2008: Burning Man Arts Festival, the American Dream, and 16’ tall tree.

The festival’s theme, “The American Dream”, was set for 2008. After attending previous Burning Man Arts Festivals, ANIMUS founder, Preston Dane and his team of artists decided to return with their first large-scale artwork-- a strong, 16’ tall resemblance of a Weeping Willow tree. “We chose a tree because we felt it best conveyed our belief that there is no ‘overriding’ American Dream. There are millions of independent dreamers, dreaming his or her own American Dream.”
Funding was provided through individual donations. For twenty dollars, a contributor could express his or her vision of the American Dream on individually-crafted tree leaves. “From a distance you only saw the beauty of the tree,” Dane explains, “but when you approached it, you saw that on each leaf was written someone's American Dream... the collective made the whole.”

WDM’s Sparkle Fiber Cable with ANIMUS’ own LED and strobe lighting system.

“Our original choice was side-glow fiber optic, but when we saw that WieDaMark carried this sparkle fiber, we were very excited,” explains Dane, “the fiber optic was part of a larger lighting package which included LEDs and strobes. We had a lighting board near the tree which allowed participants to control the lighting effects by changing the color, speed, and combinations of the lights.”

Dane and his team were concerned that the individual fiber strands would not survive under the harsh and dusty desert climate for the entire week. They were pleasantly surprised to find out that the fiber was much more resilient than expected. Dane describes, “we are happy to say that (as far as we know) no strands broke off. The only difficulty in working with the material was stripping the outer clear casing off the strands. We ended up cutting the plastic down its length... which was fine except for how many lengths we had. In the end it was more time consuming than technically difficult.”