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 of those dusty conversations are on view for all to see: "A Burning Opera: How to Survive the Apocalypse," which is currently in limited engagement at the gorgeous Teatro ZinZanni here.
While Meiners is no longer directly involved, executive producer Dana Harrison, Mark Nichols, who scored the show, and well-known culture writer Erik Davis, who wrote the libretto, ran with Meiners' idea and over the course of the last three years, have put together this show. The core goal is still the same: to provide a moving picture of what the event, held each summer in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, is really all about, as well as some of its history.
As an 11-time Burning Man attendee, I was excited when I heard about the opera, especially given its explicit mission: communicating "the transformational madness of the (Black Rock Desert) to the 'burning curious.'"
A Burning Opera has a promising central story line: the experience of a pair of newbies--otherwise known as first-time attendees--who arrive in the desert thoroughly unprepared for what's in store for them, apparently thinking that time at Burning Man is akin to any other camping trip.
Dressed in street clothes for an event where every kind of attire (or lack thereof) goes, save for street clothing, the pair--presented as a young, attractive, heterosexual couple--quickly discover things are not at all as they seem.
That, of course, is the springboard for two hours of colorful examination of various elements of the Burning Man experience.
For years, several specific stereotypes have been widely disseminated about Burning Man. The most frequent are that the event's thousands of attendees are focused primarily on drugs and sex and that they are largely, to paraphrase, "a bunch of hippies."
To buy into that is to ignore the fact that what really goes on in the Black Rock Desert for a week leading up to Labor Day each year is much, much more complex. There are hippies, of course, but there are equal numbers, if not more, of tech industry executives, rocket scientists, accomplished sculptors, singers, dancers and painters, firemen and firewomen, and so on.
And while there can be no denying that drugs--and the much more common alcohol--are a significant factor, and that there is plenty of nudity and sexual behavior, anyone who has actually been to Burning Man will tell you that the dominant elements are large-scale art, welcoming communities, music, and a culture of participation.
The Burning Opera tries to address the core components of what some attendees call "That Thing in the Desert," but in my opinion, focuses too much on the easy stereotypes.
While it's true that the show tries to dispel the myth that it's all about drugs--the man in the newbie couple is seen struggling through the effects of an acid trip, only to be told, in a singing number, that there is much more to Burning Man than mind-altering substances--it certainly does nothing to make anyone think that such substances aren't a major part of what goes on in the desert.
Similarly, an attempt to show the woman from the newbie couple coming to grips with sides of herself she's never allowed to see the light of day are expressed by having her stripped topless by a band of burners and left that way for much of the show.
In the moment, the show's writers were trying to make two simultaneous points: that transformation was the goal of attending, and that it should not be exploited. The latter point was driven home by virtue of a scene in which a photographer tries to shoot the topless woman and is quickly chided for doing so.
The transformation of one of the newbies--on the right--begins in a scene from A Burning Opera: How to Survive the Apocalypse.
(Credit: Michael Rauner)If she had then put her top back on, the point would have been made, and we could all have moved on. Yet she remained bare-chested for nearly the rest of the show.
And the focus on sexuality didn't stop there: one grand number near the end featured many of the performers dancing vigorously to a song about polyamory--again something that is seen by some as a common element of the Burning Man world. To me, this was overplayed because while you can find polyamory there, it is hardly the dominant paradigm.
Leaving the show, I worried that its creators had taken the easy route: stay close to the things most people know about Burning Man and it would be more attractive to general audiences. But they, in my opinion at least, had neglected to spend much time at all on what I believe is much more important: art and community.
Still, I wondered if my conclusion was a result of being too close to it all and looking for reasons to nitpick. After all, the theater had been packed to the rafters with hard-core burners, and most of them--including some high up in the Burning Man organization--seemed pretty happy with what they'd seen. Indeed, two of the organization's six board members are actually in the show, as is at least one other very senior staffer. Clearly, Burning Man itself has given a thumbs-up.
So, perhaps, I thought, I should filter my opinion through someone the show was actually trying to speak to: an audience member who had never been to Burning Man.
For that, I spoke with a 58-year-old gentleman named Rich Caragol, who told me that he had some familiarity with Burning Man through his ex-girlfriend but that he'd never been himself.
"I enjoyed how (the show) began, the transformation," Caragol said. "That's the big message I got...People were moving through whatever emotional state they were in, and people had some metamorphoses."
He said he concluded that transformation was the major message of the production due to the number of characters dealing with and emerging from a series of challenging situations--relationship problems, culture shock, physical problems, drug aftermath, and so on.
Caragol also pinpointed the sartorial change that the show's newbies went through, having arrived at Burning Man in street clothes and emerged later in the kinds of colorful and outrageous garb burners are known for.
"It is about change," he said of his impression of Burning Man, "even in what they wear, they get out of their suits and ties."
And he even felt that while the show did put its newbie characters through an ecstasy trip and the aforementioned LSD experience, the message was not that attendees are all under the influence all the time.
"It was a lot more than (just the) drugs, I thought." Caragol said. "That was just one element. I didn't think that was a focus of the show."
