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."
Two days before tens of thousands of people will stream into the third annual Bay Area edition of Maker Faire, the art projects were still few and far between, and the ones that were already in place were only partially done. Here, the Neverwas Haul, a steam-powered, mobile, Victorian house sits waiting to be completed.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)SAN MATEO, Calif.--The best thing about going to Maker Faire a couple of days before the gates officially open is watching it grow.
Walk a couple of times around the fairgrounds here, where the do-it-yourself bacchanalia will welcome tens of thousands of people starting Saturday, and you'll see new projects appear each time you go around: A stream of trucks keeps coming through the gates, each one hauling a new group of people and whatever fantastical art, heavy machine, oddball musical instrument or other insane contents it might be carrying.
Over on one side of the fairgrounds, a large steam-powered, mobile, Victorian house called the Neverwas Haul sat all alone, a single person inside it doing some work. Its guts were visible on one side, something I wasn't used to after seeing the wonderful Neverwas Haul twice at Burning Man and at Maker Faire last year.
Over on the other side, a giant booth was being built for Microsoft, expertly packed boxes and exhibit infrastructure standing out from the rougher, more artistic fare around it.
And then there were three giant human figures made from chains, wood and other industrial detritus in various poses of worship. These were by artists Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito and were originally part of their incredibly ambitious Burning Man 2007 project called "Crude Awakening."
This was Maker Day, a day for the many, many makers whose individual DIY projects are Maker Faire to meet and greet and hear a series of talks on issues near and dear to their hearts: extreme crafting, the future of making, how to make money with open-source hardware kits and much more. And to see these projects come to life.
I was surprised, despite having been through this process last fall at Maker Faire Austin, at how barren the fairgrounds were only two days before the gates open on Saturday. In Austin, I had wondered if a bunch of makers simply wouldn't show up when, even the day before the event began, there were vast swaths of empty space.
Artist Karen Cusolito works on the hair of this giant human figure made from discarded metal during the set-up for Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)But, my experience then was that somehow, overnight on Friday night, the makers magically materialized, and by Saturday's opening, Maker Faire Austin was fully functional and operational. I have little doubt the same will be true this year.
At the very first Maker Faire, here in San Mateo, about 30 minutes south of San Francisco, in 2006, 20,000 people showed up. Last year, for the second go-round here, that number doubled. Now, as the organizers--the event is put on by Make magazine publisher O'Reilly Media--get ready for the third Bay Area iteration, no one knows how many to expect. But given that someone told me that pre-sales for this year's event were double last year's, I think it's safe to say that anyone heading out here this weekend should expect a packed house.
Still, that doesn't mean you will have a bad time. The fairgrounds are huge, and there's plenty of space for everyone. Plus, there will be endless dozens of makers on hand to showcase their insane creations and their brilliant minds.
For Maker Faire organizers like Louise Glasgow, the best thing about doing the event over and over again--this will be the fourth time they've done it, counting Austin last fall--is watching it grow and watching the birth of new makers.
"We're making makers," Glasgow told me Thursday. "There's so many new makers who were (Maker Faire) volunteers last year, or assistants (on other people's projects) or attendees who learned something here in a class."
Indeed, that is one of the great things about this event: people come for the first time, take a tutorial in something like making things with felt, and the next year they return with their own felting business. That was the experience of a friend of mine, who first came to Maker Faire here in 2006 and returned in 2007 with her new concern, NifNaks.
There's something for everyone at Maker Faire, including the many children who will be amongst the tens of thousands who show up in San Mateo, Calif., for the event this weekend.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)For me, seeing Glasgow pull up on a golf cart, her level of energy cranked way up, was a fun reminder of the several hours I spent with her in Austin last fall as she raced around during the set-up of Maker Faire there, making sure everything was going smoothly. It takes a lot to put one of these events together, and Glasgow and the whole Maker Faire team really seem to have this process nailed down.
Yet, to Glasgow, it's a whole new event each year.
And for the thousands of people who show up here this weekend--even those who have been here before--that's sure to be true. Especially for the many children who will never have seen anything like this stuff before.
