About Site 3 Fire Arts

Site 3 Fire Arts is a community group made up of volunteers from a variety of different backgrounds. Based out of Site 3 coLaboratory, a makerspace in downtown Toronto, we create interactive fire projects that bring together art, engineering, software programming, stagecraft and game design. Our goal? Encourage friendly competition and the ridiculous smack talking that goes along with it by creating new ways for participants to control fire beyond just pushing buttons.

SETH HARDY
SSF Project Lead, RB Flame Effects Lead
My hobbies include lighting things on fire and going to far too many meetings. I’m one of the founders of Site 3 coLaboratory, a community workshop in downtown Toronto for art and technology projects. I designed the control hardware for The Heart Machine in 2010, brought Super Street Fire to the playa in 2012, and worked on a number of smaller fire art projects in between.

CHRISTOPHER GUARD
SSF Build Lead, RB Project Lead
With over 20 years of experience in fabrication and carpentry, I’ve built set designs, high-end cottages, kegerators, and everything in between, including a fiery live-action adaptation of Street Fighter II. When it comes down to it, I’m a glutton for punishment who loves to work with my hands and I’ve been known to go crazy if I have nothing to build.

CARRIE SMITH
SSF Volunteer Coordinator, RB Project Manager
I was the volunteer coordinator for Super Street Fire in 2012, during which time I fell in love with fire arts and telling people what to do (but in a nice way with lots of smiles and glitter). I’m a graduate student studying research methods and applied statistics. I’m also an engineer with a history of blowing up jet engines (on purpose.)

KATE MURPHY
SSF Software Team, RB Player Tracking Lead
During the day, I develop mobile and web applications, which led me to creating the tablet control interface for Super Street Fire. Before long I was doing work for the software, electronics, plumbing, and woodworking teams, respectively, and soon realized that flamethrowers are way cooler than software.

SARA VINTEN
SSF and RB Communications & Fundraising
I’m a colourful, vintage-loving, copywriting dork with a knack for stringing words together and a raging appreciation for grammatical correctness. I worked on Super Street Fire last year as the web content writer and quickly expanded my title to writer/ carpenter/rope knotter/LNT lead/co-fundraising lead. From then on, I was doomed.

CALLUM HAY
SSF Software Team Lead
I’m a software engineer, an indie game maker, a craft brewer, and a generally amicable geek. I’ve been a part of Super Street Fire since its first prototype in 2011, and it has been a fantastic experience that has allowed me to hone my skills in game play programming and gesture recognition. Also, I appreciate the idea of hadouken-ing fire.

MIKE EVERSON
SSF Software Team, RB Control Systems Lead
I’m a software engineer from the east coast. I love to spend my time building interactive art installations (especially if they shoot fire!) and finding weird new things to do with technology. I’ve been a part of some big projects like Super Street Fire and Burning Man’s CORE, and I’m very excited for Riskee Ball and Charcade!

MARC REEVE-NEWSON
RB Shipping & Logistics Lead
I have a degree in physics that I paid for by renovating houses. I joined a makerspace to do mad science and play with big fire. I believe that hanging a hundred feet in the air off a bridge so you can do an art project is not a bad thing. My name is Marc, and I like to build things.

4WARD (AKA ROB SANDBERG)
SSF Documentation & Set Design Lead
I’m a long-time burner, ARTery Eyes on Art staff member, native Nevadan, and notorious charmer. I brought a Swiss Army Knife of talent to the SSF team as a woodworker, technical draftsman, concept designer, illustrator, and graphic designer. In the default world, I’m a seventeen-year veteran of the video game industry with over twenty games under my Utilikilt on nearly every platform.

GREG WISEMAN
SSF Software Development
I’ve been helping out on the software side of Super Street Fire since the initial prototype, and had a blast bringing it to the playa in 2012. When not writing code that triggers large jets of flame, I like to hang out with friends or my kid. Aside from that, my day job involves wrangling and visualizing data related to Internet security and censorship, which is also pretty fun.

