09.13.06

Burning Man 2006 – Part 3

Posted in Burning Man, Personal News at 11:24 pm by divinity

Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 – Does it get any better than this?

Wednesday was an incredible day, or rather I guess most of it happened that night. During the day we had some pretty nasty dust storms, but nothing too serious. Laura and I actually braved the worst of them to walk down the street to visit the Flaming Ugly Cowboy Saloon for a few drinks in the dust. FUCS was an outdoor bar so we were literally drinking in the dust storm. Quite a new experience. While we were there we met a very attractive cop from New Zealand (if I remember right). She spent some time painting La’s face, chatted, had a few drinks with us, and then we headed back to our camp. That’s all the excitement I remember during the day (probably had something to do with the drinks).

That evening I headed over to Camp DDI as usual to meet up with everyone. It had been decided that we would do a group outing around Black Rock City this night. With 14+ people, that would turn out to be quite a task.

We started out with Skippy informing us of the best method for keeping a group together in an environment like Black Rock City. She would call out DDI, and we would count off to make sure we had everyone. It was a valiant attempt by Skippy, but alas, we had a bunch of sleep-deprived, cracked out, distracted geeks and I think we only counted off 2 or 3 times.

The night started at a club camp on the edge of the 2:00 side, not sure which one. The music was decent and some of us danced, but a majority of people weren’t feeling the music and wanted to expore. Since we had agreed to stay together as a group, we gathered everyone and headed out, losing 2 or 3 people who headed back to camp for some reason. We then headed out across the playa to the Waffle, aka Uchronia. We had such a large group of us that we decided to hold hands and form a line to sweep the playa. Along the way I got a chance to meet some of the DDI people I didn’t know yet. Such a cool group of people. I wish I could have bottled Amada’s excitement and happiness. After a long and slightly distracted walk we made it to the Waffle where the lights and music were going.

It was like a mini-rave, although much better. We spent some time just hanging out and enjoying the sights and sounds. Jennifer and I spent quite a bit of time talking about life. An incredibly cool conversation. We also spent some time dancing and checking out Uchronia close up. We found a random guy with a great EL-Wire jacket and went and let him know how much we liked it. He thanked us and let us take a few pictures.

An interesting thing happened while me and Jennifer were discussing life. I mentioned to her that I had a crush, and minutes later that crush took a whole new direction. Sometimes some things just need to be voiced for things to happen. 🙂 The rest of the night was a blur of running around the playa with some of the greatest people. We hit several art installations throughout the night. At one of them (Cat’s Cradle I think) I took off my camelbak so it didn’t get dirtier when I layed on the ground, and ended up leaving it when our group moved again. Luckily I realized quickly and was able to run back and grab it. A true loss for the night occurred at the Serpent Mother where one of my plugs was knocked out into the dirt by accident. I looked for it for a minute or two in the sand, but quickly realized it was a lost cause with the amount of people, the fine sand, and it being night. Unfortunately this was a piece of Matter Out Of Place (MOOP) that I contributed. 🙁 I hope one of the volunteers did find it when the playa was swept. While at the Serpent Mother I did get a chance to play with the buttons that triggered the flame effects which was just plain fun.

The night went on, more art pieces were visited and we wandered the playa. Eventually the group dwindled to Nicole, Rubin, Mella, Ian, Rachel, and me. We went back to someone’s tent to hang out and then crashed out in another tent. I was so tired I don’t think I could have made it back to my own tent that night.

The next morning I woke up and pedaled my bike back across the playa and promptly went back to bed, completely ignoring the fact that my tent was 100 degrees.

Thursday, August 31st, 2006 – 2pir Works!
I spent most of the day Thursday sleeping and just recovering at camp. I helped out with the studio a bit (mainly just watched) and enjoyed the shade.

We found out that Nicole, Mella, David, and Reed’s project, 2pir, was up and running! One of the projects I looked forward to seeing in action the most was working!

We headed out to the deep playa to spend most of the evening playing with 2pir. Rubin and I had fun running around the platform setting off huge flame effects with just the wave of our hands. We also watched as Mella and Rubin spun fire on the platform. I even took my turn at controlling the on/off switch to make sure noone’s fur got singed. Originally the project was meant to have three levels of sensors, and only one was working, but noone noticed as it was still one of the best interactive fire art pieces I’ve ever experienced.

Here are videos of Mella and Rubin spinning fire with 2pir:

And here are some random pictures of 2pir in action. Please keep in mind it’s hard to get a good picture when fire is shooting all over the place. Rubin did a better job so the first two are ones I stole from him:

After spending most of the evening at 2pir, it eventually started running out of fuel. So we headed over to the Waffle, the tried and true hang out place. I hung around for a bit and then decided that my sleeping bag was calling me. Realizing I would probably need to get some rest for the big weekend ahead I bid my friends good night and crawled into bed for a good nights sleep.

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