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."
Members of Burners without Borders used detritus they found in the small Mississippi town to fashion its first-ever 'Welcome to Pearlington' sign. Burners without Borders spent more than seven months living and working in the battered Gulf Coast region, helping the communities of Biloxi and Pearlington clean up and rebuild after they were devastated by 2005's Hurricane Katrina.
(Credit: Tom Price)Until a few months after Hurricane Katrina flattened it, the little Mississippi hamlet of Pearlington had never been graced with a nice, big welcome sign.
But that was before, as Pearlington was being completely ignored by every official relief agency in the Gulf region, a bunch of strangers, all of them Burning Man attendees who had formed a group called Burners without Borders, suddenly descended to help.
This was no ragtag group of 10 or 20 hopeless do-gooders showing up without a plan. This was more than 150 people, toting heavy equipment, supplies of food and water, years of experience surviving and thriving in harsh, off-the-grid environments, and fresh from many months of hard-core cleanup of the ravaged coastal city of Biloxi.
This is the story of Burn on the Bayou, a new documentary produced by Burning Man, about the hundreds of self-organizing veterans of the annual countercultural arts festival, who, after hearing about the disaster in the Gulf--which happened during the festival--dropped everything, loaded up whatever trucks, RVs, campers and other vehicles they could find and drove several thousand miles to help.
While the rest of the world's attention was focused on the disaster in New Orleans, the Burning Man group decided to head towards Biloxi, which had been hit just as hard. There, the volunteers arrived and quickly set to work helping locals deal with the aftermath of one of the worst natural catastrophes in U.S. history.
This documentary is the first film project Burning Man has funded. For years, filmmakers have created a wide range of work about the festival and many of its associated elements, but this was the first time organizers felt like there was a story worth investing in itself.
"It's a fantastic story that illustrates how the ethics and values of what you learn from Burning Man can be turned outwards towards life outside the event," Marian Goodell, Burning Man's director of communications, told me. "The natural act of giving that's so easy and prevalent and natural at Burning Man just flowed to Mississippi."
I'd been aware of Burners without Borders for some time, and had written previously about some of its innovative efforts.
But as a 10-time Burning Man attendee myself, one of the things I appreciated most about Burn on the Bayou was that it tackles head-on the meme spread by many critics of Burning Man that its self-absorbed participants are interested only in having a blow-out party in the desert and couldn't care less about anyone else.
In fact, the film informs us, more than 2,000 Burning Man participants helped out in some way in the Gulf Coast region and Burners, as they're known, donated more than $100,000 to relief efforts.
To be sure, with any event that draws more than 40,000 people, there are some for whom that assessment is accurate. But the Burning Man community has long had countless members who work hard to make a difference in the real world. Whether that happens by putting up public art in cities or by raising money for various needy causes, or by donating time and manpower to help small low-income communities solve energy problems, Burners have long been giving back.
But nothing demonstrates that like what Burners without Borders did in 2005 and 2006.
Burn on the Bayou is a strong film that successfully shows how a large group of people took it upon themselves to run to help communities that were in no position to help themselves.
One of the things that's so poignant about the documentary is that it demonstrates just how disorganized the official relief efforts in the Gulf were after Katrina. So when the Burners arrived in Biloxi, they found a situation where self-starters were the only ones capable of making any kind of headway in making a dent in the unfathomable destruction that the hurricane left behind.
But self-starters are exactly who Burners without Borders are. These are people skilled in creating functional and comfortable civilization in barren and harsh desert conditions and so were able to bring that experience to bear in a city whose residents were left stranded and shaken and without much measurable assistance from the various government agencies in the region.
One of the biggest contributions Burners without Borders had to make was industrial equipment. One manufacturer donated this heavy loader to the group, allowing it to do work in hours that previously was taking volunteers days to do.
(Credit: Burn on the Bayou)Sadly, much of the work Burners without Borders took on was tearing down rather than building. That's because the hurricane and the giant storm surges that battered Biloxi destroyed most of what was in the way. And before a community can begin to rebuild, it must first remove what was destroyed.
