Ideas for 2004...

[Ardust Plaza]

I can't seem to find an official place to share my ideas, thoughts and suggestions for next year's event. Do BRC's organizer-types view these forums? Anyway here goes...

0) This years event was incredible and thanks to all who helped make it so.

1) First, on the subject of safety... on many of the cross street corners there are large, sharp metal stakes with absolutely no lighting or anything. This is insanity. Last year I narrowly avoided a nasty bicycle collision with one of these bloody posts which are almost invisible in darkness, and I met someone this year who did crash into one, resulting in a painful injury requiring medical attention. For God's sake at least wrap 'em in glowing tape or something. Feedback please BRC!

2) "What's in this camp? Oh, another techno sound system. What a surprise."
After wandering the esplanade at 4am and seeing almost as many DJ's practicing their mixing as there were dancers, my first thought on this subject was "Why not make next year's theme something to do with the sun and ban all non-alternative powered sound systems?" But then I thought this would be repressive to the spirit of unhindered creativity. So I'll put it like this instead: DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Don't get me wrong, I love electronic dance music, but I felt a shift this year away from Art and towards the dreaded "need-to-be-entertained". Oh yeah, and make it SOLAR POWERED. I mean, are we eco-friendly and cutting edge or are we still a bunch of mindless gas-guzzling pseudo-alternative consumers? There's plenty of sun in the desert. Use it. Solar panels make good shade structure too....

Thats it from me right now... lets hear yours

[Lydia Love]

large, sharp metal stakes with absolutely no lighting or anything. This is insanity.

I had never really noticed the damn things before... but this year my husband and I both managed to wrap ourselves around one within 10 minutes of eachother.

Resulted in some pretty vivid and interesting bruises.

[nymphgonebad]

camp etoc was solared powered this year - i'd be totally into learning about how to create alternative power sources. in igs, where i was staying, we had <ireali> music; abba, three dog night, the guess who, phish. chilonia put down some incredibly phat beats this year. and then, in the end, we were all drowned out by bluehouse. sigh.

if someone had not dropped our camp ghetto blaster on the ground, i would have been dj-ing all weekend.


hrh - the princess

[Booker]

http://www.ae-zone.org/

[precipitate]

Do BRC's organizer-types view these forums?

Some of them, maybe. I wouldn't count on your voice being heard solely by posting here. But then I'm a cynic.

on many of the cross street corners there are large, sharp metal stakes with absolutely no lighting or anything.
<snip>
Feedback please BRC!

Read your ticket and bike with a light. Decorate your local T stakes. Empower yourself and do something about it rather than asking for MORE organization and MORE bureaucracy and MORE service from the LLC.

[Ardust Plaza]

Read your ticket and bike with a light. Decorate your local T stakes. Empower yourself and do something about it rather than asking for MORE organization and MORE bureaucracy and MORE service from the LLC.

I am empowering myself and doing something about it by posting on this forum. I read the ticket disclaimer so I know the score. And I do bike with a light. But I do think that commonsense safety is exactly the kind of service that my ticket money should buy and that I am within my rights to *politely request* that something inherently dangerous and avoidable be modified.

If those stakes are on every X-street, then there's about 400 of them on the Playa. I will bring some luminous stuff next year for this very purpose - thanks for the tip. But I am not decorating 400 metal posts alone, so unless a team wants to get involved, expect some more injuries. Any takers?

[III]

>exactly the kind of service that my ticket money should buy

beh. that's the whole problem with rising ticket prices: people want more for their money than they're already getting.

once upon a time it seemed, the idea of community was to go do what you thought needed doing. now that ticket prices are close to 8 times what it actually costs in blm fees, it shouldn't be a surprise that people expect to have everything done for them just because they bought a ticket. welcome to the impetus for disneyland.