Indeed, where I came away missing a dramatic discussion of community, Caragol found it, pointing to the end of the show when the performers invited the audience into their inner circle to sing and dance. "That felt like it brought it all together," he said. "You could feel the power. I could just feel the resonance of what they were trying to communicate."
I guess, then, that it's all in the way you see things. From a literal perspective, I think that's true. Some of what was going on in the production was hard to see, as the Teatro ZinZanni is a theater in the round, and I believe that the Burning Opera is not well-served by such a venue. Of course, ZinZanni is a stunning space for its own performance and offered an opportunity to do the opera there, how could the producers of the opera refuse? That said, I'd like to see the show again in a standard theater.
Ultimately, I felt that the show needs some work, which is not surprising given that it has only been performed a few times in front of audiences and that it is still being refined. And as I've written, would do well to put more emphasis on community and art. But I was pleased to hear Caragol interpret the show as having been about transformation. Because, in the end, I do believe that that's what Burning Man is all about.
I asked him if he was now planning on attending That Thing in the Desert.
"Absolutely," he said. "I'm just going to go and do my own thing."
On Thursday night, three days before the gates open to Burning Man, the Man is up and looking fine atop his forest of wooden, sculpted trees, but is still roped off.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)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 clearly worth a quick bike ride to see what's up already, and two of the most obvious pieces are the Man--the centerpiece of the festival, this year built atop a forest of wooden sculptures of trees--and the Raygun Gothic Rocket, a 1940s-era spaceship gracing the desert with its stylized presence.
From here on out, it will only get bigger, louder, and more outrageous. But tonight, amidst the vast emptiness of a Burning Man only partially pieced together, some beauty is quietly on display.
The Raygun Gothic Rocket ship, a 1940s-era spaceship, which has a planned launch a week from Friday at Burning Man.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)
The Raygun Gothic Rocketship is a 1940s-era rococo rocket that Burning Man attendees will have a chance to climb through. They may even get to see it launch.
(Credit: Raygun Gothic Rocketship)
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 the bay from San Francisco. But don't bother telling the more than 60 artists, scientists, engineers, and others who are putting countless hours of their time and energy into creating the rocket ship that their narrative is fiction: they're having too much fun crafting that narrative as they go to listen to any naysayers.
The project, which is led by artists Sean Orlando, David Shulman, and Nathaniel Taylor, is one of 25 that received funding from the Burning Man organization. It is almost certainly the only one that will take visitors back in time to a place where space travel wasn't beset by some of the real-life failures and inefficiencies of NASA and other space agencies, and the disappointments that can come from mixing politics with science.
Rather, the Raygun Gothic Rocketship is pure whimsy, mixed, of course, with some serious research into what a rocket of this era and style would be like.
For the most part, the rocket and many of its components were designed using a CAD program called SolidWorks, Orlando explained when I visited the warehouse Friday.
In the real world, though, it will be a 40-foot-tall retro masterpiece, complete with 17-foot-tall legs and three main compartments rising another 23 feet in the air. Once installed in the desert, it will be attached to an adjacent 25-foot-tall gantry by a 10-foot bridge. Visitors will be able to climb up through the three compartments and then go down via the gantry.
The plan, Orlando said, is to have a launch event on the evening of Friday, September 4. Prior to the event, a very, very loud siren will be set off to announce to the thousands of Burning Man participants that fueling is about to start, and then those participants will begin to gather outside a 500-foot safety perimeter. Come launch time, be prepared for some special surprises, Orlando suggested.
Making the rocket
Featuring a solid steel frame, the rocket will be skinned entirely in brushed aluminum. And befitting a Burning Man ethos of "do-it-yourself," every bit of that aluminum is being made in the warehouse in Oakland on a set of what are known as English wheels, contraptions that can shape the metal into pieces with the rounded edges necessary for making a rocket.
It will feature 42 aluminum panels, as well as the three legs, and it will all be held together by thousands of rivets. All in all, complete with its rococo shape, the rocket will very much like look like what it's supposed to be: a spacecraft built 55 years ago that has traveled through time and found its way to 2009.
Asked where it was built, Orlando and Shulman laughed and admitted they needed a little more work on their back story.
Just above the legs will be a main compartment serving as the engine room, armory, and life and biosciences lab. Participants will be able to look down through the floor at the rocket's engine (see video below), which will feature six power cells, each of which will display a high-voltage lighting effect. That effect, courtesy of 12,000 volts of electricity, was crafted in conjunction with a professor from the department of engineering at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Participants will be invited to climb through each of the three compartments and to explore the many displays they'll come across. The idea is to give visitors a sense of what such a rocket would be like inside. The second compartment will feature crew quarters, navigational and observational tools, and audio and video communications and scientific instruments. All of these things will be available for participants to play with.
There will also be a telescope that participants will be able to look through for "deep scanning" of space. The idea there, said Shulman, is that crew members would need to look out into space to determine approach trajectories for when the rocket docks when it lands.
Similarly, there will also be a probe launcher, which will fire off small rockets. Sticking with the narrative, the rockets are intended to travel one-to-two parsecs. Practically, they may fly three or four hundred feet, where they can be picked up by passersby, who, hopefully, will return them to the main rocket ship in exchange for small gifts.
