"That's the most difficult part," Miller says. "That's what made me stay awake at night. You want to inspire people and motivate them to express themselves but you also need a sense of cohesion."

This year, CAMP considered installation proposals from 15 teams and accepted six.

One such team, the Intelligent Node Park, is at work inside the Russell studio the day Miller, Anderson and Fotias meet to talk. The team is Jake Chidester, Richard Chase and Alisyn Malek, an architect, an electrical engineer and a mechanical engineer respectively. 

Fotias, Miller and Anderson move into the studio while the artists toil with live wires, promising a light show any minute.

Chase works on installing a set of blue LEDs into a 7-foot-tall wooden box. "It's like techno Stonehenge," he says. "

Fotias scratches his chin. "You know, the guys that I work with, we all came up in a subculture in a city that was a lot more blue-collar and conservative than it is now," he says. "But because of the situation we're in as a state and as a region, we're looking within our own community for cultural enlightenment and the work flips us out. Look at this; it'd be totally irresponsible to not help show what's going on in Detroit."

 

CAMPers

Christian Jay Sienkiewicz, who records and remixes under the name Coyote Clean Up, will offer an organic lounge called Camp Chillout. Connecting monolithic LED boxes to a heap of strobing headlights, the Intelligent Node Park is the brainchild of an architect, a guy who’s wrapping up his doctorate in electrical engineering and a girl who works on electric battery technology. The Janus Tunnel will be constructed by Dan Roberts and Erin Sweeny. Riffing on the "I Lift Detroit in Prayer" bumper-stickers you see around town, Erin Ellis and Jessica Decker have built a We Lift Detroit in Dance structure or sculpture or sign or something. Sean Hages will introduce attendees to his Wild Aesthetic, which will involve parachute balloons and mist. And A.J. Manoulian has constructed a Rube Goldberg Machine that feeds official festival programs near the entrance.

> Email Travis R. Wright

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