One of the more awesomely bizarre things that happened at this year’s Maker Faire was the band OK Go performing onstage while inside of WaterBoy, BucketHead, and BubbleHead. These are three water-immersion devices created by Marque Cornblatt. WaterBoy is sort of a full-body water bladder a person climbs into with goggles and a breathing apparatus, and the other two just immerse your head. The band bravely decided to get into these crazy contraptions, and overcome any fears of drowning, and perform before a large crowd, without ever having been inside of them before. They had little more than a ten-minute rehearsal while immersed! The crazed, improvisational insanity of it all was palpable.
It was even decided to put goldfish into WaterBoy, to swim around with lead singer Damian Kulash, which only added to the surrealism. After the show, Maker Relations superconductor Kate Rowe, fearlessly volunteered to climb into the suit, in her jeans and a t-shirt, to scoop out all of the fish to give out to kids at the Faire. As Dale Dougherty joked, his only fear was that they would refuse to change the water because Damian had been in it.
Here are some video highlights of OK Go and WaterBoy, and a link to a piece on PopSci on the making of a “floating head” costume.
How to Make a Floating Head Costume
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