Charcade!

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Some friends of mine are working on a really cool project for Burning Man 2013 – The Charcade!, which can be described best in their own words:

We’re building an arcade and it’s rather non-traditional. (Translation: We’re building the CHARCADE and ALL THE GAMES SPEW FIRE) (quote taken from http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/Site3/charcade-burning-man-2013)

To turn this quick and succinct story into a long and boring one, last night, I was an idiot and locked myself out of my studio, and one of the project leads is excellent at getting past pesky locks. I have him a call, and ran over to my place, broke me in, then headed back for the “flame test”. As soon as I heard the words “flame test”, I knew I had to grab my camera and run over to experience (and document) the action!

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Riskee ball is a lot like skee ball, only this one shoot fire at you, making it significantly more fun. This isn’t one of the flames it shoots – this is just the “I’m on” light. When you get the ball in, the flame looks more like this:

Screenshot from 2013-08-04 18:10:18

This little puff of fire managed to catch the attention of more than one person walking through the alley. It’s almost like people don’t see this kinda stuff on a daily basis.
I didn’t get to play riskee ball myself, I was too busy documenting the whole thing, capturing about 3 gigs of video which I will edit and upload eventually.

After the live demo, we took the machine apart, then we went back inside and started building 9 more of these things. I didn’t end up leaving the shop until 5:45am. It was a good way to spend a saturday night.

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Kyle Clements

Kyle Clements is a Toronto-based artist and nerd. During his thesis at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Kyle began working on his Urban Landscapes series, a body of work that aims to capture the energy and excitement of life in the fast-paced urban environment. After graduating from OCAD in 2006, Kyle spent a year living in Asia to gather source material and experience in a different kind or urban environment. His work is vibrant and colourful. Whether painting the harsh Northern landscape, or capturing the overwhelming buzz of life in the city, his acrylic paintings hover between representation and abstraction.