Here a brief chronologic partial history of the Hammock Reactor from 2016 to 2024. Many details are still missing, this post will be updated. We want to share the funny & exciting moments of build, the joy of using tools, of working together, the moments where it all comes together.
By sharing the joy & struggles of build with you, we hope you get a deeper level of understanding and joy when you experience the finished artwork. That is uniquely positive at participatory Burning Man community events: the chance to meet the artists, hear their voice, learn about their struggles, share their success. The experience Hammock Reactor started for us in 2016 and goes on, which we cherish here online. The experience lasts until after the burn, when watching videos and photos of it.
Also, in the spirit of Miss Inspiration, we want to inspire you: you see here how we have built it. We are normal people doing this as amateurs (= for the love of it) in our pastime. We have never built something as big as this before. We learned on the go. You can do this, too!
The birth of Hammock Reactor
After burning “Miss Inspiration“, our interactive and highly dangerous “pirate ship with a swing” in 2016, we decided to build the Hammock Reactor as an art piece focussed on Hammocks and chillout.
The concept was created by the Salon Leobard group between September and December 2016. Each member brainstormed what to build, we than looked at each others designs, discussed buildability, effect, safety, and started a new round.
Around 2016-11-01 we thought about the “Hammock Flower”, a 5-10 meter high structure of vertical beams, visible from far away, with lots of Hammocks on different vertical levels, you had to climb from one hammock to another to reach higher grounds. Coming with a great capability to kill hippies. We used the approach “Burning Man”, “everything is possible”, “megalomania”. We knew from Miss Inspiration though, that we are (partly) responsible for the well-being of our beloved participants, so a hippie-killing hippie-trap would be kind of stressful.
These are some of us in the “Hammock Flower” phase:
Key input to amalgate all ideas came from Joris, who followed the process in our online group, saw the problems at hand, painted a sketch on a napkin and sent a photo online on 2016-11-25 which we discussed in our internal group “It was just a sketch, knowing it doesn’t look “sexy”, but it might serve as a starting point where at the end the basic structure is less visible.“:
- people hang next to each other to be able to talk with another
- center is STAGE for performers.
- dimensions are derived from equi-hammockian-distances.
- Gugelhupf-Form!
We started welding the brackets for the outer ring on 2016-12-31 (before our new years party) and used them to make a 1:3 prototype , which was funded and exhibited at Vienna Burning Ball 2017
Vienna Burning Ball 2017
Our art grant submission was written to allow an intense Hammock Experience in a 4-Meter circle. The parts we bought (metal, M12 screws length 100mm) were already the right sizes for the “big one”.
Hammock Reactor Chillout Zone Experience by Salon Leobard
Lounge in hammocks in the warmth of “Hammock Reactor” chillout zone while gazing into the melting energy dripping onto your soul. Still radiating from the über-critical fusion reactor meltdown in 2073, the reactor core of Meta-Prater is a welcoming and cosy place with only 2.45% genetic DNA mutation per hour (pretty safe to hang out now!). Disassembled 2099 and sent back through the time warp, it is ready for you! Bring your zygotes, of course!
The reactor construction is shaped like a Bowl. There outer upper rim is a circle in about 1.2 meter height with about 5m diameter, the inner downer rim is a smaller circle. The two are connected in a triangular shape known by burners from Geodesic domes. Hammocks are connected from the outer rim to the bottom rim, touching the floor in the center. The visual of the reactor core is planned to be created with projections.
We are a community of builders and artists expanding our skills by participatory creating art to create immediate experiences for Burners. We meet regularly to advance the project. The sculpture was prototyped in 30cm size, material tried, joint constructions tried. We have a full material list of things to organize and buy and build and are ready to go. For material we need around 45 wood beams, 150 screws, nuts, and double washers, and a band saw. We know most of the angles and cuts already and made a part list. To foster a sustainable use of material and creative energy, we will use the material and equipment in future versions of the artwork, which is designed to grow and expand throughout the years. By building and growing the artwork we are growing a community of Burningman builders around it.
- 45 wood beams for a total of 151 EUR.
- Sechskantschraube 10x100mm (50 stk) 17,10 EUR,
- Schlossschraube 10×200 50 stuck 35,50 EUR (inkl 50 muttern),
- 50 Schrauben 10x180mm Schlossschraube 50 stuck 32,40 EUR (inkl Muttern),
- 100 Sechskantmuttern Selbstsichernd M10 100 stk 9,80 EUR.
- Kotflügelscheibe 10,5 x 25 mm galv.verzinkt, 200 Stück , 5,50 EUR x 2 = 11 EUR
- Holzmann Bandsäge HBS 230 HQ 90mm, 1stk, 279 EUR
- TOTAL 600 EUR
We calculated costs of 600EUR for materials and equipment.
Safety:
Climbing in and out of the Hammock Reactor needs to be safe. The construction itself should not break, but if it breaks, people fall a max height of 50cm, which is pretty safe. We are going to use sheets to make parts of the rim inaccessible so that people cannot sit on it. People should sit or hang out inside. We will do extensive integrity tests before. We will put fire extinguishers close by.
We especially cut, drilled, and welded the metal brackets, which we would need for Borderland later. We also tested our welds and learned to weld better.
As part of building the 1:3 Version, we could also prototype the “twist”, a safe method to build the whole outer ring on the floor and then lifting it up in one move:
Borderland 2017
We dreamed a great dream for The Borderland 2017:
Hammock Reactor by Salon Leobard for The Borderland 2017
(note: Budget total was 7000€ to scale it from the 1:3 model to the real thing)
We had a lot of fun building
We did a test build in Vienna
Tokamat – a dream for the Borderland 2018
The Salon Leobard Research & Pseudo-Science Department has developed a radical concept to improve your hammocking experience: TOKAMAT. We’d ♥ to share this giant net that covers ¼th of the reactor with you.
