Icarus

The Burning Man Festival is perpetually reborn in the heart of the Nevada desert. It fuels experimental, surreal, and very personal self-expression by creating a safe and universally accepting environment. Humans have free reign for days of camping out in a surreal animalistic pagan arts world, where everything created will go up in flames and burn flat to the ground at the end. So what happens when that wide-open place that once sheltered moments of freedom, exhibitionism, wild artistic movements in safety, becomes a space of carefully monitored and recorded moments?

             

                       Image Credits & Fast Co. Article Here

We face here a battle that proves everlasting in multi-media modernity. What is held sacred and what is shared? Aren't shared experiences what makes us feel most human? Isn't that what draws people in to travel, concerts, community events, and festivals like Burning Man--the rare opportunity to stand on the earth feeling connected to others in some complete and utter communion over art, food, sport, music, or play? 

Despite this need to connect the human experience with the world, there is much controversy over the presence of Drones at Burning Man. And rightly so. 

"There are a lot of exhibitionists. But there are also people like myself. Yesterday, I went out to the deep playa. I was completely by myself at sunset and got naked. I wouldn't have wanted anyone to photograph me. But the reason I did it was because, how often do I get to just stand on this earth, in my body, and nothing else? If someone were to have flown a drone over my head, it would have made me uncomfortable." (Sam Baumel, a Brooklyn filmmaker and UAV flyer who believes privacy rules actually enable expression)

Burning Man fosters a crowd who values the rare time as an apex of expressive sculptural rendering, spiritual invigoration, artistic innovation, and ephemeral appreciation of what is real and natural. The deserted and barren location allows for a sense of privacy that is hard to find in metropolis life. 

Now that group of innovative and creative folk have encountered toys of a new age, such as readily accessible (easily constructed) aerial recording devices like those used by military and government informants, a sense of voyeurism and intrusion hovers over Burning Man. 

Similar to the emergence of technology in museum environments, this behind-the-screen viewing process presents a unique way of ensuring publicity, learning, and interaction with that which was once culturally elitist and inaccessible. I can't deny that this is exciting and wonderful news. 

However, does this mean that value is lost in the natural and immediate aesthetic experience of viewing first-hand, in-person, with all your senses engaged. There is a fine balance. It surely must be honed as these years of progress pass with an increase in seemingly intrusive, yet undeniably useful tools of viewing and recording the world. 

Eventually, the communications team of Burning Man will master enforcement of the standards they are trying to set, in order to maintain the beauty and integrity of the installations and interactions of the festival. Despite this, drones will never cease to fly from this day forward, ever-recording for posterity the goings-on of this planet...at Burning Man and other venues of spiritual and personal expression.

So this leaves me with some burning questions...will this change the way that people conduct themselves as human beings and ultimately change the interactions that we have with each other and the world? Will this alter the art that is created hereforth? Would Leonardo DaVinci, a chronic procrastinator, have struggled to dedicate time and attention to creating his masterpieces with an Ipad in his hand or a drone over his shoulder watching every stroke of paint? Or would he himself have invented these technologies to hover over bathing nudes and conquer flight and optics as he always wished? 

I would guess that DaVinci, a lover of innovation, would have certainly flown his conceptualized flying machine over his Vitruvian Burning Man. But there is perhaps a reason he never published all the fruits of his findings, deep curiosity, and inventive discoveries. The wisdom, foresight, integrity, and discretion modeled by this Master of Innovation should surely be introduced to this data-mining and immodest Youtube future in front of us.

CC: http://www.fastcocreate.com/3019861/the-drones-of-burning-man

Lost/FOUND/girl/BOY

BOY+gregholden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmnbom5Hcrs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hojd0CA7CIM

no time for words, so i used a camera instead.
"i look forward."

Lights&LongLegs

Smirks&Skin

PonyTails&SheerShirts

Love&MusicShared

GenuineJoy&LifeUnNeurotic 

Accents&PosterForBareWalls

SignedCDs&Hugs&HighFives

LifePerfectlyinTune.

FallFEMININEFrenzy

Essence

"It is a experimental approach for thinking about our increasingly fast moving, globalized society."

What ties these three linkages together?

http://www.lorenzpotthast.de/deceleratorhelmet/implications/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-BznQE6B8U

http://www.sfst.com/quang-ellie-slow-motion-booth/

&The Winner Is

She woke as dawn cracked open a wet and rainstormed morning. Her clogs hit soggy peanutbutter and jelly colored leaves beneath them. Her scarf struggled to keep her hair from soaking through as she meandered down the long tree lined stretch of saturated Fall branches. She wore sun-glasses despite the dark morning weather and beads of droplets dripping--most likely to keep her sensual experience of this intimately burnt season a secret from the few umbrellaed passersby. Grabbing cold coconut coffee, knee-high leather boots, and an oversized slicker, she hit the highway.