The rocket features a telescope that crew members used to peer into space for docking.
(Credit: Raygun Gothic Rocketship)At the top of the rocket is the cockpit, where a lovely pilot's chair will be installed. The chair will be made to rotate around, and allow the pilot to engage with the ship's flight controls. The pilot will have access to communications so that he (or she) can talk to those in the compartments below. For that, the team is utilizing 1930s and 1940s-era hand-cranked telephones.
How the idea began
I asked Orlando and Shulman how the idea for the Raygun Gothic Rocket ship began, and Orlando said that, from the beginning, they wanted to work on a retro rocket based on a romantic 1940s aesthetic.
A big part of that, said Orlando, whose father was a NASA contractor, was building up a sense of the excitement and innocence around space travel that still existed in the 1930s and 1940s, when science fiction was "still very positive and wide-eyed" and people saw nearly unlimited potential for space.
Added Shulman, the idea was to bring out that sense of wonder that perhaps went away a bit when the Cold War kicked in and politicians took the space program into another direction.
And for participants who visit the rocket, Shulman said, the hope is that they will walk away with the feeling that they got to take part in a "real rocket from the 1940s."
"We want it to be disorienting," Shulman said, "and create doubt: is it real, or is it not."
A new $15,000 device from Live Spark makes fire dance to the beat of music.
(Credit: Live Spark)
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 Las Vegas hotels and clubs hot and bothered over the prospect of entertaining their guests with synchronized dancing fire.
"Think of the illuminated bars on your stereo's graphic equalizer. Now imagine them on fire (links to video)," the Chronicle reports. "Algorithms analyze music in the room, even specific instruments, and send signals to the gas lines that rapidly open and close a series of valves to 100 different positions up to 30 times per second."
Now, I've seen some pretty amazing fire art in my day, but I'm guessing for your average Vegas visitor, this would be something they've never encountered before. And that's why, the Chronicle reports, Vegas hot spots are lining up to talk to Levine and his business partner about getting Live Spark hooked up.
This, of course, reminds me of some other artists that time visual art to the beat of music: Arc Attack, an Austin, Texas, group that uses the electricity from a pair of tesla coils to produce music.
Still, fire definitely has a primal attraction for a lot of people, and I can certainly see why Las Vegas would want to bring some of the magic that good fire art generates to its visitors. Now, as the economy continues to falter, Vegas' elders just need to figure out how to get those visitors to actually, you know, visit.
On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's in-laws live at the top of a mountain, are off the grid, and have missed the last 30-plus years of innovations in media. On Monday, they got satellite Internet installed. This is the view of their new dish from the deck of their mountain-side house.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)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 visit them for nine years, and there were countless conversations with them during which my wife and I, both Internet junkies, rhapsodized about its virtues. We gushed about Google. We raved about Second Life. We couldn't stop beating Wikipedia's drums.
We'd get weary nods and, "It sounds great, but we don't really have any use for the Internet."
For my wife and me, that was nothing but further motivation to get them online.
A couple of years ago, we replaced the ancient desktop computer on which they did their accounting with a new PC that we joked was the planet's healthiest Windows machine, having never been anywhere it could meet a virus.
We also began bringing them DVDs, and they fell hard for "The West Wing" and "The Wire." But it was my wife's masterstroke--getting them a Netflix subscription--that probably won them over.
They had no way to manage their Netflix account, so we did it for them. They'd get the movies at their P.O. box, 45 minutes away, watch them, return them on their next supply run, and repeat.
Two installers from HughesNet putting the finishing touches on the satellite dish.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Setting up their queue was beyond surreal. They'd seen nothing. Not "Goodfellas," not "Pulp Fiction," not "Gladiator," "The English Patient," "Traffic," or "Chariots of Fire." Hardly anything. Do you know anyone like that?
The last time we visited, Tyler asked me to find out how much power a satellite dish, a modem, and a wireless router used. He wasn't sure that their power system was up to the task.
It was, though, and last week, as we were getting ready for a visit, my wife said, "By the way, they're getting satellite Internet installed on Monday."
Our incredible toy
I'm a geek, so I don't mind telling you how eager I was to show off our incredible toy. Despite being avid readers, radio listeners, and now movie fans, my in-laws still had no idea that the world was coming to their door. On Monday.
Some friends visited the mountain with us, and they also got excited about introducing my in-laws to the Internet. Over the weekend, we made a list of Web sites everyone agreed they had to visit: Snopes.com, NYTimes.com, NPR.org, BBC.co.uk, Huffingtonpost.com, Google News, PostSecret, Craigslist, Flickr, BurningMan.com, Epicurious.com, TED.com, and others.
But on Saturday night, we asked them what they wanted to explore first. In my mind, it would be something fanciful. Maybe a site about science or history or politics.
"Oh, something about fava beans, I imagine," Tyler said.
On Monday, HughesNet sent two installers, and then, after nine years, it was game on.
In the in-laws' little office, where their PC lives, I sat down to work on getting the machine secured.
