I have a lot of favorite things about Burning Man. Here are some of them, set to song. Put up a new page tonight! Leave No Trace, which includes info on what, why, and how, with an emphasis on garbage minimization tips, since nobody likes hauling their garbage out afterwards. http://www.burn.life/leave-no-trace.html
They're also looking for donations. If you're in a Burner community, you're aware that there'll be a lot of opportunities to fund art and mutant vehicles and sound camps and so on, and of course those are all excellent (though some are more excellent than others). What Que Viva is asking you for help doing is funding artists themselves, particularly underrepresented ones. It's way too easy to spend all your attention on the 'big' art at Burning Man, and miss great projects like this one that, to my mind embody the spirit of Burning Man. I think it's pretty cool, and I'm donating. I hope you'll consider it too. Details: This page explains what the funding is for. Mainly for tickets and tents for the low/no-income artists, and art supplies. Donation link is towards the bottom of the page.
"Hudson’s visions are contagious, drawing dozens of volunteers who labor in his warehouse, carrying out the details of his ideas." “I feel like it’s a gift that he’s allowing me to participate in,” said volunteer Karen Allman. “He’s giving me the gift of being a part of something magic.” "Behind the curtain of Hudson’s magic are feats of engineering, science and film arts. His technical trust includes Pixar animators and cutting-edge engineering experts. Still, Hudson fearlessly dips into each aspect of the production with the curiosity of an eternal seeker." Nice little article/video! Definitely adds to the excitement of the upcoming ticket sales for me.
Anybody know if he's doing a zoetrope this year? My assumption is he's taking the year off, but would love to be wrong. The Man burns in 244 days! The BMORG released their plans for 2015 tickets today, as you probably saw. Summary:
My feeling is that they should probably not have reduced the number of vehicle passes, because while more were sold than were used last year (and they were very easy to find/get in the weeks leading up to BM), it would really suck to have tix and not be able to get a vehicle pass. And from all reports last year, they were willing to simply sell you a vehicle pass if you showed up at the gate with tix but without a vehicle pass anyway. I've got no problem with them increasing the price of the pre-sale tickets. Clearly, all the marginal revenue from them is not funding the low-income tickets as per their justification for the pre-sale tix but whatever - people are willing to pay it, and if they're not, they can participate in the other sale options. The increased allocation to the DSG sale is great. The people who are eligible for DSG tix are generally a subset of the group of people who actually make Burning Man what it is, and I'm all for it. What do you think? I'm kind of excited about this as I've been involved in cryptocurrencies for a couple years now and had been invited into a couple meetings at BM HQ to help advise them on whether/how to accept Bitcoin (which was awesome! The first time I felt like I was visiting my own personal little Mecca, but with more dreads and tattoos.) I think that Bitcoin is a fit with Burning Man because:
Full press release: San Francisco, Calif., December 22, 2014 -- Burning Man announced today that donors around the world can now contribute to the organization’s programs and capacity building using Bitcoin, and do so without having to pay transaction fees. Dear Jim, You posted your letter recently explaining your side of the Caravancicle debacle. We don't know each other, and though I have a friend who stayed in your camp, I didn't visit it and so have no first-hand experiential knowledge of it, to be clear. You're getting pretty overwhelmingly negative feedback on your post, based on comments on Facebook, the Burning Man blog, and the ePlaya forums. You may be wondering why and thinking to yourself that the Burning Man community was going to deliver harsh judgment no matter what you wrote. That's probably partially true, as there is a small contingent of Burners that simply react poorly to anything that smacks of wealth greater than their own. I'm not one of those people, however. Perhaps unlike some others, too, I'll grant that you meant well in organizing Caravancicle and that you meant well in posting about it today. I know others don't believe it, but I'm fairly certain you had no reason to care about making a profit from a Burning Man camp even had you intended to - the opportunity isn't particularly large or attractive (much less scalable) and you've had enough success that you don't need it. Beyond that, it's obvious you're a huge Burning Man fan. Nobody comes 6 years to cross something off his bucket list. Tourists come once, possibly twice. But the entire camp, and your response to the controversy, comes across as a bit tone-deaf to me:
Here's my feeling: As Larry and many others have pointed out, the Principles are a reflection of the principles of the community in 2004. I'd suggest you consider that what you did with Caravancicle has deeply offended a good portion of the core, repeat-attendee Burning Man community, which should tell you that what you did probably does not reflect the principles of the community in 2014 (or 2004 for that matter, but that's ancient history).
I think you're a highly successful guy used to dealing with people who like to be pampered. As such, it may not seem weird to you that you are literally lauding fully-functioning adults for washing their own dishes or picking up their own trash. The level of "gaaah!" is pretty high for the rest of us though. You would have been better just saying nothing, or, if you wanted to actually take responsibility, doing so in a forthright manner, simply apologizing, and pledging it won't happen again. Instead you've left us with a bunch of defensive-sounding justifications and no reason to believe it won't happen again based on what you wrote. You obviously love Burning Man and you're passionate about it. I'd imagine you're going to be involved with running or contributing to camps in the future, as so many veteran Burners are. I hope you'll consider what I've said (not that you have any obligation to) and just think about whether you want to build a camp that is designed to bring people into the Burning Man culture, or one that is designed to make it easy and painless for people to come play tourist. You can reach me at yes@burn.life if you want to chat about how to get your newbies to high-dive into the culture like champs rather than tip-toe around the edges. I'm friendly! Best, Dr. Yes / Matt I just put up a new page called Poopin' on the Playa that's all about the toilet situation out there.
Enjoy! I love to take photos and video at Burning Man, despite being a complete amateur at both, and was playing around with some over-the-top photo processing methods on photos I've previously taken. These aren't really photographs any more, and they certainly aren't paintings or anything similar, so I'm unsure what to call them except just images. I'm just making stuff that looks cool to me now, even if 6 months later I look back and roll my eyes at myself. They're obviously out there in terms of photo editing but that's the point. I'm not trying to make "photos" here, just images.
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AuthorI'm Dr. Yes. I run this site, lead a theme camp called Friendgasm, and make Burning Man videos. Just say yes, folks, and help keep Burning Man weird! Archives
September 2022
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