Proposal · Boom Festival 2027 · 30 years of Boom
A kinetic tree of unity. One motor moves 3,048 gears – and the shadow on the ground becomes a mandala that never repeats.
01 The story
Fractals are everywhere. The world is built of them – and so are we.
What is in the small is also in the big. The same branching pattern runs through our veins, lungs and neurons, through rivers, ferns and lightning – through family trees and tribes. Boom has celebrated this oneness for 30 years. The Fractal Tree makes it move.
One object, three themes – depending on where you stand.
From the side
From the side, the vertical rods hang like the lines of a family tree – generation after generation, every branch connected to the one before. Back to the roots of tribes. I found this unity again at Boomland.
From above
From above, the tree unfolds like a molecule under the lens – the same structures psychedelic visions reveal. The beauty of the universe, in motion.
From below
From below, light radiates through the ornaments into sacred mandalas – the geometry of ancient temples, built as the kinetics of the future. My crew found unity by building.
The vision · seconds after the solar eclipse
Reality opened into its sections – the natural fractals the universe is made of started to dance.
Psychedelic visions are not random. We all enter the same matrix, with its own physics – so it can be calculated and built.
Then I remembered a mechanism I had built three years ago: fractals are fundamental kinetics.
Proof of principleOne crank – every arm curls into the same spiral. My most-watched video ever.
Made for Boom
In 2025 we designed the look of the Dance Temple – a temple made by humans, where thousands become one through dance.
For 30 years of Boom we take the next step: from the man-made temple to the natural one. A temple without walls that is not built around people but grows like a tree – written in the code the universe itself uses. No screens, no logos, just movement, light and shadow. “Art is magic.”
One motor moves everything – no branch moves alone.
Gears from recycled plastic, steel frame, leave no trace.
Modular levels – the tree can grow with every edition.
Shade by day, golden light at sunset, a mandala at night.
Boom 2025Dance Temple · Photos: Christophe Renodeyn, Silvia Lopes
The tree as a symbol
Humans can walk into a forest and make a desert.But they can also walk into a desert and make a forest.
02 Play with the tree
Turn the central gear and watch every branch follow – the real arm lengths, gear chains and ornaments, seen from above. Once it moves, it never shows the same image again.
Central gear40°
Motion
View
Ornament
Levels7
Each V turns by exactly the same angle as the one before. After seven levels the tips have curled six times as far – the spirals appear by themselves.
03 Light & shadow
From the side, the tree becomes a swarm of lights drifting through the night – thousands of pixels moving with the branches, never in the same place twice.
One spot on the mast shines straight down. The crown draws its shadow onto the ground – randomness becomes geometric order. By day the Alentejo sun does the same.
The LEDs sit under every ornament and light it from below. You never see a single LED – only leaves that glow like living things, breathing in golden-ratio rhythms with the music.
You don’t look at the Fractal Tree – you step inside it. Shade in the morning, golden light at sunset, a mandala of light at night – and on 18 July, the full moon above it.
Two minutes from our simulation: LED, shadow, mechanism and the tree in an Alentejo landscape – from night to sunrise.
04 How it works
Plan, elevation and details of the build version – real arm lengths, heights and gear teeth, drawn directly from the model.
The golden ratio
The ornaments sit on the 34-tooth gear and turn at 21/34 of the arm – the golden ratio, the most irrational of all numbers. Once the tree starts, branches and ornaments never line up the same way twice: an endless stream of variations, like a Mandelbrot fractal.
In the real gear train the teeth are whole numbers, so a position only returns after 21 × 34 = 714 tooth steps – 21 full turns of the central gear. With changing speed and direction in the show, the same image practically never comes back.
The motor turns the central gear.34 teeth in the crown, meshing with the six main arms.
Every arm carries its own gear chain.21 · 21 · 34 · 21 teeth in one line. The inner gear is fixed to the parent arm, so the chain rolls off as the arm turns.
Every V turns by the same angle.Inner and outer gear both have 21 teeth – the next V repeats the movement exactly, level after level.
The ornament turns in the golden ratio.It sits on the 34-tooth gear: 21/34 = 1/φ. Light from above draws it onto the ground, LEDs below make it glow.
Design, engineering and production planning.
The first full-size branch in Berlin.
Steel, gears from recycled plastic, light.
Assembly at Boomland – ready for July.
05 Investment
Three sizes of the same object. Under every crown there are at least 3.5 m of free space.
The pure mechanism: four gears in a line, 21 · 21 · 34 · 21 teeth.
A fractal ornament on the big gear, turning in the golden ratio – it draws the shadow mandala.
LEDs under the ornament light it from below – it glows like a living leaf.
01 · Arms + gears
The pure mechanism, lit by the sun
02 · + Ornaments + spot
The shadow mandala, day and night
03 · + LED ornaments + space
Bioluminescent – a living forest at night
Option · the tree grows with Boom
If the full budget is not available for one edition, the Mother Tree can grow over two: two thirds now, one third at the next edition – together with a further development of the tree. Each step is a complete artwork on its own, and the second builds directly on the first.
Design, engineering, production of the object and build-up by our crew.
Technical rider to follow.
The design is highly variable and can be adapted to the space – size, height and number of levels. All figures are indicative budgets, excl. VAT, and will be finalised together with you.
“If we create this together, we might achieve something that until now only evolution itself has mastered.”
kinetic art by
MechanicalMagic
Mailfloriangoerlitz@mechanicalmagic.de
Instagram@florian.goerlitz
StudioMotionlab.Berlin · Bouchéstraße 12, Halle 20 · 12435 Berlin
Stages · Installations · Rentals · Commissions · FlowMotion
PDF · 20 MB
© 2026 Florian Görlitz · MechanicalMagic · Confidential proposal for Boom Festival
Proposal · Boom Festival 2027
The Fractal Tree
by Florian Görlitz