CARL PENNY
SSF Wearables Lead
I am a creature with a diverse understanding of things. My skill set ranges across multiple industries including: textiles, electronics, software, wood and metal fabrication. Currently I am infatuated with making costumes and wearable art.

BEN MOSSBARGER
SSF Master of Games Lead
Howdy! I’m S3FA’s resident clown and sparklepony extraordinaire, bringing a sense of flair and spectacle to the art to make our installtions as fantastical as they are technically brilliant. I shoot things with lasers in my day job as a grad student, and in my free time I like to light things on fire and spin them around in circles. I also play fetch and chase my tail when I get excited.

MARC GORCEY
SSF Project Manager
I first visited Burning Man on my honeymoon in 2005. Since then, I have found enrichment in the Toronto Burner community, BurnT, and have returned to the playa almost every year. I am fulfilled by the Burning Man community and look forward to its eventual and complete encroachment onto defaultia.

KRIS COWARD
SSF Logistics Lead
I hooked up with Site 3 Fire Arts while taking a propane safety course to make sure I had properly installed the cooking system on my boat (I had). I later became SSF Logistics Lead after deciding that getting a major fire art piece to the playa couldn’t be that much trickier than bringing my 4-year-old to her first burn a few years prior. I still have a not-so-secret fondness for wood fires.

Special Thanks to Our Fire-Loving Volunteers

Sometimes it was freezing cold. Sometimes it rained all over our precious circuit boards. Sometimes it was wickedly dusty. Many thanks to all of our awesome volunteers for saying, “fuck it” and showing up anyway. You know who you are.

Interested in getting involved? Send us an email

The Project (2012 Burning Man Honourarium)

Super Street Fire is a live-action adaptation of Street Fighter 2 only with the fire of a thousands suns. Set on a real-life version of Ryu’s classic stage, Super Street Fire sees two brave fighters duke it out while wearing motion-sensing gloves that capture every throw from perfectly timed blocks to deadly hadoukens. With each attack, fire hurtles towards the opponent as they scramble to retaliate or succumb to fiery damage. Still remember combos? Good. The stronger the attack, the greater the spectacle. As the countdown clock winds down, punches are thrown, life is lost, and a victor is named.

The Nerd Porn: Wearables

Similar to a Nintendo Wii-mote, the custom designed motion-sensing gloves contain intertial measurement units that capture a player’s actions. It then wirelessly sends this data to a game server that detects if those actions match one of the pre-trained game gestures. If the gesture is recognized, the game system gives feedback to the player by activating the flame effects.

The Nerd Porn: Flame Effects

The 32 flame effect heads are propane-fed devices that emit a column of fire high into the air. Flame effects are expressed as two rails of eight computer controlled flame effect heads, one rail for the right hand gestures and one for the left, as well as an outer ring of sixteen flame effects triggered by special combos or controlled by the Master of Games for crowd engagement. The game system is computer hardware and software with an Arduino microcontroller that interfaces with the flame effect head solenois to regulate both the intensity and duration of the flame.

The Project

What could possibly be better than Skee Ball? How about fire-erupting Skee Ball? Lovingly dubbed Riskee Ball, this reimagined arcade staple will blast fire from the central row of target holes and straight out the top when some serious celebrating is in order. Topped with rotating warning lights and air horns to signal special game modes, like sudden death eruption mode where points scored on one machine triggers flames on them all, this bank of ten modular machines are the perfect addition to any pyromaniac’s arcade. Play it at the Charcade, a 2013 Burning Man Honourarium project.

The Nerd Porn: Flame Effects

The flame effect control system is custom designed hardware that will activate the five flame effects on each machine. One large effect head will connect to two outlets on the top, and four flame effects will fire through the target holes. Feeding of the machine’s primary fuel line, a low pressure pilot system made of perforated copper pipe will circle each of the four central holes, so they glow with a constant ring of flame. The machines themselves will be constructed using formed aluminum, and the ramps will be made of aluminum sheet that can be rolled for easy transportation to our favourite dust city.