For big parts of Biloxi, however, that meant trying to rip down shattered houses with small equipment or by hand, painstaking work that takes incredible amounts of time.
So when word got out about what Burners without Borders was doing in Biloxi, one manufacturer of heavy industrial equipment donated a brand-new heavy loader to the group.
The result? The ability, showcased in scene after scene, to rip down a condemned building in hours rather than days.
These scenes are heart-wrenching because as is pointed out, the machinery allowed group members to reduce 30 years of someone's belongings to a pile of rubble in mere minutes. It surely must be a horrible thing to have to do, yet it's what was absolutely necessary at the time.
The film, however, balances destruction against re-birth, in the tale of the Biloxi Vietnamese Buddhist community's new temple.
In Biloxi, Miss., members of Burners without Borders set up a small tent city outside a Vietnamese Buddhist temple they helped repair and rebuild after it was flooded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. After years of construction, the temple was dedicated the same day Katrina slammed into Biloxi. Burners without Borders set up their home and headquarters inside the temple.
(Credit: Burn on the Bayou)For years, we discover, the community had put money together to build a new temple. Finally, in August 2005, it was ready. And on Monday, August 29 of that year, it was dedicated. That was the same day Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.
Though the temple was not destroyed, rising water levels forced temple members to seek refuge in the building's attic, and had the water gone even three feet higher, most would have perished.
Arriving in Biloxi and looking for a home, meanwhile, the Burners without Borders group found the Vietnamese community and a marriage was born.
On the one hand, Burners without Borders spent much of the next few months helping to rebuild the temple, and on the other, they set up their headquarters there.
The film is interspersed with interviews with Burners without Borders volunteers and Mississippi residents talking about the interactions between the two constituencies. Over and over again, we hear residents talking with a fair bit of awe and admiration about how appreciative they are for the unexpected help--and how life-changing being involved in the relief efforts was to the volunteers who had traveled so far to get involved.
After several months in Biloxi, it was time for the group to move on, for reasons that are not entirely spelled out in the film. But what is clear is that the Burners without Borders members were not ready to leave the Gulf Coast. They wanted another place to help out.
Where they went was Pearlington, a town of less than 2,000 residents a short distance northeast of New Orleans.
The Burners without Borders camp in Pearlington, Miss.
(Credit: Tom Price)As Kim Jones, a Pearlington resident put it, "The day after the storm, there wasn't a house in this town that was inhabitable. Nothing. Nowhere."
So for the Burners without Borders group, working in Pearlington was largely about helping raze the endless numbers of destroyed buildings, even if the group wasn't welcomed with open arms at first.
"Any small town is going to have an inherent suspicion of any large outside group that just moves themselves in," said volunteer Lisa Benham. "And I think those suspicions stayed until we rolled out the big equipment and started doing what we do, which is to just rip through large projects very quickly, for free."
One project they took on was rebuilding one resident's house, from scratch. Another was showing the locals that even amidst detritus spread as far as the eye could see, art was possible.
That was demonstrated by the penchant group members developed for taking discarded wood and other materials from destroyed buildings and making art pieces that they then burned each night after work.
After seven months in the Gulf, the group finally decided to leave. But before they did, they had a final, good-bye party.
In 'Burn on the Bayou,' we see how members of Burners without Borders helped bring a measure of hope to residents of Biloxi, Miss., who saw their town nearly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The group's volunteers helped the community with tearing down condemned houses and by raising spirits with things like Christmas gatherings.
(Credit: Burn on the Bayou)More than 150 of the 600 or so people still in town showed up, recalled Tom Price, one of the Burners without Borders volunteers, and a producer of the film, remembered. And in footage from the party, we see Pearlington residents looking on as Burners without Borders members burn their art and spin fire, two regular activities at Burning Man.
"It was pretty wild," Pearlington resident Larry Randall says in the film. "I never seen nothing like that before. I'd hear about it...It was fantastic."
One other thing the Pearlington residents seem to have especially appreciated was the new "Welcome to Pearlington" sign put up by Burners without Borders.
