Lost Nomads of Vulcania Teluriz from Burning Man 2014 (photo by Rubens Bürgel)."Lost Nomads of Vulcania," a 2014 Burning Man art installation, was a steampunk-inspired gypsy encampment featuring the Teluriz, one of the few remaining Vardo Class Steam Walkers built by the last surviving members of Captain Nemo’s crew. The intrepid explorer are be able to enter the Teluriz through the hatch and contemplate the mysterious disappearance of the crew and the ephemera left behind. What were they doing so far from the island of Vulcania in the desert wasteland of Blakroxiti?
Funded in part by an honorarium from Burning Man, the Teluriz (here to be clear on terminology, the whole art installation was called Nomads of Vulcania, but the walker specifically is called the Teluriz) was the brainchild of Joseph Mross of Archive Designs, and built by both the staff of Archive Designs, and numerous volunteers who worked feverishly to get the thing together in time to put in on a trailer and rush from Oregon to the Burning Man site in Nevada, then to assemble the various pieces there. At one point Mross figured he was two months behind his schedule on fabrication of the Teluriz, at the time the largest and most complex piece Archive Designs had ever done. But it was the perfect piece for that point in the development of Archive Designs and in Mross' growth as a designer, and Mross said at the time that the Teluriz represented the culmination of everything he’d learned so far in his career, starting with high-school metal shop and an arts degree at the University of Oregon, up through the commissioned metalwork he’s sent around the globe as the proprietor of Archive Designs.
The whole process was a wonder of steel and wood and sweat and tears and a few almost-accidents. Take a look at some images below!
(A bit more of the story of the Teluriz can be found in Interior Design magazine and the Eugene Weekly.)
