the 1200x800 resolution looked sharp.
Everything was going smoothly until I started the Unity scene. The big issue I ran into was extremely poor tracking from the Kinect. Like, unusable bad.
How did I not anticipate this?
During my research into finding a Kinect camera replacement, I learned that that my Kinect V2 performs body tracking using its infrared sensor, which being infrared, does not require a visible light source. Did I test this? Nope.
Instead, I subconsciously ignored memories from my first set-up experience with the Energy Ball in 2023—where I placed several colored area lights nearby to enhance body-tracking—and blissfully entered this burn festival with the impression that I’d be able to set up my installation in a completely unlit area.
I quickly realized how cooked I was. I couldn’t get any tracking skeletons to show up until I added a bit of area lighting, but the only lights I had were white and way too bright. Covering them with a towel helped, but not enough; hand-state tracking went from being completely unavailable to barely available only in a very narrow area directly in front of the camera. There was absolutely no way multiple people were going to be able to interact with my project at the same time. Lastly, perhaps due to the bad tracking, the energy balls I was able to create were way too huge.
I ended up putting away the Kinect and replacing the Interactive Energy Ball with a looped tutorial video I had downloaded from YouTube awhile ago about how to create and rug pull a meme coin in under 15 minutes. Funny timing considering the crypto market had completely crashed earlier that day. Anyhow, just imagine how confused people got when their peaceful psychedelic strolls along the beach got interrupted by visuals of a random shitcoin’s chaotic 5-second chart tracing into pump-and-dump scam. Not exactly your typical burner art piece, but thought provoking and rebellious in an unconventional way perhaps. It’d suffice for a night. I figured one more day of delay would add to the intrigue, if anything.
The next morning, I got up and began vibe coding under the gazebo next to Boba’s Beach Bar using a hotspot from my phone. It was a race against the mushrooms kicking in and I was up for the challenge. Adding a maximumUnscaledSize to the spheres was an easy fix, but getting the particles to faithfully adhere to the surface of the sphere during motion (something else I’d resolved to improve) proved too difficult to figure out. Oh well. The code was ready enough now and the real issue was finding some lighting. I cast out text requests for lighting in the Love Burn Artist WhatsApp group chat, then sent several personalized texts to friends of mine at the festival I thought might be able to help. I prayed to the playa that it’d provide.
Minutes later, I coincidentally struck up conversation with a guy named Peanut Butter who happened to be my camp’s designated electrician. After explaining my situation and showing him my gear, he cautioned that I’d probably only be able to afford adding a single colored light to my setup without tripping breaker giving power to my stuff, the beach bar, its DJ booth, and the art project next door. On the bright side, he grabbed a colored light from the Boba’s Bar DJ booth for me to use.
Now, my situation was truly a sticky one. I knew the light would help, but I couldn’t guarantee it’d fix body tracking entirely and couldn’t be sure until night time. I decided to let the day play out and went ahead and tripped on mushrooms. By the time I got back to camp around sunset, I’d formulated a plan.
The last time I attended Love Burn in 2024, I spent so much time on the construction of the art project I made with Drew and his wife Pixie that by the time I was finished working, I had no willpower to have fun and party. I was determined to make sure this year played out differently, and decided the best way to do that would be to reduce the amount of calibration I needed to do once the sun went down fully.
How would I do that? By moving from a Kinect scene that tracks up to 6 people at once to one that only tracks a single person. Yeah bitches, now we’ve sifted to the root of what happened—I pivoted from displaying my Interactive Energy Ball to my Inherit Dancer visual. It’s still fun, still interactive, and still trippy. With help from my friend Gaby, I got this other project up and running, and it looked freaking beautiful. It was time to party. Gaby and I took our party favors and strolled off to watch the big temple burn.
Around midnight, we returned to camp to grab warmer clothes and check on the visuals. To my disdain, the projector screen was dark. I did a quick gear check and realized that somehow, my computer had gotten unplugged and died. There was nothing I could do except plug it back in and wait, but I didn’t have the willpower to wait, so I just plugged it in and went back to partying.
When I finally returned to camp around 3:30 AM, I abstained from turning on or turning off my equipment. I just went right to bed. It was freezing outside.
The next morning, I got up to turn off my gear, and was surprised to see it’d been sectioned off by fencing and a security team. I met Prosperity, one of the co-founders of Love Burn, and she told me that my project was in the area of an active crime scene investigation so I’d have to return for my gear in a few hours. Confused and powerless over the circumstances, I simply walked over to Boba’s and enjoyed some wonderful Sunday morning mimosas. Eventually, I learned that someone killed themselves a mere 25 feet or so behind my art installation. Bonkers.
Yeah, that sucks, but it also epitomized what’s so powerful about burns. The patrons at Boba’s bar continued to drink and be merry despite having just lost a colleague in tragedy, because what else can really be done except accepting? When the temple burns, everyone watching the flames acknowledges that the past will forever be no-more and the sweetest possible moment is the eternal fire of here-and-now.
I aspired to have that same acceptance towards my visuals, because when the CSI team finished their investigation, they actually took down my projector screen from the tree. I took that as a final sign that my Interactive Energy Ball simply wasn’t meant to be showcased at Love Burn this year. Heartbreakingly, and perhaps due to a subconscious disappointment at the lack of integrity in my party-first attitude, I captured no footage whatsoever of my Inherit Dancer visuals running at the festival. But fuck it! I had the time of my life this weekend and have absolutely zero regrets about it.
To anyone wishing they experienced the Interactive Energy Ball this past weekend, I’m deeply sorry for the letdown. Just know, this project is never retired and will continue to improve with each and every post I make in this blog ❤️🔥
P.S. - I just purchased 850nm infrared floodlights, which, according to ChatGPT, I can use to improve infrared return quality to the Kinect’s IR sensor (and thereby improve body tracking) without needing to light up my scene. What’s the point of making mistakes if you don’t go and fix them?
Tags: kinect body-tracking projection presentation events debugging