[deliveryboyespecialle]

But I do think that commonsense safety is exactly the kind of service that my ticket money should buy and that I am within my rights to *politely request* that something inherently dangerous and avoidable be modified.

geez... I'd rather they spend money on the non-comonsense safety... I should be able to handle commonsense safety on my own.

And when did a post in the ground become 'inherently' dangerous?

[Ardust Plaza]

III: I wouldn't go to Disneyland if you paid me. And I wasn't expecting, I was requesting. Will you help me decorate? Or don't you think there's anything wrong with the stakes the way they are?

DeliveryBoy: A post in the ground becomes inherently dangerous when it's made of bare metal, unlit, and in the roadway at a dark intersection.

[chloe_dancer]

yeah, i stubbed the crap out of my foot on one of those street signs....they need reflectors or something. lets do something about that for next year!! wonder who we can talk to about it? is there a committee or something that takes suggestions from burners?? ***ALSO** it'd be really great if we could design some kind of neclace w/ a blinking light or refelctor that is given out to every participant so the number of pedestrian/art car or what have u collisions is lowered....we could do a fundraiser? who wants to help??

[III]

> And I wasn't expecting, I was requesting.

does that mean that you don't expect your request to be heard?

there will probably be an email address for questions for the town hall forum. expect there to be enough entries that yours might not be answered.

> Will you help me decorate?

in the past, i've been on the crew that installed the intersection t-stakes. each one (as well as the short intermediate posts) received a strip of 3m reflective tape around the entire top. they were rather noticeable, even with weak headlamps. at $0.10/inch, it had better be. i'm not sure if those strips were considered superfluous this year, or whether they were stolen by participants who thought they'd make nice decorations for their outfits.

considering that the people who installed those stakes are for the most part still out there cleaning up yalls's left behinds, i wouldn't expect a real answer real soon, though.

[Lydia Love]

Start an "adopt a post" campaign. Get people to commit to, in some way, lighting or reflecting one or two neighborhood posts and encourage them to take credit for it ("this post adopted by _____"). Those things could be turned into art.


Hell, maybe I'll organize it... though at the moment I don't feel up to organizing a fucking fruit basket...

Aw hell... I'll go put it on the list...

[precipitate]

> I am empowering myself and doing something about it by posting on this forum.

No. You're still just talking about it. But it's a great start, carry it through and it should be a neato project.

> commonsense safety is exactly the kind of service that my ticket money should buy

Oy. OK. You pay the LLC to hold your hand. I'm going camping in the Mojave with a bunch of rednecks instead. I think my ticket money should buy medical services, sanitation, and Federal permits. And nothing else. But that's just me.

> inherently dangerous and avoidable be modified.

Hmm. I can see that if you were intoxicated or not using a light or not paying attention, the T stakes might be dangerous. But those are all <i>your</i> fault, not mine, so why should my ticket money go to thinking for you? Personally I found them very helpful as they marked the intersections rather than just open areas in a theme camp or in general camping.

If this is important to you, run with it. That's what Burning Man <i>should</i> be about, IMO.

trey, about the reflective tape: didn't see any this year. Probably got cut from the budget.

[Ivy]

Okay peeps, this is my first reply on this new-fangled contrptions, so please forgive all the mistakes I am likely to make...

I personally noticed that after the street signs were (removed), the stakes became way less noticable. I think maybe the signs themselves were refelctive and therefore help the stakes be notciable... I didn't have any problems until Sunday night, when I ran headfirst into one, and I had a light and everything. I never noticed that tape trey mentioned, dunno if it was there or I'm thinking maybe it was incorporated into the signage, hence the problem whe the signs "disappeared."

After I ran into that stake, I ntocied the same thing about the others. once the street signs were gone, they were just black stakes in the dark. The 5mph signs weren't relfective, either.

Just a thought.

