Burning Man festival

Hide and Seek at Burning Man 2007

By Joshua S. Hill

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

For six days out of every year, ending each year on the US Labor Day holiday, the Burning Man festival is a symbol of humanity's ability to coexist peacefully. Described as an "...experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance", Burning Man brings together people from all walks of life, and allows them to express themselves in ways that would not normally be allowed in our modern and uptight everyday lives.

Burning Man 2007's theme -- given each year to direct the inevitable artwork towards a common purpose -- is entitled the Green Man. Built upon the ancient lakebed known as the 'playa', Black Rock City forms a 2/3 circle around the Center Camp, the center for civic activities.

The Burning Man art is one of the highlights of the event, but not the sole focus. But it constructs like the Cubatron -- in its many incarnations -- that leave people awestruck. The Cubatron, for example, is a massive construct, described as a large scale 3-dimensional dynamic light sculpture. With a total of 6720 lights, each individually controllable and with the ability to be updated 50 times per second, this is one of the draw cards for those interested.

Burning Man has long been the center of media suspicion and speculation, so much so that an entire page on their website has been devoted to debunking popular myths such as Burning Man being a Pagan Event, a hippie festival, and being based on the "Wicker Man". It also lists the things that did not inspire founder Larry Harvey to burn an effigy of a human.

Born in 1948, Harvey accidentally sparked off the myth when he suggested that the time and place of the first 'burning man' coincided with the anniversary of a lost love affair. From there, identities such as himself, his ex-girlfriend, the new boyfriend and the lawyer were all thrown up and shot down.

Serving as chairman of Burning Man's senior staff and Black Rock City LLC, its executive committee Harvey also co-chairs the Art Department, and labels himself a man with a "grandiose" imagination. He founded the Burning Man on a beach in San Francisco in 1986, and has guided the festival ever since.

This year, along with many other years, Burning Man Widows and Widowers are being left behind; the spouses and partners of those who trek off each year to erect their monuments to artistic creativity and freedom of expression.

However Jane McGonigal has taken steps to ensure that, while her husband Kiyosh is off enjoying himself in Nevada, he will not forget his wife.

A noted game designer in her own right, Jane received a 2005 Innovation Award from the International Game Developers Association and a 2005 Games-related Webby. And though she is not attending, the 45,000 people who are venturing to Black Rock have been assigned a task -- or at least those who know of it.

Their task is simple, to spot Kiyosh, and to say "Jane says Hi" or something along those lines. This understated game is indicative of the pervasive games that Jane is renowned for.

So if you're at Burning Man and you happen to spot the man, "usually wearing an orange jumpsuit, sometimes wearing goggles and/or a white muslin head wrap, and possibly hanging around a bunch of people with TV cameras," according to his wife, say hello from her, and let him know she's thinking of him!