If you're heading downtown to Hart Plaza for Detroit's Movement Electronic Music Festival this weekend, watch out for the dinosaur.
No, it's not a heat wave hallucination, but the art installation "Project: Dino" by Kelly Kaatz, Janice Polzin and Matt Pawenski for CAMP Detroit.
CAMP Detroit, a collaboration with Movement operators Paxahau, selected six proposals for art installations and gave each team $1,500 (as well as studio space in a former cheerleading gym) to build imaginative works that will delight music fest attendees.
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Local artist Vanessa Miller started CAMP Detroit with co-founder Melinda Anderson, working with Paxahau and Movement's Operations Director Sam Fotias to make artwork a bigger focus of the festival.
"Anything that depends on creative force to produce it has a similar string," Fotias said. "Whether it's design or art or music, it's all connected."
When Paxahau took over Movement in 2006, the organizers looked at other music festivals around the country to see different ways art and visual elements became part of the event. They also saw an opportunity to draw attention art in Detroit.
"Tens of thousands of people are in the city [for Movement] and we have the opportunity to highlight more cultural richness in the city," Fotias said. "We want people to see how amazing the city is, how creative, how much awesome energy [there is]."
Earlier this year, Miller, Anderson, and representatives from Paxahau and the Detroit Creative Corridor Center selected the six projects from 24 proposals.
"I made the program because I wanted an opportunity like this to exist," Miller said. "I'm lucky enough that they've given me the resources to make that happen -- it's really cool to provide this opportunity for other artists."
In their proposals, each artist group had to explain how their work would continue to enrich the city after Movement is finished. Some works will be shown again at other festivals, while others will take up permanent residences in community spaces.
The pieces are varied: an arcade game, that large dinosaur -- made out of recyclable materials -- a "moustache stand" and more. Miller said they looked for pieces that were arresting, whether seen in daylight or in the dark.
"We looked for pieces that were three-dimensional and interrupt space, and we looked for interactivity to involve guests and transform their experience," she said.
While Forias is cruising around Hart Plaza in his golf cart solving whatever problems come his way this weekend, he said he'll be keeping an eye out for the sculptures.
"To be able to see people sitting on the grass underneath the pieces or taking a picture or just standing there looking at them, that's what I hope for and look forward to," he said. "That's the whole point of art, for people to interact with, be affected by it and be made to think something just by looking at it."
Get a sneak peek of the projects and behind-the-scenes production below. And while it may be more fun to stumble on the works accidentally, Movement attendees can scope out the installations' locations on the free festival app.
Can't get enough of Movement? For the best local acts, after parties and more, see all of HuffPost Detroit's Movement Electronic Music Festival 2012 coverage.