We're buying them a Mac, but for now, my eyes were on the prize: the latest Windows security updates. But the connection speed they were getting was painfully slow, around 13Kbps. Windows Service Pack 3 is more than 300 megabytes--more than eight hours of download time away. We had to leave long before that.
I decided to forgo SP3 and instead install AVG, a free antivirus package. But the connection was so slow that the download failed. Twice.
The screen on the computer of one of the HughesNet installers as the satellite Internet connection was being set up for the first time.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)I was embarrassed and frustrated. To diffuse the situation, we decided to turn the focus to picking a Gmail address. They suggested a series of what to any veteran Internet user were obviously unavailable names: Tyleranddonna, Donnaandtyler, Beautifulmountain. Using my MacBook Pro and an EV-DO card, we finally found something.
I also decided to download AVG on my Mac. That, too, was painfully slow--we were at 4,000 feet, far from town--but it worked, and I copied the AVG file to their PC via a thumb drive.
But AVG needed its own updates, and so it went looking for them. I noticed that the download speeds had slowed even further, now to less than 2Kbps.
Slowly but surely?
This was ridiculous. They had signed up for a 1.0Mbps connection, which, I read, promised downloads of more than 500Kbps. They were getting 1Kbps.
I called HughesNet, and a technician told me that the account had surpassed its "Fair Access" limit. It turns out that satellite Internet users get only so much bandwidth per day--in my in-laws' case, 200 megabytes. Go over the limit, you get dial-up speeds for 24 long hours.
The technician told me that there was nothing he could do about it, despite my insisting that there was no way they'd passed 200 megabytes. A supervisor confirmed that he had "no mechanism" to lift the limit for the day, even when I explained that I had to leave soon and that I absolutely needed to finish downloading the security patches before I drove off the mountain.
In the HughesNet pamphlet that had finally lured Tyler and Donna, a footnote I now discovered really concerned me: "Based on analysis of customer usage data, Hughes has established a download threshold for each of the HughesNet service plans that is well above the typical usage rates."
CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's father-in-law sits at his computer, looking at his Internet connection for the very first time.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)This was alarming, as one of the things my wife and I were most excited about was the idea of her parents being able to . This vision now looked endangered.
"In order to arrive at our Fair Access Policy, Hughes conducted an analysis of HughesNet customer usage and then established a download threshold for each plan that was above average usage rates," Hughes wrote me in an e-mail Thursday. "Certain activities are more likely than others to exceed the daily download threshold, such as continuous downloading or viewing streaming-media content such as audio or video programming."
Users do get unlimited high-speed downloads from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. EST. Long after the in-laws would be watching streaming movies.
This was not good. What worried me more was that even watching YouTube videos might quickly put them over the top. The Hughes e-mail, though, seemed to dismiss that worry: "Activities such as viewing Web sites, checking e-mail, watching short streaming-media presentations, i.e. YouTube, and automatic software and antivirus updates are not likely to exceed the download threshold."
Back on the mountain, I decided that, slow speeds be damned, I was getting them online before my wife and I departed.
So I pulled Tyler over to the PC and sat him down.
This would not be so simple. After all, he had no experience with a browser. He didn't know where to click, or how to enter a URL, or how to tab between fields. There's a huge learning curve here for my wife's folks. They need Internet for Dummies--and now.
We booted up Firefox--I had downloaded it for him, as I would never let Internet Explorer set foot in their house again--to head to Google (see the video below, which evolves slowly).
Starting with the basics
I showed him where to type, and a little while after he typed in "Google.com," he got his first look at the search engine's wonderful, spare home page.
It was a moment of truth: What would be the first thing he would look up? Would it be FDR? The Vietnam War? Barack Obama?
Nope. It was fava beans. He hadn't been kidding earlier.
Before we knew it, Tyler was on EveryNutrient.com, a good site, it seems, to learn about the nutritional value of fava beans.
After a little more browser 101--explaining that words in blue are usually hyperlinks, and how to use the back and reload buttons--we hopped over to Wikipedia. More fava beans.
But things went downhill when we tried Gmail so that Tyler could send his first-ever e-mail--can you remember when you did that? The site wouldn't load. The connection was simply too slow.
My wife and I had built this moment up so much in our minds over the years that we were clearly more excited than her parents. Yet Tyler was frustrated. And that was crushing.
Looking for a graceful way out, we adjourned from Gmail and moved into their living room to talk.
We asked them what they were looking forward to using the Internet for. And again, practicality won. Donna said she wanted to be able to get better fire information than she could on the radio, which makes sense, since they live in the middle of a forest.
I said there were always real-time maps online during fires.
"That's exactly what we want to know," she said.
Tyler added, "That'll be tremendously helpful."
They also said they were excited about investigating the various weather sites, since they are deeply subject to the whims of their environment. And, yes, they expect to spend a lot of time reading up on nutrition.
For my wife and me, it was time to leave. But I felt sheepish.
I had had such high hopes for this experience, and instead, it had been deeply disappointing. I couldn't even bring myself to ask what they had thought about their initial experiences on the Internet.
But it will get better. We'll go back soon to make sure.
