The Life Size Mouse Trap

photo by Scott Beale

Mark Perez will be running his amazing Life Size Game of Mouse Trap tomorrow, Saturday, May 21st down at his barn in San Francisco (702 Earl Street). There will be 3 shows which will take place 4:00pm, 7:00pm and 9:30pm, as well as DJ’s and live music by Esmerelda Strange and One Man Banjo. All for $5.

Here are my photos from a Mouse Trap event in 2004 and one in 2003. The photos do not do it justice. This is a wonderful and incredible kinetic sculpture is something that has to been seen in action.

The LIFE SIZE MOUSETRAP is a fantastically hand crafted, 16 piece 50,000-lb. interactive KINETIC SCULPTURE set atop a 6,500-square-foot, 2,000-lb GAME BOARD. This giant Rube Goldberg style contraption comes complete with a VAUDEVILLIAN style carnival show, original MUSICAL SCORE, CAN-CAN DANCERS, acrobatic HIJINKS, and other Spectacularly scripted SCENARIOS dedicated to the bending of reality!

This show is in conjunction with Mark’s bid to win an art grant from BORG2 so that he can take the Mouse Trap back out to Burning Man this year (the last time he took it out there was back in 1996).

Here’s Mark Perez’s BORG2 proposal:

If this MONSTROSITY is properly supported, it will DISPEL your average DESERT experience. I plan to place the MOUSETRAP and its BURLESQUE dripping sideshow inside a BIZZARE CARNIVAL atmosphere. Where lucky contestants can PICK EACH OTHER’S POCKETS, lift a 350-lb CAST-IRON BATHTUB 12 feet into the air, turn impossibly huge GEARS, load SPRINGS, and light a 13-foot TALL FLAME-THROWING LAMP POST all in a SUPREME effort to CRUSH a TRINKET of MEANING (say, a BIRTHDAY CAKE or a thought provoking EFFIGY) u0nder a FALLING 2 TON BANK SAFE! Be it an enormous construct of CRAZY STAIRS, careening FLAMING BOWLING BALLS, or the unique HAND-BUILT, 30-foot-tall CRANE, the MOUSETRAP can deliver SPECTACLE by the TRUCK LOAD! For a sacrificial sum of $9,000 +/- the voters will know that they brought the MOUSETRAP to the desert. Due to THEMATIC limitations twice the Burning Man ORG. has REJECTED this project. It’s now up to YOU to show the blind how to see!