LastNight: Flamethrowers + Dance Dance Revolution = DDI

Oakland fire club Interpretative Arson lit up their world-renowned Dance Dance Immolation carnival ride in the bowels of West Oakland Saturday night. About three dozen people turned out to watch some brave, yet stupid souls play the Dance Dance Revolution arcade game while getting shot in the face with real live fireballs during the fire art club’s combination photo shoot, press gaggle and VIP party for the two-year old device.

Roughly a dozen slightly insane volunteers donned forty pound “proximity suits” made of fire resistant fabrics and coated in aluminum, before a team of eight Interpretive Arsonists dressed in flight suits hooked participants up to an air supply and stereo headphones, then led them onto the DDR game pad.

For those few souls unfamiliar with DDR, it’s like that hand game “Simon”, only with your feet, while dancing to rave music and you don’t have to remember anything, just hit the buttons as fast as they show up. Dance Dance Immolation reworks the concept with flamethrowers that shoot you in the face when you fuck up one too many times. (See picture.)

Based out of the NIMBY warehouse in industrial Oakland, Interpretative Arson’s creation of DDI began with co-creator Ian Baker and a friend playing with fire. Long-time Burning Man attendees, these former fire poi dancers had since graduated to co-opting process automated industrial machinery for kinetic fire art.

Interpretive Arson debuted a working prototype in 2005 at Burning Man. They rarely run the machine due to the thousands of components that must be assembled for each show and the 75 gallons of propane that the device expends during a standard night’s work. Saturday’s show tested some new modifications to DDI, as well as prepped it for July, 2007’s Fire Art Festival in Oakland and Labor Day’s Burning Man trip.

Interpretive Arson works on two sequels to Dance Dance Immolation, Baker says. A proximity-based fire controller called 2[pie]R and a music-based kinetic fire sculpture that uses sound waves and genetic algorithms to sculp the flame called Evolve.

When asked why do something as dangerous as Dance Dance Immolation at all, Baker says that numerous fail-safes only make its appearance seem dangerous. “The worst injury we’ve had has been to the relationships of the people that built it,” Baker said. “And we wanted to see how far we’d go for a joke.” -By David Downs

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