Aquatica: The Story Behind Our Art Poster

Aquatica – a 36 inch by 48 inch art poster. We made it for the Carnival Of Space & Time installation for our Eridu Society camp at Burning Man in 2015. This was years before we became Atomic Octopus. The event’s theme that year was Carnival Of Mirrors. We wanted to play on that. Subsequently, we decided to use it for our own art theme. Eridu Society often worked elements of steampunk and time travel into its installations. The premise was that members of the camp had traveled to future Burning Man events. Then we brought back the art theme posters to delight and inspire.

The Burning Man event takes place on an ancient lake bed, which today is an intermittant lake during the winter and spring. Trilo had been working on 3D models of the region for years, and he had a clear vision of rendering the Black Rock Desert as global warming made it a shallow lake in the summer months. It took months to get the model and shallow lake to render in a fairly realistic way. At the end, Trilo was not entirely happy with the results. Subsequently he was inspired to take a more whimsical approach and instead went with tub toys. Trilo was the art director on the future Burning Man future art theme poster series and creator of the Aquatica poster.

Exhibition

Trilo and Pani felt honored to exhibit their art theme posters at Burning Man headquarters in San Francisco during the weeks leading up to Burning Man 2015. The exhibition gave friends and staff members a chance to experience the artwork before it made its playa debut. At the same time, it playfully reflected Eridu Society’s theme of time travel by presenting the pieces weeks before the event itself.

After Burning Man 2015, the story continued. Several works from the series joined the permanent collection at Burning Man headquarters. As a result, the exhibition became both a memorable milestone and a lasting contribution to the Burning Man community. Click on the images below to see in higher resolution.