The four hosts of the new Discovery Channel show, 'Prototype This' sit on the perpetual water slide they created for one episode.
(Credit: Discovery Channel)If you're a fan of things like MythBusters, Make magazine, Burning Man, the do-it-yourself movement and the like, you are probably going to love Prototype This
The new TV show, which debuts tonight at 10 p.m. on Discovery Channel, is a celebration of what intelligent, creative, and slightly crazy people can make when given freedom, expert help, and a bit of a budget.
The basic theme of Prototype This is that the four hosts, Terry Sandin, Zoz Brooks, Mike North, and Joe Grand take their combined skills and use each episode to conceive of and craft some entirely new design, product, or technology. The end result? A full season of prototypes that are off-the-wall, entirely practical, and everything in between.
In August, I spent a day shadowing the show's hosts and producers as they worked on creating some very useful new tools for firefighters (see video). Later, a colleague of mine wrote about a separate project in which the show chronicled the creation of an autonomous Prius.
Until today, the machinations of the show were entirely behind-the-scenes. Now, Prototype This is being unleashed on the public at large, and my hope--and Discovery Channel's as well, I'm sure--is that the efforts of this new-style band of TV stars will forever change the way people view geeks and the things they can make with the power of their minds.
There were huge crowds at Maker Faire 2008. While no attendance figures were known yet, there were rumors that the event's ticket pre-sales had doubled over Maker Faire 2007's. Regardless, it was clear that the event was attracting many more people than during the last two Maker Faires, in 2006 and 2007.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)
SAN MATEO, Calif.--If the hour-long traffic jam leading into Maker Faire wasn't proof that the do-it-yourself festival being held here all weekend is bigger than ever, then maybe the huge crowds gathered around attraction after attraction was.
This is the third year that Maker Faire has packed the San Mateo Fairgrounds with the best and brightest of the burgeoning DIY community--mobile barcalougers, dueling Tesla coils, huge Burning Man art pieces, felt masterpieces, and on and on--and there can be little doubt the success of the previous two years' iterations led to a bigger crowd this time around.
In 2006, the first Maker Faire was a bit of an oddity, yet still attracted 20,000 people for the weekend. Last year, that number doubled and while I didn't hear any attendance figures for this year, I did overhear someone saying that ticket pre-sales had doubled over last year's total. All this is just the math behind the wall-to-wall people moving around the fairgrounds--most of them sporting ear-to-ear grins.
At Maker Faire 2008, there was a very large contingent of steampunk vehicles, structures and clothing. Here, a steampunk vehicle resembling a tractor powers its way across the pavement of the San Mateo Fairgrounds in San Mateo, Calif., where the do-it-yourself festival is being held all weekend.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)
For me, and many others who have been to the previous Maker Faires, this weekend's version was more like a reunion than a showcase of new projects. To be sure, there was an endless supply of new makers on hand. How could there not be with hall after hall of creative people showing off the talents, skills, and wicked good humor that is the hallmark of events like this.
But, there was also a lot on display that had been at previous Maker Faires--and other events, too, like Burning Man, Yuri's Night, Coachella, and so forth. These days, a lot of big interactive art pieces are making the rounds of such festivals and events and some of the artists behind them, people like Michael Christian, Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito, Mark Perez, and others, are becoming known beyond the relatively insular communities they began in.
But, let's be honest: None of that matters when what you see when wandering around Maker Faire is excited kids, happy parents and young, attractive men and women dressed to the nines in period costumery.
One of the first things that one would see when entering Maker Fair was Kevin Mathieu's LegoJEEP. The car was meant for covering with Lego bricks, and it was a huge hit with kids. However, Maker Faire security was not too happy to see children climbing on top of the vehicle, but in the spirit of the event, after security voiced its concerns, Mathieu restricted kids to standing on the ground or on the bumper. The car and the resolution to security's issues with it, were emblematic of the do-it-yourself ethos and the desire of its participants to solve problems themselves.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)
And that is really the message that Maker Faire sends: That there are delights for everyone, whether you're a robotics fanatic, a Lego fan, a crafting devotee, a fire artist, a 9-year-old, or all of the above.
Those of us who live in the Bay Area might be tempted to think that this is the only place on Earth where you could find such an eclectic combination of people. Yet, as the very successful Maker Faire Austin last fall demonstrated, there are such folks in many places. What's really needed to bring them out of the woodwork is an event that champions their creativity, glee, and interest that people of all kinds get from hours and hours of playing around with the kinds of things that Maker Faire offers.
So, indeed, what does Maker Faire 2008 have to offer?
I could go on and on and on and on. But in the interest of your time and mine, I'll only go on and on.
Colin Fahrion poses for a picture wearing a whimsical steampunk-esque bunny mask and ears. The outfit was emblematic of a popular aesthetic at Maker Faire this year.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)
One wonderful project was the Buscycle, a fully pedal-powered bus of sorts. You'd see it rolling by all over the fairgrounds, a happy collection of children and adults thrashing their feet, driving it forward. I had seen it sitting idly on Thursday when I visited the fairgrounds for Maker Day--a day for the makers to meet each other and get a bit of a taste for the event before they had to entertain the multitudes--and I'd wondered if it would be special. Question answered: Yes.
