Category Archives: Burning Man

Burning Man 2010 photos

Over the years I’ve regularly collected links to some of the best photography from the Burning Man. Most of my links come from the Burning Man’s mailing list, so if you enjoy these then you might want to look that up over on their site.

The Burning Man festival happens once a year in Nevada. It’s a crazy mix of performance art, dust, nudity, music, love, more dust, fire, self-revelation, and even more dust. It also is reasonably dangerous in that you are camping in a desert, which is not a friendly habitat. I was over there in 1999 and 2002, and I hope to go again someday.

In the meantime here are some images you might like to browse. Warning: there is some nudity (though not of a sexual nature):

A set of photos looking mostly at the attendees of Burning Man 2010, taken by Pedro Sagüés.

The essence of Burning Man in a single photo – two firespinners kissing mid-performance.

A fantastic set of images by Mr. Nightshade showing a mix of the art, sculptures, and the people of the burn.

A fun display of how one person’s art can become everyone’s canvas as a ‘Harveywood’ sign gets subverted. (The Burning Man festival was started by a man called Larry Harvey.)

And finally, if you’ve ever wondered what 51,000 people camping in a desert look like from space, here’s the answer!

Burning Man earns you education credits & the first, obvious, target for iPad hacking

How cool is this? A bunch of architecture students are getting university credits by going to Burning Man and building a structure there. Frankly, I think that’s pretty damn awesome – it gives them all the design side of the process and then the practical experience of making sure the damn thing stands up when the desert wind blows up. What a great way to get through university!

In other news, Apple released the iPad and were trying to keep it free or ‘adult’ material. Guess how long that lasted? Less than a day. Oops. The internet exploded into popularity as soon as you could put pictures on it, and guess what those pictures were of? The home video camera became popular because people could use it to video themselves in private moments. Why did Apple think that they might be able to keep the iPad smut free? On a more realistic level, a good business model should take a realistic approach to human desires and respond to them, and so tech will only succeed if it can support people’s needs.

Matazone supporting teachers around around the world

There’s a festival called Burning Man that I’ve been to a couple of times in America, but beyond being a cool get-together, there’s also an agenda of ‘leave no trace’. The idea is to make sure that you leave places in as good, or better, state as the one you find them in. I like to apply this to as many activities in life as is practical, and one of the ways of doing this is to support renewable energy sources.

A little while ago I sent a donation over to a small town in Lovelock, Nevada. Due to budget cutbacks, they were having to lay off some of their teachers. The organisers of Burning Man stepped in and asked the world if we could send a donation to build a solar array. By removing their electricity costs, they could afford to save jobs, keep teachers, and be environmentally friendly too.

The project has come to fruitition, and there’s even a lovely plaque with ‘Matazone’ on it, listed among the supporters.

I went through some hard financial times over the years, and it was thanks to the support of the visitors to this site that I got through them and I’m now in a position to help others. Keep passing on the favours and we’ll make this world a better place for everyone.