Burning Man

One of the most popular pieces of art at Burning Man two weeks ago was Bliss Dance, a 40-foot-tall metal sculpture of a nude dancing woman. Think Michelangelo's David, only female and lit up spectacularly at night.

A friend of mine, Dave Simon, posted one of his photos of the sculpture on his Facebook page in an album he set to be public. On Tuesday, after the photo had been up for five days, Simon got an e-mail from Facebook saying that the image was removed for violating terms of use, which ban posting photos that contain nudity.

"… Read more

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev.--If you ever wanted a perfect blend of Internet meme phenomenon meeting a large-scale gathering of its fans and the circumstances that created it, Burning Man provided it on Monday.

For days, the weather here, in the Black Rock Desert of northwestern Nevada has been unusual--cold August daytime temperatures, for example--and extreme, with two days of structure-destroying winds. But on Monday, as thousands of new arrivals passed through the just-opened gates, the skies opened up, the rain fell with vigor, and then, there it was a double rainbow.

As anyone who has been paying attention to … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--For Ron Meiners, the aha! moment came during Burning Man 2006.

A longtime attendee of the countercultural arts festival, Meiners had been thinking about how one would explain what Burning Man is to someone who had never been. The answer, he decided, was obvious: an opera.

In typical Burning Man fashion, as he was standing in line at the port-a-potties, describing this epiphany to a friend, a man next to them piped up and said, in effect, "Are you talking about putting together an opera about Burning Man? I create operas. Can I help?"

Today, the fruits … Read more

Have you ever worried that knuckle cracking will give you arthritis or wondered why pregnant women don't tip over? Me too.

Research into those topics--as well as studies finding that diamonds could be created from tequila and giant panda feces are good for composting--received Ig Nobel Prizes in a ceremony on Thursday night at Harvard University.

The prizes, awarded to scientific achievements that "cannot and should not be reproduced," are presented in the week before the real Nobel prizes are announced and are sponsored by the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research."

A Thousand … Read more

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev.--Burning Man is not just an alternative culture event; it's increasingly a commercial cellular opportunity, and that has purists fuming.

For one week, participants leave behind their work and more mundane matters, and immerse themselves in an alternate reality, recharging their creative energy and drawing inspiration from the surreal atmosphere.

The remote location, 140 miles from the nearest city (Reno) in the desert of northern Nevada, makes it easy to escape. Meanwhile, banning commerce (apart from ice and coffee from the organizers) is designed to wean people off capitalism in favor of a more idealistic … Read more

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada--It's Thursday night, three days before the gates officially open to Burning Man, but already a lot of people have arrived here for set-up. The arts festival is quickly taking shape.

On this night, it's oddly quiet on the Black Rock desert. Oddly because if you've ever been to Burning Man, you're used to nights being filled with noise of all kinds--music, explosions, screaming, laughing--coming from every direction. But because the only people here right now are helping to build things--art projects, theme camps, public infrastructure--people are plumb tuckered out.

But it was … Read more

OAKLAND, Calif.--Want a trip back to the romanticism and innocence with which space travel was associated in the 1940s? Then get yourself to Burning Man, starting August 31 in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.

That's where the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, a retro rocket "made" in 1944, will be on display for the thousands of participants at the annual countercultural arts festival to play in and around.

In reality, of course, the rocket wasn't made in the 1940s; It's being made as we speak in a warehouse in a run-down part of Oakland, just across … Read more

Updated at 12:03 p.m.: To correct that Arc Attack did not synchronize music to its tesla coils.

Just in time for Maker Faire, I read in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning that a local fire artist has created a revolutionary machine: a fire pit, from a company called Live Spark, designed to make flames dance to the beat of music.

According to the Chronicle, Brett Levine--not surprisingly, a Burning Man and Maker Faire artist, as well as a former software entrepreneur--has begun selling his so-called "Fire 2.0," a $15,000 device that has gotten … Read more

NICE, Calif.--This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Imagine getting to introduce to the Internet a couple of otherwise-normal 60-somethings who, having lived off the grid at 4,000 feet in the middle of national forest, have missed more than 30 years of media innovations.

That's what I did earlier this week, with my in-laws, Tyler and Donna. They're perfectly nice people. They just have never used the Internet before, haven't watched TV, really, and even their cell phone is turned off most of the time to conserve their limited solar power.

I've been coming to … Read more