Another terrific--and very popular--attraction was the remote-control scale battleship naval wars that were being put on by members of the Western Warship Combat Club. In front of hundreds of people lined up four-deep or standing up on bleachers, these folks ran their little warships around a makeshift pool, firing BBs from ship to ship, trying to sink them. Little ships would get damaged, and then, showing no mercy, those running much bigger vessels would ram their craft into the smaller ones, all to the gasps and "Oohhhs" of the crowd.
There were hourly demonstrations of dueling Tesla coils that, with dimmed lights for full dramatic effect, would build up to a crescendo of commingled lightning bolts crackling away in front of an audience lucky enough to have wandered by at the right time.
In one outdoor area, the Neverwas Haul was attracting a long line of people wanting to climb inside a fully steam-powered, mobile, Victorian house. If that's a concept that boggles the mind, don't let it: A mobile Victorian house is exactly the kind of disconnect that Maker Faire is all about.
That's why, for example, Mark Perez's gigantic, Life-Size Mousetrap was a massive hit this weekend, with hundreds of people lining up to watch and see if a bowling ball could make it all the way around a long path of levels, pulleys, ramps, baskets, ladders, and the like. I never actually managed to see it running because the crowds were too deep. But when I've seen it in place previously, at Maker Faires here and in Austin, and at Burning Man, it's been a thrill to watch it in action.
A fire art project called 2piR tasked people standing on a platform in the middle of a circle of propane-fueled jets to move around and set the jets off with large plumes of fire. The more they moved, the faster the jets would shoot.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)
What else? Well, no story could do the event full justice. But the sublime 2piR was well worth highlighting. This is a fire art piece in which a large circle of propane tanks connected to jets shoots out plumes of fire in time with the movements of people standing on a platform in the middle. The more you move, the more the jets of fire erupt on the perimeter. As the day grew cold Saturday, many people huddled on the outside of that perimeter, hoping that the players in the middle would cause the plumes to erupt near them and warm them up. Sadly for me and my friends, the propane fueling the jet nearest us was empty.
Several people were on hand at Maker Faire demonstrating what's possible with aerial kite photography, a technique in which a digital camera is harnessed and hung from a kite and then raised to shoot pictures of the ground below.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)Earlier in the day, I had wandered through the various halls and came across a terrific exhibit of aerial kite photography. An artist named Ben Peoples explained that a small camera suspended from a harness under a kite can be controlled with precise movements and with some practice, can be used to take excellent photos from high above the ground. And indeed, there was a series of the photos on display, and you would never know from looking at them that they weren't taken by a professional with a camera in hand, maybe inside a helicopter or a plane.
Another project I liked was Michael Yates' "Camp Rehab Chevy," a collaborative effort to rebuild a very worn down 1948 Chevy truck and bring it back to life. As I found it, it was still pretty beat up and sad, but a group of people were tinkering around in the engine and inside the cab, and I had no doubt that by weekend's end, this might well be a functional truck.
The point of all this is that Maker Faire is a place where there is almost literally no end of wondrous attractions and terrific little finds. Tucked away in a corner of a hall, you might find some little delight that you'd never think you'd find: someone with a series of LEDs being spun around in seemingly random circles, making gorgeous patterns in the air, like Carl Pisaturo's "Rotating Amusement Device," or Tim Giugni's "Shadow Dome," a terrific exhibit which projected a shadow castle on the wall of a canvas room with a spotlight inside.
It's not likely that if you're reading this story that you'd be able to hop in the car and make it to the fairgrounds before Maker Faire closes Sunday--at 6 p.m.--but if what you're reading here piques your interest and you've never been before, mark the first weekend of May 2009 on your calendar and make a point of coming down next year. You will not be disappointed.
ArcAttack's performances include two singing Tesla coils, a robotic drum set and a PVC pipe organ.
(Credit: ArcAttack)
When you think of things related to science, music may not make the top of your list.
But the folks involved with a small collective called ArcAttack would like you to change your associations.
ArcAttack is all about one thing: building singing Tesla coils and crafting entire musical performances around them. For some time, at events like Dorkbot and other geekfests, the team--Joe DiPrima, Oliver Greaves, and Tony Smith--had been pulling off straightforward demonstrations of their creations. But they were synchronizing the machines to other people's music and not adding much in the way of their own innovations besides the singing Tesla coils themselves.
Now, however, ArcAttack has a whole ensemble mixing science and music and plastic--the Tesla coils, a pipe organ made from PVC, a robotic drumset--and putting it all together in short concerts with original music.
"We've got a solid 45 minutes or so of original content," DiPrima, an engineer at the University of Texas, told me recently, "and sometimes we'll incorporate themes from popular songs or do mixups with video game music.
When you see the singing Tesla coils, it takes a minute to really understand what you're watching. At first, you don't hear the tunes in the crackling of the electricity. But after a few moments, you realize what you're hearing and it's startling--especially if you have any experience with Tesla coils--to see these scientific wonders spitting out little bits of lightning with a beat.
