• Come Have Cocktails with us on the Playa!
• Flight delay
• Visit BRAF at Burning Man
• San Francisco Embraces the Raygun Gothic Rocket Ship!
• Mayor Unveils Monumental Raygun Gothic Rocketship Sculpture
• Raygun Gothic Rocket Ship
• Storyline Transports: Shadow and Light Festival
• The Rocketship Glows
…full story

• Burning Man: Updated July 27, 2010 2010 Art Theme: Metropolis Great cities are organic, spontaneous, heterogeneous, and untidy hubs of social interaction. At Burning Man 2010, we will inspect the daily course of city life and the future prospect of civilization. Prior …full story

• Burning Man Art: Trick’in Out My Ride: Customize Bikes Using Recycled Materials Save Bike-able, Walkable Local Libraries, no matter how broke we think we are …full story

• burningman.com: [ Carolyn Ellis, aka Kali, rode in the Critical Tits Ride for several years before becoming one of the principle organizers of this storied Burning Man tradition. This post is part of the Digital Rights Blog Series .] I care deeply about camera and privacy issues on the playa. This …full story

• ePlaya Board: Topics Replies Author Views Last Post Sticky: Artists seeking Stages [ Goto page: 1 , 2 ] 55 AntiM 12051 Sat Jul 10, 2010 8:18 pm AntiM Sticky: Stages seeking artists 23 AntiM 6058 Fri Sep 11, 2009 3:55 am …full story

• Black Rock's City's : PISS CLEAR IS NOW A BOOK! RE/Search Publications has published Burning Man Live: 13 Years of Piss Clear, Black Rock City’s alternative newspaper, a 320-page anthology compiling all 34 issues of PISS CLEAR. It includes a brand-new essay from longtime …full story

• Laughing Squid: Close Forgot password? Please put in your email: Send me my password! Close message Login This blog post All blog posts Subscribe to this blog post's comments through... RSS Feed Subscribe via email Subscribe Subscribe to this blog's comments through... …full story

• Burncast: HOLLIS HAWTHORNE is no longer in a coma! How's that for good news? Read all about it at the Friends of Hollis blog . As I write this, I'm so overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude that Hollis' spirit is back …full story

• Burning Man Blog: home > art of burningman …full story

• Dark Garden is Helping Hollis Hawthornern rnDearest Friends of Honey Lawless -rnrnI am sending this out on behalf of Dark Garden Corsetry:rnrnOne of our kindred spirits, Hollis Hawthorne, is in peril. Here's how you can help!rnrnShe is: a dancer, a "do"er, a muse that has touched many lives here in the Bay Area and beyond.rnrnShe has been in a horrific motorcycle accident in India, and needs to be air-lifted home to the Bay Area. Stanford Medical center has agreed to donate her medical care if she can get here.rn …full story

• SAN FRANCISCO — Burning Man became Burnt Man four days early on Tuesday, and a San Francisco performance artist was arrested on suspicion of igniting the signature figure of the counterculture festival in the remote Nevada desert.rnrnThe early morning fire scorched about 85 percent of the structure, Burning Man spokeswoman Andie Grace said. Event engineers decided it would be best to dismantle it and rebuild a less elaborate version, accomplishing in two days what normally takes weeks so the figure would be finished in time for Saturday night's scheduled burning, she said.rnrn …full story

• Small scale glowing Heads at Decompressionrn …full story

• Two San Francisco artists are seeking nearly $1 million from a Nevada farmer for torching what was once an elaborate replica of a Spanish galleon that sailed the sandy seas of the Black Rock Desert during the annual Burning Man Festival.rnrn …full story

• Despite loosing status as an honorarium art piece for Burning Man 2009, the Timescale Project team is eager to move ahead. We have redesigned elements of the project to accomodate a smaller budget, and now it’s time to fundraise like crazy!rnrnThe call for artists is now extended to March 25 (previously March 18): read about the column chapters in the Timebook and submit your proposal.rnrnFunding & Equipment SupportrnWe are currently accepting cash donations via PayPal (see donate link in the right column). Cash donors can also sponsor a column for $400 — the cost to fully build a column, the associated electronics and power system, and to haul it to/from Burning Man 2009.rnrnWe’ve published a Wish List of materials and equipment necessary to make Timescale happen.rnrnOur intrepid team continues hard at work, and marches full steam ahead! Next stop Black Rock City!rn …full story

