WAIT, WUT?
Billion Jelly Bloom's Burning Man-ifested, benthic bumpin' performance art transforms the night air into an ocean depth inhabited by an undulating, luminous jellyfish bloom. Our tall, 600+ lumen bright, performer-articulated jellyfish dip, swarm, sting, groove and participatorily, interactively, immersively engage bipeds, sounds and environs like it ain't no thing. BOOM *drops the mic*
THE POLYP TROUPERS
Billion Jelly Bloom is a performance art dance theater mega-puppet tripper trap founded by Patricia & Robert Lord in San Francisco, California, USA circa 2010. Inspired by our own prodigiously vertiginous Burning Man experiences, Billion Jelly Bloom is our extension of Burning Man's transformative tentacles.
PATRICIA ‘DEBRIS’ LORD
Patti Lord is the lead on jellyfish design, production and business operations. Patti will make her fifth pilgrimage to the playa in 2014. When not betentacled, she is often strolling with her two kids in San Francisco’s Mission District.
ROBERT ‘BETA’ LORD
Rob Lord is the Maha of Billion Jelly Bloom, chief instigator and team tea-server. When not undulating, Rob is multitasks as dad, Debris kisser, Intertubes geek/entrepreneur and honey badger.
Moreover, Billion Jelly Bloom would be inestimably less fun without the boundless creativity and fortitude of Marina Barnes, Derek Dukes, Ann Larie Valentine, Kevin & Sabrina Rinderle, Ethan Currens, Kachina Gosselin and Carly Lenhoff.
And high-five tentacle to our extraordinary documentquariums Myleen Hollero, Elena Kulikova & Jason Mongue.
A Natural History
INSPIRATION
One Halloween night in mid-’90s in San Francisco, California, Rob Lord recalls being delighted by a woman with an elegantly executed jellyfish costume crafted of a simple clear plastic umbrella with bubble-wrap strips.
PROTO-BLOOM
On a Halloween night years later in Santa Cruz, California, Rob Lord primitively crafted a five jellyfish bloom and convinced his friends to perform the jellyfish as group performance art downtown. These jellies featured two notable refinements: broomsticks placing the jellyfish in the air above people's heads and internal flashlights increasing their visibility from afar.
BURNING MAN 2010
In preparation for Burning Man 2010, Patti Lord took the creative helm, craftily constructing a six jellyfish bloom from studio lighting umbrellas, foil ribbon and tactical LED flashlights. We were immediately overwhelmed by exuberant delight and awe of fellow burners at Opulent Temple and the Bliss Dance art sculpture. “Next year we must have our own ‘Million Jellyfish March’!” declared a friend. “Yes, or perhaps a ‘Billion Jelly Bloom’!” replied Rob Lord.
BURNING MAN 2011
In 2011, Billion Jelly Bloom was blessed with a Burning Man art honorarium that empowered creative lead Patti and our team to design and produce 25 taller, brighter and more kinetic jellyfish for five participatory playa blooms at Burning Man 2011. Each night a Human-Jelly Relations Coordinator, Field Marshall and Swarm Leader, assisted by first and second deputies, invited Burners to perform our jellyfish bloom. Together we swarmed art cars, undulated through art installations and bloomed booming soundcamps, each night refining and scaling the bloom’s interaction and reach. Memories of those evenings still make us giddy.
THE FUTURE BLOOM
Returning to the default world from Burning Man 2011, Billion Jelly Bloom’s email inbox contained unprompted requests to bloom at non-Burning Man events to our surprise and delight. Somehow Billion Jelly Bloom had established a default world presence.
What’s next? We don’t know. We only know that the previously inconceivable is our reality so we follow our bloom.