Engineering Mythology: A Digital-Physical Framework for Culturally-Inspired Public Art

TL;DR

This paper presents a digital-physical workflow for creating culturally-inspired public art, exemplified by Navagunjara Reborn at Burning Man, integrating myth, craft, and computation across multiple disciplines.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interdisciplinary pipeline linking digital sculpting, distributed fabrication, structural optimization, and digital feedback for large-scale cultural art projects.

Findings

Successful integration of digital and physical fabrication processes.

Effective collaboration between artisans and engineers across continents.

Framework for future culturally-inspired public art projects.

Abstract

Navagunjara Reborn: The Phoenix of Odisha was built for Burning Man 2025 as both a sculpture and an experiment-a fusion of myth, craft, and computation. This paper describes the digital-physical workflow developed for the project: a pipeline that linked digital sculpting, distributed fabrication by artisans in Odisha (India), modular structural optimization in the U.S., iterative feedback through photogrammetry and digital twins, and finally, one-shot full assembly at the art site in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The desert installation tested not just materials, but also systems of collaboration: between artisans and engineers, between myth and technology, between cultural specificity and global experimentation. We share the lessons learned in design, fabrication, and deployment and offer a framework for future interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of cultural heritage, STEAM education, and public art. In retrospect, this workflow can be read as a convergence of many knowledge systems-artisan practice, structural engineering, mythic narrative, and environmental constraint-rather than as execution of a single fixed blueprint.