"Awakening"

Awakening is a monumental interactive sculpture by Elmendorf/Geurts, a Denver studio, built as an homage to human vision and discovery. Ryan Elmendorf works across electronics, programming, and metal fabrication; Nick Geurts brings fifteen years as a structural engineer. Together they've built over thirty large-scale public art projects. Awakening debuted at Burning Man in 2016 and returned to the playa in 2023.

Ryan's wife, Valerie, is a friend. She owns Rule Gallery in Marfa, just a block away from our glitch gallery. She commented once that they were looking for Awakening's forever home and it was immediately apparent to us that it had to be Chaos.

A sixteen-foot head rises from the ground, two hands an arm's length away, palms turned inward as if examining themselves. A kind of coming into existence.

The head is a working stereoscopic camera obscura, the same optical principle Leonardo da Vinci used to study the eye, complete with irises that project an inverted, nearly 180-degree view of the surrounding land onto a wall inside. We have not posted any pictures from inside the head because it has to be experienced in person.

The hands get the same care. Articulated fingers secured by aircraft cable, their skeletal structure suggested through negative space in the steel.

A team of eight of us spent four full days assembling it here in Eugene in June 2026. It remains one of our favorite experiences on the property.