The crowd fell silent. Within seconds, a navy blue river cascaded into a turbine-driven windmill, then detonated in an explosion of hundreds of brightly colored dominoes. It was just one epic element at the eighth annual Tech Topple held Saturday at the Tech Interactive museum in San Jose.
A team of professional builders led by kinetic artist Alex Huang — known to YouTube fans and “Domino Masters” enthusiasts as Flash Domino — put their kinetic energy skills to the test to create the Machine City and bigger dominoes than ever. Constructed from over 17,000 pieces of plastic, Topple Town, USA recreated an urban aesthetic mixed with a serene landscape, with small parks, a lake, a river, a snowy mountain, houses and dominoes creating the sight of fireworks shooting into the air .
As the 54-hour build-up came to an explosive end, dominoes collapsing into each other and other props in a massive and surprisingly creative chain reaction, the crowd erupted in oohs and aahs. Huang, the 23-year-old domino guru from San Jose, stood on a 6-foot-tall ladder, pumping his left fist in the air.
After achieving the incredible feat, he said: “It’s overwhelming. This is exactly the result we wanted. I’m so happy. Ecstatic.” As he prepared for Thursday’s event, he also explained, “All we’re doing here is trying to tell a story.”
Alex Huang, lead designer of Topple Town, applauds after the 17,500-piece domino chain reaction installation worked perfectly at Tech Interactive in San Jose, Calif., Saturday, July 15, 2023. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area Newsgroup)
Huang is a prominent member of the domino and machine building community. He was just 16 years old when he launched San Jose’s first Tech Topple in 2016. Last year, he produced the reality show “Domino Masters” for Fox and Hulu. Although he has done freelance projects for Pizza Hut, Disney and the Golden State Warriors, he looks forward to Tech Topple every year because it gives him a rare opportunity to work with famous builders in the community.
Seven builders joined Huang last week at Tech Interactive to build the miniature city. Among them were professional chain reaction artist Lyle Broughton and former domino world record holder Erez Klein. They first met Huang on the set of “Domino Masters,” which Broughton won. Klein was a 22-year-old college student when he set the world record for knocking over 255,389 dominoes in 1980.
“The logistics are really the hardest part,” Klein said, not the painstaking hours it takes to organize the finger-sized pieces. The satisfaction comes from the creative elements of construction.
Broughton and Huang share similar views on their work. The demolition is not so much an engineering feat as an artistic one, and they are eager to prove it.
Fans watch as Topple Town, a chain reaction of 17,500 dominoes is successfully triggered at Tech Interactive in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday, July 15, 2023. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Today’s streamlined plastic dominoes, combined with YouTube tutorials, have taken the technological capabilities of the art form away from the simple record.
For Flash Domino and the rest of the team, the challenge is to create something beautiful rather than technically impressive. What’s important is building elements of a larger narrative, with moments of tension, relief, humor and drama.
“The question of ‘will it work?’ it’s been resolved,” Broughton said days before the crash. “So the questions we’re interested in answering are: How do we do something that’s visually interesting that hasn’t been done before? How do we do something that tells a story in an interesting way?’ These are all artistic questions.”
When a chain reaction of landscape and city lights turned on Saturday, it painted an adventure torn down piece by piece.
