Burning man might be a week long social experiment/festival for some, but for other’s it’s a year-long hobby that increasingly takes over their life as the burn gets closer. Hanging out in San Francisco I got to meet some of the people who invest their time and money to create the magic that is Black Rock city. Read on
Where dreams are built
The first time I walked into Nimby (not in my back yard), a massive warehouse in Oakland, the cynical bastard in me went to sleep for a few hours. It was at the back stage where dreams were being set up, like some scenes in Niel Gaiman’s Sandman. All around me people were working on projects that they chose to work on, investing their time and money on something that had no practical use. “We just like building stuff,” most people would tell me when I asked why they were doing this.
Even Dr. Brainlove can’t escape bureaucracy of licencing and a license plate.
I joined a group called Phage which exists for around 10 years trying to ‘infect the playa with science’, their art car called Dr. Brainlove models brain activity by using 400 meters of LED’s on a massive steel framework that can be climbed on.
After running around taking pictures and poking my nose around I asked to help and was put to work painting. I was delighted by the large percentage of women that were involved, many of them leading the project.
Build parties
Nimby might be where all the heavy duty work took place, but cutting of the LEDs, soldering and the programing mostly happened at the crazy house of two amazing technical artists (check out their web site called sustainable magic and their workshops and events). I have always used the technique of calling something a party + ordering pizza and beers to get people to build my garden, paint my walls, help me move to a new apartment. These people have taken it one step further with their ‘build parties’. I practiced being a Chinese factory worker for a few hours of cutting LEDs. My main contribution was probably finding a way to reduce the labor for that specific task by sliding the LEDs then cutting them just once instead of cutting them on both sides.
Chinese factory worker, just with music, friends and as many breaks as I want.
I also joined the sustainable magic crew in a last minute attempt to save the day by using their laser cutter to create thousands of plastic pieces that will hold in place the material used to defuse the LEDs light. The warehouse they work in was another small version of Nimby with amazing art created for burning man in previous years.
Another project I helped out with a little, mostly by giving massages, although I got to grind some of the rust away with this massive machine without killing myself, was the Tree of missed connections. A bunch of friends working in their back yard creating a LED-lit climbable tree, yes people like to climb on thing at burning man!
The Tree of missed connections
Both these projects were funded using crowd funding and let’s admit it, would probably not have come into being if the day jobs of a lot of the participants and their friends wasn’t the booming high tech industry in the area. This doesn’t lessen their accomplishment by one bit but shows that the freedom to create comes at a price that most people probably can’t afford.
Some amazing art from last year!
These people and thousands of others creating the art for burning man will be working right up to the burn (and after). They will reach the playa even more exhausted than most but at least for some the added value of creating something together as a group is enough to keep them going and send them raving into the night… well, some chemical assistance might help as well.
See you on playa!