• Burning Man is a marriage of art, technology, desert experience, expression, noise, fire and anarchy, but art comes first in more than alphabetical order. It continues to amaze me that while some of the art at BM is trite and sophomoric, some of it is actually very good. rnrnMore amazing is that much of this art will exist only at Burning Man. It's built on the desert and in many cases destroyed at the end, by fire or plain old deconstruction. Art lies in official art installations, but also in the camps, ceremonies, the vehicles and perhaps most often the people themselves. (Perhaps the most common form of participation at BM is self-decoration.) rnrnThis is only a small fraction of it. Because of my bicycle problems (see main page) I didn't end up getting my camera out to all the locations I would have liked to photograph. rnrnLarry Harvey may take some pleasure in the discovery that the festival itself is a work of art with many component parts. rnrn …full story

• Howard Davis wasn't thinking about Burning Man when he tore apart a 1975 Volkswagen Beetle and fashioned a road-worthy ride that looks like a push-button phone from the '80s. rnrnIn fact, Burning Man didn't even exist when he built his bright red PhoneCar in 1985 as an adjunct to his passion for collecting telephones. Davis, who owns a business-focused telecommunications services company, has attended the desert festival for five years and only this year decided to bring the PhoneCar, in part to celebrate his 50th birthday. rnrn …full story

• Christian grinds on Elevation's main structure. The project has been about 14 weeks in the making; planning, designing and engineering took nearly half that time. rnrnThe structure of the piece has evolved from Christian's original proposal, but the artist said he's happy with the changes. rnrn"It always turns out however it turns out," he said. "You leave some things to chance as you go along and there's always got to be some possibility for failure and experimentation because otherwise you're just doing a job." rnrn …full story

• A brief break in Monday's dust storm reveals the first magnificent desert sunset of the 2008 Burning Man festival. rnrn …full story

• OAKLAND, California -- In a project that would make Franz Kafka grin, a 40-year-old bug has metamorphosed into a snail. The resulting creation, an art car called The Golden Mean, is a golden gastropod that glows in the dark and shoots rings of fire from its feelers. It also seats six comfortably. rnrnBlacksmith Jon Sarriugarte, who fabricates custom home furnishings, worked with his wife, Kyrsten Mate, to transform a 1966 VW Bug into the rolling piece of art. The Golden Mean is making its debut at the Burning Man art festival this year. rnrnMate says she literally dreamed up the concept. rnrn"I woke up and said, 'We have to build this giant snail,'" she said. "It totally wasn't planned. This whole project has been weird coincidences and math." rnrnThe visually stunning vehicle takes its name from the golden ratio, a mathematical proportion that's said to produce aesthetically pleasing art and architecture. The spiral in the snail's shell is shockingly close to the ratio. Other inspirations for the project include the giant pink snail from Doctor Dolittle, giant mechanical elephant puppets by Royal de Luxe and Jules Verne's imaginative creations. rnrnHere's a peek at last-minute preparations that took place in Sarriugarte's Form & Reform shop before Golden Mean headed off for its date with the playa. rnrn …full story

• BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada -- Wild rides, fireworks and letting it all hang out. That's the updated American dream at Burning Man 2008. rnrnThe annual desert gathering always celebrates that most-American ideal: freedom. Freedom to ride a giant red, white and blue tricycle across the playa; freedom to blow your mind however you want; freedom to traipse around wearing nothing but body paint. rnrnThat kind of ingrained whimsy, rather than politics, seems to be the point of this year's American Dream art theme at Burning Man. "What has America achieved that you admire?" is the event's official statement. "What has it done or failed to do that fills you with dismay? What is laudable? What is ludicrous?" rnrnGroovy, man. Let's get it on. rnrn …full story

• Snail-car creators Jon Sarriugarte and his wife, Kyrsten Mate, have written up step-by-step instructions on building your own wild ride. rnrnThe 22-step process laid out in their Instructables guide uses examples from their experience building The Golden Mean, the snail-shaped art car they took to Burning Man in 2008. rnrn"This is meant as a process guide for building any kind of art car and not a guide for building this one," Sarriugarte writes.rnrn"There are far too many details in this project and each step could be broken into many different stand-alone instructables. I hope by posting this you gather your own team (most of mine had no experience) and make your own dream car together. The sum of the parts make wonderful things!" rnrnThe pair's how-to entry, which covers everything from choosing an appropriate base car to adding fire effects, is doing well in the Craftsman contest currently running on the Instructables site.rnrn If you like the snail car guide -- or just dig the Golden Mean -- you can vote for it through Sunday night. rnrnUPDATE: Sarriugarte just sent over an Obama-style get-out-the vote graphic (right) he produced for the Instructables contest.rnrnWhen will the "Hope"-ful Shepard Fairey-inspired knockoffs end? Maybe the Shadow knows, but I surely do not.rnrn …full story