[df]

back to the subject of a theme for next year ....

i found the 'beyond belief' theme to be rather abstract, and much of the art i saw didn't seem to reflect that theme - at least in a way i could understand; with that in mind, i wonder whether a more concrete theme would attract more art that is connected with a theme

i liked the previous suggestion of "the sun" for a theme, expanding on that a bit there is the old belief from alchemy that everything is composed of "earth, air, fire, and water", and the elements of phlogiston, i.e. sulfur or terra pinguis, the essence of inflammability; mercury or terra mercurialis, the essence of fluidity; and salt or terra lapida, the essence of fixity and inertness (ref, e.g. http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/Fr ... phlog.html)

what think you?

[Taniwha]

back to the subject of a theme for next year ....

i found the 'beyond belief' theme to be rather abstract, and much of the art i saw didn't seem to reflect that theme - at least in a way i could understand; with that in mind, i wonder whether a more concrete theme would attract more art that is connected with a theme

what think you?

I agree - we talked about it a lot this year and basicly we decided that we need more 'visual' themes - the 'Floating World' was great in this respect both evoking lots of visuals and being a 'big' theme with lots of scope - I think 'The Sun' is probably too narrowing a theme - maybe 'The Heavens' for example is both a big and wide theme with lots of visual room for a playa full of space ships, ufos, alien, planets, suns, moons etc etc

[Ivy]

What I liked best about "Floating World" that I didn't really see in "Beyond Belief" was the multi-layer aspect of it.
You could take FW at face value, i.e., pirates, ships, jellyfish, etc. But it also worked on a deeper level: there was a whole theme of Asian art around the floating world which entailed man's search for meaning in the world.
Honestly, my first thought when hearing "Floating world" was Cloud City/Bespin from The Empire Strikes Back...nothing to do with water. There were just so many ways to interpret it.
I think "Beyond Belief" tried to have that diversity in that it could mean almost anything, anything could fall udner that heading, but it backfired and just ended up being *too* vague...
We are human, and while to varying degrees, we need structure, and that's what the theme is for (whether you choose to take it or leave it, that's up to you). I'm totally down with something like "the Heavens" (although I might word it differenty, don't know how" or (I lean towards this one) "the Elements."
I don't really have any other suggestions; I'm not good at coming up with this kind of stuff--all the themes I ever do are for corny musical theatre fundraisers and wouldn't really work for BM... international night or Through the years, anyone?

[TestesInSac]

...or (I lean towards this one) "the Elements."

Me too! I wanna camp at Pu and 2:35, hehehe...

[_tears_]

chloe_dancer :
A small group of my friends and i each bought 100 glow sticks in bulk and tied strings to them. We took shifts and carried many with us finding people who were without light and clearly not in a state to really tell where they were going, we would simply slip one onto there neck.
I too ventrued out very fucked up without light and was hit by a bike, just a bad bruise thank goodness, but someone was nice enough to hand me a glow stick after that. Maybe you should think about making a theme camp to just helping people in need of personal light. I can give you great places to buy all kinda of glowy things in bulk.

As for the THEME :
I do indeed like the idea of "the sun" or something along those lines. Given i am not a huge fan of the fun, but a fan of the darkness, the sun would still be an interesting theme.
Oooo " The elements" i REALLY like that one...

---TEARS---

[blyslv]

Piss Clear had a great take on Themes. They hinder creativity by channeling it. I liked Beyond Belief, and did not come anywhere close to chewing the flavor out of it, so therefore I'm adopting it as my theme for next year. Whatever I create will be an exploration of that. How about an anti-theme year? Or a DIY theme?

[seaquesta]

OF EARTH!

Oh hey, DF you link isn't working...

[seaquesta]

Hey, have a look at the 2004 newbies section and read the "Beginning, the plan, an idea.

[Iago]

Hey Y'all, I got an idea for next years theme. Let's call it "BURNING MAN"!

[Liverace]

Oh yeah, and make it SOLAR POWERED. I mean, are we eco-friendly and cutting edge or are we still a bunch of mindless gas-guzzling pseudo-alternative consumers? There's plenty of sun in the desert. Use it. Solar panels make good shade structure too....