It was "just unreal that they took pure junk and made such a beautiful thing out of it," said Jones. "Everytime I go by it, I just hope it's there forever."
The film ends with a scene of a convoy of RVs and other vehicles rolling out of Pearlington, with those inside presumably heading back to their regular lives. It's a touching moment.
But what stays with me, and certainly with many members of Burners without Borders themselves, is that once you take part in something like this, you can't ever again think about the world the way you did before.
"If any of those guys from the group I was working with called me up," said Karine Wilson at the end of the film, "and said, 'Karine, we need you,' I'd say, 'Okay, when and where, and what tools should I bring?'"
Escape from Berkeley is a race planned for the July 4 weekend that will task contestants with getting an alternatively powered vehicle from Berkeley, Calif., to Las Vegas.
(Credit: Escape from Berkeley)
Update July 19, 2008: Escape from Berkeley is now scheduled for Oct. 10-13, 2008.
If you're a regular reader of Geek Gestalt, but not of its sister blog, Green Tech, I thought I'd point you to an entry I just posted there about what sounds like one heck of a cool event scheduled for this summer.
The so-called Escape from Berkeley race will task contestants with getting their non-petroleum-based fuel vehicles from the famously liberal Bay Area city to the famously outrageous Sin City, Las Vegas, over the July 4 weekend.
Part Burning Man, part Power Tool Drag Races, part DARPA Grand Challenge, Escape from Berkeley should be a sight to behold.
For more information now, however, check out my entry on Green Tech.
Burning Man tickets went on sale Wednesday morning. The first 10,000 tickets--which are available at $210--will go very fast.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)There are tens of thousands of people for whom Burning Man is an annual certainty: They and their friends and families know for sure where they'll be during the week leading up to Labor Day.
For these people, this morning is a D-Day of a sort: The first day that tickets to the counter-cultural arts festival go on sale.
And, as always, tickets are being sold in a tiered pricing structure, with 10,000 tickets going for $210, 10,000 for $225, 10,000 for $250 and whatever supplies are left at $295. Burning Man asks people to buy the highest-priced tickets they can afford, but in my experience, most people buy the least expensive ones they can.
In the previous few years, attendance to the event has soared, and for years, many burners have rushed to get their tickets as quickly as possible. That used to mean that everyone would ensure their orders were placed in the mail and postmarked the first possible day, because the lowest-priced tickets went in a first-come, first-served order.
Nowadays, Burning Man uses an online ticket ordering system, as well as mail-order, though the $210 tickets are only available online. That means, as I write this, there are thousands of burners all over the world who, at precisely 10am pacific--when the tickets went on sale--hit "order" and are now waiting to see if they will be able to get one or two of those 10,000 $210 tickets.
In 2006, this system melted down as it was unable to handle the rush of orders all at once. But last year, it seemed the system had improved, though I definitely still heard tales of people having problems with it.
I've gone to the last ten Burning Mans, and this year, for the first time, I was thinking seriously of not going, and thus, not ordering tickets. But for the sake of this blog, I decided to try to buy some and see how it went.
This year--so far at least, the system seems to be holding up under the weight of the onslaught of orders. And they've added a nice little feature, which is updating how many orders are ahead of you every 60 seconds.
However, it's moving awfully slow.
I actually didn't hit "order" until 10:01, so by the time I made my way into the system, there were 4,480 orders ahead of me. By 10:15, that number had dropped only to 4,265. At this rate, it will take until about 2:12 pm to get to my order. That's assuming that I have the patience to wait. And, of course, it may speed up. Though it may also slow down. I'll update this blog later to indicate how long it took to process my order.
Anyway, if you're just reading this now, you're probably already too late to get in on those first 10,000 $210 tickets. But I would hurry up and get in an order anyway, because you may still be able to get a couple for $225. If you wait, you're going to be paying $250 or more.
And don't forget: This year, for the first time, Burning Man is not selling tickets at its gate. And, also for the first time, it has indicated that it may limit the number of tickets it sells.