• Dubstep: …full story

• Las Vegas Sun journalists Tiffany Brown, J. Patrick Coolican, Kristen Peterson and Zach Wise report from the 22nd annual festival. Burning Man has grown from a small event on a San Francisco beach into an eight-day celebration of life on The Playa, an ancient dry lake bed in northern Nevada. About 40,000 people are take the nomadic journey to the site in the Black Rock Desert, including some 50 to 250 "burners" from Las Vegas. …full story

• Wall Street executives at Burning Man? You bet. Though there’s nothing farther from the cutthroat, moneymaking world of Wall Street than the anticapitalist, anticorporate festival of radical self-expression known as Burning Man, we found several New York business executives and Wall Street types who are heading out West this week and staying through Labor Day. In the dusty, storm-ridden desert flatlands north of Reno, Nevada, is a place dubbed Black Rock City, home of the biggest little countercultural festival in the world.rn …full story

• At the annual Burning Man arts festival here in Northern Nevada, celebrants ritually burn a simple, 40-foot wooden sculpture of a man, an act of catharsis and celebration following a week of self-expression and self-reliance.rnWhen last week an alleged arsonist burned up the Man five days early, the incident seemed to carry an uncomfortable metaphorical significance: Because of the fire, the science exhibits under the wooden man - meant to inform festival-goers about environmental crises and what they can do about them - were temporarily closed.rnrn …full story

• Burning (Senior) Man: Hip oldsters marvel at Black Rock CityrnCrude Awakening, an art installation by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito, illustrates modern society's dependence on oil. The piece shows nine statues, or "faithful," that are portrayed paying homage to the Revered Oil Derrick. The derrick is then destroyed amid the sound of an air raid siren, the vivid colors of a fireworks display, and a 1000-foot fireball. Duration: 4:01. File size: 34.2 MB. Camera and editing: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, Chronicle Staff …full story

• Christina Nellemann was shocked when her mom - at age 73 - came home from a friend's birthday party and told her she wanted to go to Burning Man.rnrn …full story

• While attendees of the yearly arts festival known as Burning Man come from all over the nation and the world, the impact of the costly desert bacchanalia is felt pretty strongly around San Francisco. Many rejoice at the sudden lack of rich hippies and art cars dripping Barbie heads and Legos onto the roads when fog breaks down cheap art-store epoxy, and the ease with which one can get brunch in the Mission. There are virtually no white dudes with dreadlocks for seven square miles. San Francisco smug levels ratchet back to tolerable in the absence of arty hipster trust fund brats and Web 2.0 lets-resurrect-Pets.com-as-a-vlog leeches. Super annoying guys don't hit on me in bars assuming I know what the hell they're talking about when they use terms like "the burn," "the man" and "off the grid." …full story

• The performance floor at the CELLspace studio in the Mission District whirls with colors - giant striped hoops in purples, blues, reds and oranges swirling, some flashing gold and silver, and bodies in jeans and yoga pants undulating to the perky, robotic New Wave keyboards of Gary Numan's "Cars."rnrn …full story

• The San Francisco man arrested outside Grace Cathedral with a backpack full of fireworks last fall has pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor, the public defender's office said Monday. …full story

• It's been called the flattest place on earth. The Playa, a dry desert lakebed in northwestern Nevada, is so flat it creates mirages. If you stare into the distance you could swear, absolutely swear, you see water. …full story

• Last year I did my very best as a sex educator to make sure fewer people than usual would bring That Burning Sensation back home from that yearly rave destination in the Nevada desert, Burning Man. Sure, I also made fun of people who pay $300 to visit a festival where they can wear nothing but Crocs with socks while ogling body-painted sex clowns and really finally getting to be themselves, man. …full story

• The Man isn't scheduled to burn until Saturday night, but Burning Man participants gathered Wednesday to watch the sun rise over the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. About 50,000 people are expected to attend the annual art and fun festival, which began Monday and culminates with the torching of the festival's towering wooden icon. Attendees are flocking to the remote festival site known as Black Rock City from all over the world, but the biggest crowds aren't expected until Friday. Sheriff's officials in Pershing County reported no problems. rnrn …full story

• Once upon a time you could turn your bike into a carrot, go to Burning Man and consider yourself a style maven. rnrn …full story

• It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection… There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers… and that, while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been and are being evolved.rn — Charles Darwin, The Origin of SpeciesrnNature never made a plan, nor does it seem to copy very well. No living thing is ever quite the same as others of its kind. Charles Darwin called this Natural Variation. There is a kind of subtle chaos, a supple element of chance and change, residing at the core of living things. We've learned that DNA, the code that programs life, is subject to continual mutation. This enables generations to evolve within a changing world. This year's art theme contemplates the power and the meaning of the process we call evolution. rnrn …full story

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