100,000 generators running 24x7 couldn't release 1% of the stench and pollution that emanated from those porta-johns, not to mention the 1.5 million cigarettes that went up in smoke on the playa last week. I'd love to see solar panels powering more of the daytime machinery (since that's when I sleep ) but let's not delude ourselves; 75% of BRC's power demands are after dark and the last thing we want is burners littering the playa with millions of pounds of lead-acid batteries, or worse, those uber-carcinogenic NiMH cells.

Not to mention the cost: how in all of Middle Earth are thousands of burners who can't buy a $200 ticket without crying foul going to afford solar panels which cost over $1000 per kW and batteries which cost $50 per Ah? Surely you don't mean to restrict the event to the privileged few who can afford these expensive and inefficient eco-toys.

A BTU is a BTU and a Joule is a Joule. BRC can't wish its way around the laws of thermodynamics any more than we can the law of gravity. So let's abandon the specious and hypocritical "fossil fuels are evil" harangue and appreciate the fact that a lot of what makes BRC such a surreal and spiritual experience is the "electricity," both figurative and otherwise. I say buy the Rangers a couple dozen $60 sound meters from radio shack and have them impound any motorized contraption that exceeds a pre-set noise limit, then let the masses make juice any way they see fit.

Peace out, and live like you're on the playa for the next 365 ticks.

[amerhicka]

I liked the open interpretation of Beyond Belief and enjoyed "not getting" the art it inspired. I also enjoy the challenge of self-reliance at BRC, although dangers should be noted. I don't know when new themes are decided upon but I can't wait as I already have a donor car for next year's creation. Maybe as commercialism was forced to it's knees to barter at BRC, maybe we've seen the bartering submit further into simple gifting. As BRC spills it's reenergized disciples back out to the world to spread the light of expression, community and discovery, maybe the aging festival needs a gift given back to itself... from all those who have taken to all those who have given. Next year could be a phoenix year, an ash to flame, a gift to the giver, a full circle?

[olivia]

i would love to see what we would all come up with, based on these themes:

• plants / trees / arbour / forests, rainforests, jungles

• imaginary societies, created worlds

• future (a very broad subject, i know)

• misery

[shitmouse]

i think the themes in the last several years have been waaay too fluffy.
like 7 ages of mang. way to fluffy.

i liked the theme in '96 or '97 "hell".
nice and simple and everyone can easily grab it.
i had long time burners calling me and asking for ideas this year for
beyone belief. --- and these folks are very creative folks.

why not put a vote to it??
any ideas?
-b

[tbone]

>
Oy. OK. You pay the LLC to hold your hand. I'm going camping in the Mojave with a bunch of rednecks instead. I think my ticket money should buy medical services, sanitation, and Federal permits. And nothing else. But that's just me.

Have I told you recently how much you rock?

[tbone]

I say buy the Rangers a couple dozen $60 sound meters from radio shack and have them impound any motorized contraption that exceeds a pre-set noise limit, then let the masses make juice any way they see fit.

But what if part of your art is that fact that your art car makes a certain noise?
My art car for next year definately involves noise - yup, it'll be quiet around camp, then get loud as hell out past the esplanade.

Besides, I'm against giving the rangers any more authority.

On the other hand, everybody needs to be aware that generators are loud. My neighbors set up a 10hp genny without a baffle. They'd run a few sets of Xmas lights and a strobe, then dissapear for hours. Quite clueless.

[consumer]

Here's a theme idea: "Senseless"

Gather thousands of essays from people with sense disablities. A blind person describing what they think a garden looks like, a deaf person writing what they think music sounds like, etc. And then interrupting those ideas into reality. Imagine the playa filled with creations dreamed up by people who have no pre-concieved basis for their look, sound, feeling, etc.

...or perhaps a theme based on "dreams & nightmares" would produce similiar results.