Megan and Murray McMillan

Hmm. So we have the lava towers created. They line up beautifully with the floating room. We’ve also finished off the face of the front tower, however, now that we’re looking through the camera, it just doesn’t work as well as we thought when we designed it. There is something missing–or possibly something too much. It seems heavy handed. Something needs a big change…

…we Like the furniture and the lava idea, but the “blocks” of the lava towers seem to be at odds with the “block” of the floating room…

The lava furniture lines up with the floating room so that a performer will be able to hop from one giant stack to another.

One of the inspirations for this project is how we played as children (and how this has informed who we are now). One of Megan’s memories is the game of Lava: you can’t touch the ground because it’s hot lava. She did whatever it took to not touch the ground.

We’re relieved that it feels super stable and acts like a single unit. We’ve placed a “hat” on top to secure it on to the crane to keep it moving rigidly. the floor is 3/4″ thick. Everything is overbuilt.

The room is 10′ x 10 ‘x 10′, with an inside of 8′ x 8′ x 8’. Everything is quadruple reinforced so performers can operate safely. Our Engineer Sam Hogg oversees plans and comes by to double check our details. One question we don’t know yet: how will the performer exit this room? Not sure about the choreography yet…

After being embarrassed with the tremendous loss of energy in our first attempt, we brainstormed over the last weekend and came up with a completely new idea––or at least a highly edited version of our first idea. Here’s the pieces of a large moving room ready to assemble.