"I've always loved music--playing it, and electronics too," DiPrima said. "I've been in a lot of bands, along with the other guys in the group, and this is probably the most fun we've had out of any other project we've been in. The way people respond to the coils playing real music with other instruments involved is amazing. People love it."
In particular, DiPrima suggested, ArcAttack's performances give their audiences--both in person and on the Web--a sense that music and science can indeed blend in a way that teaches something.
For many people, music is not the first thing they would associate with a Tesla coil, but ArcAttack has managed to build entire performances around its singing versions of the geek-favorite machines.
(Credit: ArcAttack)
"It's...a great way to get people interested in the science behind it," he said, "to present a Tesla coil, not just (as) an 'air core resonant transformer,' but (as) an effective tool for high intensity music."
Swarm is a project made up of six large orbs in which five of the orbs are tethered to a single 'mother node' that can then autonomously direct the others in open space. Here, project member Corey Fro chases after one of the orbs, trying to keep it from crushing another robot.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Corey Fro is chasing a large metal orb across the pavement at the NASA Ames Research Center here. He is desperately trying to make sure that the orb doesn't crush a nearby robot.
The orb in question is being remotely directed by a kid wielding an Xbox-like wireless controller, but it's the kid's first time using the device, and he really doesn't have any idea what he's doing.
Swarm is the work of at least 30 artists and is the continuation of a project originally created for Burning Man 2007. It is expected to be even more developed for Burning Man 2008.
(Credit: Swarm 2.1)And that's why the orb has rolled away and is bearing down rapidly on the unsuspecting and defenseless robot a few yards away. In the end, Fro caught the wayward sphere and saved the day, or at least the innocent robot.
If this sounds unusual, it isn't. At least not at Yuri's Night, a 12-hour celebration of space, science, music, and art held at NASA Ames and other locations around the world Saturday in honor of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's first flight into space.
The orb is part of Swarm, a project designed for Burning Man built around the concept of autonomous spheres that can be programmed to perform in one of many ways.
Or, as Fro put it, "They're kinetic sculptures that drive around in an autonomous but choreographed pattern."
Fro is just one of about 30 people who built the orbs for Burning Man 2007, and now the project is returning to Burning Man 2008 as an art piece partially funded--and therefore honored as noteworthy--by the curators of the annual countercultural arts festival.
But before it can go back out to the Nevada desert, Swarm had to make an appearance at Yuri's Night, and it was certainly one of the main attractions for the thousands in attendance Saturday.
And that's at least in large part because of what they can do.
"The orbs control their own movement, light show, and music," explained Fro. "The way they do that is by communicating with the mother node."
"The Swarm of autonomous beings by their very nature will have emergent and complex behavior," the project's Web site states. "They will flock, flirt, dance and interact, and their actions will surprise and astonish even us, their creators. They are simple, but together they will behave in ways more complex than we can predict."
At Yuri's Night Bay Area on Saturday, the orbs from Swarm were one of the most popular projects on display.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)
The idea is that five of the six orbs--which look something like specialized see-through hubcaps turned into spheres with really expensive robotic controls and LEDs inside--are subservient to the desires of the lead orb, or mother node.
The only information the subservient orbs send out is GPS and accelerometer data, which they send to the lead orb, which, Fro said, uses that information to coordinate the movements and lighting effects of all the spheres.
"So the movement coordination allows it to follow the leader, drive in patterns or (even) make the orb representation of planetary systems," Fro said. "But once they're running under control of the mother node, there's no control from humans.
That means, once all the orbs are in motion--something that wasn't on display at Yuri's Night--the only way to stop them is direct the mother node to stop.
Each orb, Fro said, is driven by counterbalancing using the weight of lead-acid batteries as ballast. By swaying the ballast forward, the orb moves forward as the center of gravity changes.
"To turn right or left," Fro said, "we swing the ballast right or left."
At Burning Man, where the entire project, in its 2008 configuration, will be unfurled, the Swarm team plans to erect a mast on the open desert floor that projects a large laser circle on the ground.
The idea is to define a safety zone so that pedestrians, bicyclists, and those on other forms of conveyance are safe.
"If they walk into that circle," Fro said, "all bets are off."
I was very happy to see the orbs at Yuri's Night because Swarm was one of the legendary art projects I missed at Burning Man 2007. It was something I heard a lot of people talk about after the fact in very reverent terms.
And as befits many Burning Man art projects, the 2008 version is sure to be new and improved. In fact, Fro said, the Xbox-like controllers were a big part of what's new for this year: joysticks that can allow anyone to take very subtle control over the orbs.
But it's also very easy to lose control of them, as I saw multiple times on Saturday as Fro would hand the controller over to one person or another.
"Try not to rock it so much," he said to someone at one point, "because if you hit the kill switch, it will stop."
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF.--In April 2006, NASA announced that it was bringing in University of Arizona astronomy professor and former brigadier general Simon "Pete" Worden to be the director of its NASA Ames Research Center here.
