Labor Day has come and gone, and for many of us that means the end of summer…but for a few of us it also means the end of Burning Man (until next year, of course). If you haven’t heard of it, Burning Man is a weeklong arts festival held in a remote part of the Nevada desert during the hottest part of the summer. Its central principles include freedom of expression, art, community, participation and extreme survival. LED lights have always been an important part of Burning Man—participants use color-changing LEDs to adorn their costumes and to ensure they can be seen at night. And of course, many participating artists use LED lights to illuminate their projects. After all, LEDs are the perfect lighting fixture for the job since they’re versatile, easily programmable, and importantly, low voltage. (Can you imagine how many generators it would take to run hundreds of incandescent or halogen lights all week long?)

This year’s Burning Man was no different. In fact, LED lighting was taken to the next level on one of the festival’s most talked-about installations, Bliss Dance. Designed by Bay Area artist Marco Cochrane, and lighting-engineered by Elemental LED’s own JoeJoe Martin, Bliss Dance is a 40-foot steel sculpture that beautifully depicts the female form, caught dancing in a moment of sheer joy. According to the artist, the sculpture is “composed of 55,000 welds, mostly done by hand. It’s 40 feet tall, weighs 7,000 pounds and is 97% air. The design is based around the structures of geodesic domes, and 4,500 of the ball joints are threaded to attach the steel mesh “skin” with screws…It is supported by six I-beams buried 2 feet under the surface in a radial pattern.” (Thanks to John Curley’s Burning Blog for the quote.)

The mesh, see-through skin that houses the sculpture creates the perfect translucent medium through which light can shine. Martin lit the sculpture at Burning Man using low-voltage, color-changing LEDs. To top it off, a custom iPad app allowed both the interior and exterior lighting effects to be completely interactive and customizable. Amazingly, all of the lighting and controls for Bliss Dance were powered by a tiny 2000W Honda generator!

Thanks to some ingenious artists and color-changing LEDs, Bliss Dance shone brightly at Burning Man 2010.

Thanks to Dan Dawson and Michael Holden for the photos.