Mayhem Photoblog

Art scooter

Jax and Jean bought me a really nice birthday present this year -- they got me this electric scooter! The idea is to convert this scooter into an art scooter for next year's Burning Man. I can see some cool EL wire sculpture superstructure for the scooter -- should be fun to work on an fun to ride on the playa!

Foo signs

I loved the simple and elegant design work for Foo Camp. I also loved that a Camping Zone sign would be appropriate for indoors. But still my fave was the Meeting Area, no camping please signs. Taken out of context they would make no sense whatsoever.

Martini Camp

Jeff McManus planned all year to have what I dubbed Martini Camp at Foo Camp. He was serving up some tasty Martini's for those who wanted something stronger than beer.

Well done and thanks for the drinks, Jeff!

Scooter

This is me on Trevor Blackwell's segway like scooter -- this version if beefier than the regular segway and had no difficulty transporting a lard butt like me. Strong work Trevor!

Talk nerdy to me

Seen at Foo Camp. Too bad I cut off her name tag. :-( /p>

Fire pendulum

This fire pendulum was created with 4 ndependently controllable flame throwers. By shooting off one flame thrower, the pendulum ould move in the opposite direction and thus gave the operators the control to do figure 8's and controlled starts and stops. Did I mention hat every blast emits a 10 foot fireball? I found his at 3am on a random bike ride across the playa on friday night...

Metal sculpture shadow

There was this very large metal sculpture, which looked cool and all, but the shadows cast onto the playa were even cooler!

Temple

This David Best's incarnation of the temple at Burning Man this year. 4-5 stories tall again, resulting in a, not surprisingly, very large fire.

Silver sphere

Silver spheres are cool. That is all there is to it!

Sunrise

The playa was magical, yet cold on friday night/saturday morning. The feeling in the air was too precious to waste away sleeping, so I never made it to bed until well after sunrise.

Even after 10 years on the playa, I can't explain how it feels to stand in the desert and be in the middle of the strangest city on the planet. Surrounded by fire, dust, sound, generator fumes, lights, wind and thousands of people it really is a small city. Yet you trust everyone -- I can't cound the number of times I took candy from strangers. And it was the best Jolly Rancher ever had!

Love it or hate it. It's beautiful!

Fire Tornado

This is the Singularity Machine (read: fire tornado) in action. I managed to miss it the previous two years, so I spent a bunch of time loitering on the playa to catch this.

And it's amazing -- tornados are cool, fire is cool and the two combined are mind lowing. Impressive!

Playa Fabulous

Jean, at Burning Man, posing in front of the Singularity Machine (Fire tornado). See the next post for this machine in action! /p>

Weird bubble

During the day saturday I spotted this giant inflatable balloon thing. Wicked cool. /p>