Dreamland Station

The Art and the Land.
It was good to see the art; both the art created for this magical weekend and the art that is more permanently connected to the grounds. Sheepytime projected rotating sheep images onto big white fabric walls. To many late night walkers it promised sleep and dreams. For those who could not sleep it showed deep sleep as a wonderful thing even if it was beyond their experience. Though large enough to capture the attention of even a wide perception, the actual cut outs of the sheep were small.

A Shiny New Catheter was an interactive wishing well. One painted ones camp location and wish on a rock, exchanged it for a rock with someone else's wish and attempted to grant their wish. People really knew how to use black lights. Black light reflected from teeth highlighted with yellow highlighter on a drawing at the Art Creation Station, from the white string on the DreamCatcher and on the tapestries in the Down Tempo Dining Car. The baths were four outside cement pools each large enough for 10 people. Three were filled with hot water and one with cold. The would be back wall for the pools was a series of vertical tapestries depicting a mountain. Between them there was a view of a real mountain. The way the water drains is a part of its Institute of Perception design.

The Institute of Perception
The Institute of Perception is the site and its dedication to the evolution of the human spirit through the arts. It is forming an artistic family, magicians of the arts, to enhance, activate and broaden perception. The open land is used to free perception. Vision walks and inspirational meditation promote shifts in our usual assemblage point of Reason, and allow Pure Understanding or Silent Knowledge.

The Plasma Garden
The Plasma Garden was a group of visually stunning interactive light sculptures that conveyed the mind-blowing fourth state of matter, also known as plasma. It was like electricity in bottles. Delicate colorful lightning coils and bolts pulsated in their own worlds and in ours.

Temple
The Temple was in the Pyramid, a permanent structure on the land. It was the destination of a great pageant. A wedding party sauntered up from the Dreamland Stage, banner bearers in front, holding very long wood staffs. Thin blue triangle flags and cloth hung from them. In the Temple, they told how they met (they went separately to a couples only New Year's Eve party because neither wanted to meet anyone) and renewed their vows. Just outside a man in a natural open costume balanced on a column. He held high the staffs, the colors flying in the breeze.

Liquid O
Liquid O was a large black bus with a stage and a crane on top. A cage with a stripper pole dangled from the crane. A person in the cage hung onto the pole as the whole cage violently smashed into the side of the bus again and again. The person spun, lost control and was saved from a hard bang into the metal by the hands of the crowd. From the stage three of them played metal grinders that shot off sparks.

Colorful Mannequins
Along a sandberm were brightly painted mannequins. Some had only the below the waist half of their bodies. They were installed with their feet pointed up. Others had all but the top of their heads and their names were written on the top of their heads. All of them had detailed strips and swirls.

Costumes
People wore costumes for visual effect -- Frogs, Zebras, and for interaction, pirates and belly dancers and gadget bearers with lots of pieces that called out to be played with. And of course, costumes for dancing and for eating and drinking. Sausages on sticks cooked slowly at the Acoustic Stage fire pit. Grapes came out of the Black Company Dead Pirates Lounge. It had a hollowed out monitor filled with glowing junk and looked like a broadcast at night. The Nocturnal Libations bar had a vaulted ceiling. At some random hours theatrical smoke left everything in a thick fog.

Dancing
The music was energizing. People danced and spun fire to multi-tracked beats. Electronica, also, House of the Rising Sun and Ring of Fire. Dancers spun poi from leather straps mostly wrapped about their wrists but also, as they danced, flung about their ankles and thighs. Fire spinners performed at night, on stage and in the middle of a blue rope light. Fire was on the ground, on the body, being put out dramatically by a speed up in the spinning. Sometimes multiple performers, sometimes one, it was all balanced and graceful yet strong.

Camping
Camping together people share how they live. Crack of Dawn put on eyelashes. Stories were told. One that was true was that life is a gift. One that was funny was that Mexicans sometimes go to the border fence not to cross it but to take pieces of it to sell for scrap. The sun shone through the green OttoPup frozen popsicle and through the green electric rope light. The creator of TMA-3 took low light photos. TMA stands for Tycho Magnetic Anomaly. Tycho was the name of the crater that the black monolith was in in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Magnetic Anomaly was the electromagnetic field emanating from within it. When a human touched it for the first time, it began to transmit a signal. The Tycho monolith was TMA-1. The second monolith, TMA-2, was discovered in orbit around the planet Jupiter. The monolith encountered by the apes in Africa was TMA-0.

Want to hang with you forever
Some pictures are at: digitalconsciousness.com/galleries/Calico/SDDecom2009.phtml Harry Dingle of the Harry Dingle and the Dingle Berries band played a harmonica on street corners from New York to New Orleans. On his Vision Walk atop the rocks behind the Temple he explained that some people just want to hang with you forever.