NASA Ames director Pete Worden has brought a fresh perspective to the facility since his arrival in 2006. At the Yuri's Night celebration on Saturday, he demonstrated his sense of humor and history by wearing a Soviet-era general's uniform in recognition of the first-ever space flight by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)Since then, Worden has brought a fresh perspective to the helm of one of NASA's most important research facilities, demonstrated through initiatives such as giving a keynote address to the International Space Development Conference from the virtual world Second Life. (Note: My wife works at Second Life publisher Linden Lab).
But along with administrators at several other NASA facilities, Worden has been a leader in hosting Yuri's Night celebrations, something that might not have been possible even just a few years ago.
An evening of art, music, dancing, fire, and science, Yuri's Night has become a much anticipated event for many people, especially the version held annually here at NASA Ames.
On Saturday, as the party throbbed just feet away, and as Worden sat drenched in sweat from having participated in a fashion contest wearing a Soviet-era general's outfit, he sat for an open-ended, if short, interview with CNET News.com.
Q: Why is NASA hosting this event?
Worden: Tonight, there are at least four NASA centers doing it. The fundamental issue facing NASA is that we're embarking on the most significant step that has ever been done in space. The next step is settling the solar system. The U.S. space exploration program is a key part of that, as well as efforts around the world. NASA has always played a key role in other critical issues that face us as well, such as aeronautics, all the way up to understanding the secrets of the universe and addressing climate change. Those are all NASA jobs. But to do that we need the next generation excited about space and the other things that NASA does. But we are a technology agency, and it's a lot of science and math and engineering. Sometimes that's not considered quite as cool as other things. We think it is. And Yuri's Night is an opportunity to bring the next generation in and show them how cool it is. This is an opportunity to reflect on the past, such as the first humans in space, such as Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Our first Space Shuttle flight in 1981. And to the future, where the future means expanding into the solar system. But we're not just expanding as machines and science. We're expanding as humans. There's art, culture, music, and dancing. So it's about all those things as well and to link that with the technical aspects will be maybe the most inspiring thing we can do.
NASA Ames director Pete Worden sitting in his facility during Yuri's Night celebrations on Saturday.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)Talk a little about NASA's role in addressing climate change?
It's basically NASA data that has enabled us to understand climate change and that changes are occurring, and that human activities are a significant part of that. Here at NASA Ames, we specialize in measurements of climate change. Second, NASA Ames houses the agency's supercomputer, the Columbia supercomputer, and one of its primary purposes is to run these very significant climate models and to support research from climate researchers around the world. We do the detail work, and we run airborne sensors, and we run the really sophisticated computer models here.
Can NASA Ames be a center of research into peace?
I think we are a center of research into peace. I can't think of anything more peaceful than working with the rest of world to expand humanity into the solar system, or to address some of the pressing issues like climate change that are facing the Earth or researching new green energy solutions. Peace in its fullest and most positive sense is bringing everybody together. Probably the most significant thing NASA did in the 1960s was to take that famous picture of Earth from space. That made people realize we have a lot more in common than differences. I believe that it was that one image that has led to the end of the Cold War, and to growing global linkages.
Please talk a little about NASA's repositioning of astrobiology?
It is one of the most significant areas, and an interdisciplinary field. We're trying to invent a new area based on the fusion of biology, astronomy, physics, and engineering. And there are three key questions: One, where did we come from, and where did life come from; two, Where else is it in the universe; and, three, what is the future of life in the universe. That is a very exciting area. There were some cuts in our astrobiology program, but we're seeing those have been largely restored, and we have a very optimistic program. We're expanding the program.
What's the period, like this one, leading up to a change in presidential administration like for NASA?
Every election is both an opportunity and a potential problem. After awhile you grow comfortable in what your current leadership, both congressional and presidential, tells you to do. But there's going to be new leadership, and I'm pretty optimistic that though there will be some changes, the fundamental direction of NASA is not going to change. The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 passed by huge majorities. There was bipartisan support for it. All of the potential candidates voted for that.
Why was the deal to allow Google's co-founders to keep their airplanes at Ames good for the facility?
The key point is that this is a research center, and it has a lot of facilities that are expensive to maintain. We have very limited usage of the airfield, and we're fortunate enough to have 1,800 acres of Silicon Valley real estate, which is very valuable. Congress and the White House have pushed us to form new relationships with private corporations, and there are 55 corporate tenants on Moffett Field. We also have research partnerships, including one with Google. In addition, we are building public/private partnerships with other people who have airplanes, and we lease those facilities. The use they put it to is some benefit to NASA. In this case, the Google co-founders' airplanes are available for some NASA research use, and we've used those a number of times. Plus they pay us for the hangar, and this is a real win/win, and it's good government. We're defraying government costs. And it's not really a sweetheart deal. The use of the facility is pretty expensive.
Is Google building a facility at NASA Ames?
We're in discussions with Google to lease tens of acres that they would use to build new facilities, offices, research facilities and housing. I would expect in a few months to have some agreement on that. We're also in discussions with a consortium of universities to build a university campus here. Right now, it's the University of California, which is the lead university, and Santa Clara University, Foothill College, and De Anza College, and Carnegie Mellon University. The idea is to have a campus devoted to some of the specific expertise that's needed to power Silicon Valley. And this is an ideal location for it.