In other words, if you want to go to Burning Man 2008, this would be a good time to order tickets. If you get some and decide later not to go, you can always sell them on Craigslist.
Update: At 11:37 am, I've moved up to the 917th spot. So it appears the system has sped up considerably.
Update: At 11:50 am, one hour and 49 minutes after clicking "order," I got to the top of the list and was able to order two $210 tickets. So, I would have to say that Burning Man got its online ticket system right this year, although it should be noted that the button for ordering tickets was in a hard-to-find location on the Tickets page and I've heard from some friends that it took them long enough to find it that they likely missed out on being able to get the $210 tickets.
I got my annual Burning Man ticket invitation post card in the mail Monday, always an interesting experience given all the emotions that the card conjures, particularly this time.
At first, I gave the card a cursory reading. But a few hours later, I picked it back and examined it a little more closely. And there, tucked away about a third of the way down the page, are 13 words that could be the most significant in modern Burning Man history: "New for 2008: No tickets will be sold at our event site gate."
It's bolded, but still, it doesn't exactly jump out at you on the page. And yet, these are very big words.
Throughout the history of the event, it has always been possible to buy tickets at the gate. Many thousands of people have done so. A few years ago, the decision was made to close off sales at midnight on Friday morning of the week of the event, but still, you could buy them up until that point.
What this new change means is that no one will be able to just show up at the gate and buy a ticket. That means everyone will have to plan ahead. Everyone.
This is likely to be a well-received, though controversial move. Many veteran burners feel that the people who show up late without tickets are people who don't "get" Burning Man and who are increasingly flooding the event with a non-participatory energy that is in stark contrast to its traditional "no spectators" ethos.
And so, to force every single attendee to get a ticket ahead of time is likely to be seen as the single most tangible step that could be taken to weed out the so-called "yahoos" whom many blame for a watering down of Burning Man's creative energy.
Others will point to the change as unnecessary, elitist, and unfair.
Either way, it's a seriously major shift in the policy of the event, and it is sure to be debated far and wide as to the wisdom of the decision, as well as whether it's possible to properly educate the community so that people don't make the long, long drive to Nevada's Black Rock Desert, stopping along the way to buy hundreds of dollars' worth of supplies, only to be turned away at the gate.
I don't yet know what precipitated the change, but one likely scenario is that Burning Man fears it may be in danger of growing too much.
Under the terms of its permit with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (click for PDF), Burning Man's growth cannot exceed 6 percent of its previous high attendance.
And given large growth over the last couple years, it is very easy to imagine that the 2008 event could have approached or exceeded the 6 percent growth mark.
Just this weekend, I was talking with someone and explaining that the only way Burning Man's organizers could deal with too much growth under its permit was to do a massive publicity effort to alert potential ticket buyers of any limits on sales at the gate.
But this was purely theoretical. I didn't actually imagine that it would come to pass.
Now, these 13 words on the invite postcard.
There's more, too.
The invite also says, "10,000 tickets (available) at $210 each....10,000 tickets at $225 each....10,000 tickets at $250 each (and) $295 tickets available while supplies last."
Again, this is a first. There have never been limits on the number of tickets available at the highest cost. And while the invite is not definitive that there could be a cut-off of available tickets at $295, it's clear that Burning Man is reserving the right to do so.
And why would they reserve that right? Because if they approach the limit allowed under the permit, they'd have to stop selling.
This is all very interesting, especially to longtime burners.
My advice to you if you want to go this year? Get your ticket early, and spare yourself the headache of worrying about it later.
The route for the Baja 1000 road race that begins next week in Ensenada, Baja, Mexico. One team, from San Jose, Calif., plans to run the 1,300 mile route in a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle loaded up with modern communications equipment.
(Credit: Jim Graham)SAN JOSE, Calif.--If you were to see this 1969 Volkswagen Beetle, missing a couple of tires, its engine compartment and hood open, and its interior feeling very much like a work in progress, you'd probably mistake it for one of the countless automotive projects currently under way in American garages and driveways.
You certainly wouldn't think any special was afoot.