Read on at TOKAMAT – a dream by Salon Leobard for The Borderland 2018
Oz Led Fusion PARTYcle Accelerator – a dream for the Borderland 2018
Read the full story here: Oz Led Fusion PARTYcle Accelerator – a dream for the Borderland 2018. Oz
- added lights
- composed a symphony of sound
- and light
- and created a near-perfect hippie trap
The experience took about 30 minutes, the majority of participants shouted “again! again!”
The music & light composition was later lost in the catastrophic “harddisk crash” on “the one laptop it worked on“.
Oz wrote himself on 2018-04-04:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2023837931274916&set=a.1446148669043848&tn=%2CO*F
When your flight is delayed three hours so you buy a sketchbook to continue planning big things 
This time I’m planning the LED Fusion PARTYcle Accelerator for the undbelievable Hammock Reactor coming to Borderland. And I tell you, distributing 90A among 4320 LEDs and making it all waterproof is not that simple 
“Imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited.” Albert Einstein
#burn #burningman #hammock #hammockreactor #borderland #theborderland #ledinstallation #ledstrips #led #ledart #visualart #vj #dj #djontour #digitalart #digitalnomad #igersaustria #igersgraz
Fusion?
A kind of Hippie Fusion was done by Michalle Malev, who used a photo of her in the Hammock Reactor to announce on 2018-07-28
Hey beautiful people,
To those whom been wondering, I’ll give another Tribal Fusion Bellydance workshop today (Saturday) at 18:00 at Wonderland.
See you there
Michalle
https://www.facebook.com/groups/theborderland/posts/2082352811784141/
2019 Kiezburn
For Kiezburn, Tototo added a projector to the roof that targeted the stage, reflected on a traffic mirror, and projected on the roof. Circular projections for the win.
2020 – The Borderland that never happened
In 2020, we were all set up for greatness, on 2020-02-04, Bussicat wrote in our internal online group, weeks before the Sars-Cov-2 pandemy turned the world sideways:
We made it – we are the team that will bring the Hammock Reactor to The Borderland! It will create a Hot Hippie Fusion Plasma with unlimited chill energy! But we don‘t stop here, we bring along:
- TOKAMAT (Tensional apparatus for producing controlled fusion reactions in a hot hippie plasma),
- better CILS (Cyclops Injection Light System),
- the Gate which is our hippie guidance and landing zone (and it needs a nerdy acronym)!
- There are some other camp related improvements on our list, among others:
- Kitchen: an additional (smaller) gas stove, and a dedicated cooking equipment collection!
- Single point of Information stop with an integrated lost and found feature!
- The stage of the tower finally get‘s a decent color coating!
- The roof tarp gets a cover for better rain protection!
All in all I know we all strive to bring an extraordinary experience to our fellow burners, then again we will shamelessly enjoy their art, gifts and projects they will bring along. Learning, teaching, growing, connecting, celebrating together.
Looking forward to be part of an awesome team – we meet again in 11 days 
We spent the beginning of 2020 with preparations
Hammock Reactor at the Oasis Virtual Burn 2020
Tatz had the clever idea to take the 3d model and upload it to The Oasis.
Read on at Hammock Reactor now on The Oasis Virtual Burn
Nowhere 2022
We finished some details
We travelled to Nowhere 2022, an experience by itself
The photos and videos of Nowhere 2022 are here:
Hammock Reactor at Nowhere 2022
For Nowhere 2022, we also opened up the scientific debate of the goal of the Hammock Reactor. Up until then, the goal had been a “hot hippie fusion plasma” – bringing Hippies in a state that is so hot and energetic, that they build a plasma, the borders between hippies do not exist anymore, they become one.
Given our experiments with Hammocks and our primary focus as a chillout camp, we noted that we can reconfigure our fusion reactor and continue with another experiment. This is what scientists do, we are looking at you, CERN folks.
Superconducting Hippie Chillout State
So our new goal for scientific experiments was to create a “super hippie chillout state” in which hippies reach a state of relaxation that brings them close to a zero-activity state. Which, was you all know already as a prediction from the hippie particle physics theory department, probably creates a state of hippie superconduction.
The goal of “super chillout” aligns well with the observations of hippie particles that participated in our past experiments. Hippies in hammocks are measured to look not very excited and hot, they rather look chilled. Some are even sleep.
In a superconducting state, information and energy flows between hippies without friction. Hippie Particle Physics Theory predicts that the ideas and creative energy are conducted between hippies, duplicated, remixed, amplified. At a given mass of hippies, ideas, and energy transported this way, a point of criticial mass of creative energy, will lead to something new. What will it be? An explosion of creative energy? A protoss archon manifests (possible saying “Power overwhelming” or “You all look so different on this side”)? Creation of a new particle? A new project idea?
Nobody knows yet what will happen then.
That is the fascination of science.
Borderland 2023
We participated at Borderland 2023.
Not many photos were taken and not much was written down here. TODO: add details!
Our roof got ripped by the wind
Borderland 2024
For Borderland 2024, Bussicat built a new roof, with the help of many old and new Salon Leobard members. The new roof is waterproof and sturdy, which paid off tremendously when it started raining 30 minutes after we put it up first.
TODO: write something about the roof! Add photos from the build.
We also finished the “Über Roof” which we started in 2020 for Borderland, see … Über-Roof fertig
Documentation 2024:
Borderland 2024 – Hammock Reactor Performances – by Leobard
Salon Leobard’s Hammock Reactor at Borderland 2024 – Photos by Leobard