Almost an hour later, in the company of only the slow Sunday morning highway of steamy fog, she felt that she could somehow relate to the sloshing wipers. She frankly couldn't blame them for dodging back and forth so quickly--unable to choose which side of the windshield they preferred. The rain would keep coming regardless, and their confusion was actually making her view the path more clearly.

Her dreamy and surprisingly apathetic indecision vanished as the Farm loomed via left.

Swerving slowly past the old sign post, the car slumped along the uneven road--into holes the size of kitchen pots, and out again. The horses came into view--standing like proud stewards with rain-blankets waving quietly in the wet wind, as if to welcome and wave a newcomer into their bucolic domain.

Mid-October means Halloween looms. This year, the hay-eating wide-eyed mares and their men will rise above the gray-goats, black-bunnies, and calico-chickens with unnatural, yet eerily magnificent costumes of paint and picture. Ultimately, the horses will make a choice. Their identities for the coming Holiday will be revealed. Clarity will come. They will pick out the paints, dyes, ribbons, bows, and most importantly those important strokes of change. The strokes that will rid the horse of the quotidien, and let it find its true colors. If only for a matter of measured moments.

Tousled manes will be tidied. Symbols of their spirit will be rendered on briskly brushed hides. The horses that this morning shiver as chilled, discontent, drenched, and lonely--perhaps waiting for days for their owners to unharness their chains and let them be wild once again--will shine extravagantly in glory come All-Hallow's Eve.

Plush paints of gold, blue, and all varieties of rainbow flavors, will mold musings into the raw ancient symbols or candied carousel decal that will come to cover the horses. They will find a facade that masks their feathery fear and fly through any obstacle without hesitation. They will jump the humps with reckless abandon and feel content in that mask of sheer confidence that comes with hiding behind a shell of silver linings. Their dazzling horseshoes are nailed in tight and hurt like crazy--but golly, what air those animals can accrue as a result of that painful process. For all this and more, the crowds will love them. The miracles here are manifested in mere moments, with stunningly perfect plays of paint.

Time drags on, and the carousel begins to slow down its spin. The carnival music skips and then haltingly stops humming. The humans one-by-one exit the ride of amusement to go home, leaving the glorious painted ponies standing solo in their stall.

The horses will soon be boarded up and bored again, but with slight splattered remnants of the festivities still dripping off as sweat and fatigue overcome their muscular bodies--spent from showing the world their stuff. Their tongues will drag and their nuzzling noses will look for the hands that had patted them with such novel admiration and offered their chomping mouths countless chewing carrots just hours before.

Now, no hands will come through the iron bars of their caged wooden homes. Night will come, and the magic of the painted ponies will vanish as November 1st hits. All Sinners of the Saints' Day will be gone from Procter Hill and long on their way down the country road. Perhaps purchasing a peach pie, pumpkin, or bag of apples from the stand further down towards town. Satiating their newest hunger for harvest happiness and material glee.

The fog, the mud, and the hay are washed off her boots when she arrives home that night with sore feet. She takes her sunglasses and scarf off. She washes her make-up off from the night before.

Old Old Fashioned

Five Findings on Forward Thinking Like Our Forefathers

1) Fostering innovation of days of yore could allow for more dedicated and fluid time-management.

2) Following old old fashioned creative and imaginative commitment to a specific goal will surely allow serious space for alternative progress.

3) Fueling the soft soft static of the indelibly ingrained maker-inclinations within our souls and capturing the wild capacities of the human brain could be exactly the remedy for the short-attention spanned and instant gratification generation of today.

4) Feeling internal intuition, nurturing innate natural processes, honoring your immediate surroundings and allowing a cocoon of time for creative work and educational observation, despite dreams of distance, proves practical, prudent, and productive.

5) Founding the work in vital values that will organically become viral through discernment of the WHY, not necessarily the WHAT or the HOW: there you will find a faithful following through shared believe and desire for common experience, grounded in deep priority.

Alien & Sedition

The old rickety railroad tracks swirl and curl like a long zipper straight through the bustling town square. Blood brown and sticky, the mud supports the weights and measures of industrial innovation. The dirt remains laced with native feathers of ancient marauders who had once smelt freedom roaming the Fair Banks. 

Now, the mud breaks, bubbles, and boils. 

Not a square, but a circle, the epicenter of Contentment is cracked in half by splintered, weathered wood joined by rusty cold steel rails and nails. 

The townsfolk of Contentment saw the Square Circle as common ground. A peaceful place to view the Community, join in jolt at Java, and pick the finest fruits freshly at the Market. 

These days, a man named Bache feels the shakes growing stronger. He recognizes the rattles that shook up the land. He feels thunderous tumbles rippling over the River in the Dale. He hears the trembles clink the glasses at the Village Manor. 

Bache barely sleeps as the quakes under his mattress hinder peaceful, slumberful snores. He senses the vibrations. 

They grumble louder each day.