But this is no normal '69 Bug.
No, this little machine, which on a Friday afternoon still looks a lot closer to a junkyard than a highway, is actually awaiting the finishing touches that will have it ready to race in next week's Baja 1000 race, one of the world's most-grueling, and one that (hopefully) will take its owners across 1,300 miles of unforgiving roads up and down the Baja peninsula.
And it's going to be loaded down with the kind of high-tech gear that will make it possible for its owners, a team of 12 dedicated people from all over Silicon Valley known as Desert Dingo, to know precisely where they are at any moment, to know what giant pothole might be around the next bend and to Twitter every little development back to the rest of the world as it unfolds.
Desert Dingo is the brainchild of Jim Graham, a high-tech publicist; Mike Aquino, a Cisco mechanical engineer; and Cary McHugh, who repairs MRI machines for Siemens.Their goal? Run the whole race--their car is entered in Class 11, for stock VWs--in the 53 hours they're allotted, all while staying safe, sane and having the time of their life. And counting on a passel of high-tech gear to do it all.
Graham said he got the idea for running the race while watching the racing documentary Dust to Glory earlier this year. He got on the phone with some friends, and next thing you know, they were out in search of a Beetle to run the race with.
"Class 11 is the lowest (race) class," Graham said, "but everyone roots for them because if you can get (one of the cars) across the desert, you've got something."
This VW has been specially decked out for the race. Graham explained that he called Eric Solorzano, a nine-time Baja 1000 Class 11 winner, in search of advice on how to put the car together and that, next thing he and his team knew, Solorzano had agreed to build them an engine, even though the car would be up against his own in the race.
These guys, meanwhile, are all from Silicon Valley, and so they decided that they had to gear the car up.
"Because we're all Silicon Valley geeks," Graham said, "we figured we would trick it out with as much electronics as possible."
Jim Graham, one of the leaders of the Desert Dingo Baja 1000 team, shows off the handheld GPS unit and the satellite phone his team will use to stay in touch while running the race.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)So, Graham explained, they will be carrying three GPS units and at least one satellite phone. The idea is to be able to know exactly where they are at any point and for him to be able to Twitter everything that happens almost in real time.
One innovation Desert Dingo will employ is to take the basic GPS course data provided by race organizer SCORE and add to it.
"We went a step further and bought data from a team that pre-ran the course," Graham explained, "and what they did was annotate the data with all the hazards on the course, such as big rocks, sheer cliffs, water crossings, and silt, with silt probably being the worst."
Thus, he added, "as we're driving, we'll know everything that's coming up."
Graham is also toting along a satellite phone, which he is hoping will allow him to send Twitter updates about the car's progress. He's not certain he'll be able to file the updates directly from the phone, but if not, he'll relay them via text to someone in a support vehicle who will them post them to the Internet.
"I'll (Twitter) the status of the car, or what a section of the route was like," he said. "Whatever I can fit in 140 characters."
One additional convenience Desert Dingo decided on was paying someone to handle the team's pit stops for it. So, by calculating how far they could make it on a single 15-gallon tank of gas, they've figured out exactly where to set up the pit stops along the route.
And while teams like Desert Dingo are relying on GPS for navigation, others have no choice to but to utilize the written directions provided by SCORE. Graham said his team will carry a copy of the directions in the car in case everything fails.
While many Baja 1000 teams will have high-tech navigation equipment to help them run the grueling race, some will have to rely on written directions.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)And while Desert Dingo doesn't look like its hopes to win the race, it is hoping that it can raise some money for Diabetes research. On its Web site, it is accepting donations, which will go entirely to the International Diabetes Foundation.
Ultimately, putting together a project like this, especially for first-timers like Desert Dingo, was quite the challenge. The team, many of whom are Burning Man veterans, has been working hard at it since March, has spent about $20,000 and is hoping its preparations will allow it to finish the course.
"It's all about figuring out what the variables are and managing them," Graham said. "It's like doing a theme camp at Burning Man. Except tis theme camp will be moving 25 miles an hour and it's for 1,300 miles."
