Burning Man 98 was my first experience, 7 days in 110-plus temperatures, 5 blocks to the porta-potties, dust storms, rain, and sticky mud - but I am already looking forward to the pilgrimage next year. Why?

Before making the trek I had serious doubts. My impetus for going was research on technopaganism. I apprehensively tagged along with my brother who had gone in '97. In his encouraging me to go, he suggested that it might be a "life changing experience." Right- My concern was that this suburbanite being I am (was?) could not make it in survival mode. More than once the thought, "I could die out there," crossed my mind. That concern was real. When the ticket I purchased over the Web came in the mail, the disclaimer on it read:

YOU VOLUNTARILY ASSUME THE RISK OF SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH BY ATTENDING
You must bring enough food, water, shelter, and first aid to survive one week in a harsh desert environment. Commercial vending, firearms, fireworks, rockets and all other explosives prohibited. Your image may be captured without consent and without compensation. Commercial use of images taken at Burning Man is prohibited without the prior written consent of Burning Man. A Survival Guide will be made available thirty days prior to the event, which you must read before attending. You agree to abide by all rules in the Survival Guide. This is not a consumer event. Leave nothing behind when you leave the site.
***PARTICIPANTS ONLY. NO SPECTATORS.***

I haven't been camping since I was a kid, and didn't like it then. Taking everything you need for survival for a week, and packing it all out again is a very different way of thinking. "Leave No Trace," the motto of Burning Man, means no trace. Think you can bury your garbage, or toss your cigarette butts to the wind? Think again. The alkaline clay of the playa goes down almost a mile. There are no organisms to biodegrade organic matter, and no small furry beasts to scavenge your leavings. What you take with you, you bring home. No garbage pickup in Black Rock City.

The blank slate of the cracked playa becomes the backdrop for a community which has a unique appeal in the daylight hours - colored flags billowing in the wind, the skin of nude bodies batiqued in an array of bright colors or covered with playa-mud, costumes that rival any Halloween parade - but it is a community which comes alive at night. When the unbearable temperatures drop at sundown, the lights of the city come up, and the playa becomes a much different spectacle. A multicolored flying saucer moves slowly across the expanse of the darkened playa, an 8-foot metal thistle shoots flames from its flower, the bronze-encased tree whose branches during the day dripped cooling waters onto heat-stricken bodies, now shoots flames from its topmost branches, a ten-foot high tesla coil sends out crackling tongues of electricity, and on and on...

But...what draws people to Black Rock City?

Well, I have a hypothesis that I'd like to put forth. Could it be that our training on the Internet and its ontology makes this "experiment in temporary community" possible?

What Burning Man does is create the framework for the same personal, creative, and artistic expression found by many on the Web. It's a blank slate with a big audience and few rules. There is freedom (Baby!) to experiment with identity, gender, and relationships, to create community with people you don't know (and don't know you), to make art outside of the "art world," art that is ephemeral, art that isn't commodified but burned.

Turkle's description of MUDs (Multi-User Domains), or multi-user computer games also could be used to describe the environment of Burning Man (brackets are mine):

The virtual environment or space in a MUD is pre-set, as is the physical space and the City's infrastructure at Burning Man; but the interaction is not. Turkle says some MUDders use MUDding as a "psychological adjunct to real life," doing things within the MUD they would never consider doing in real life. They create characters / identities "that they wouldn't want their parents to know about." This is true for many at Burning Man, yet some come to exhibit their extreme-outside-the-norm real life, e.g., the young guy riding around in the back of a pickup, bouncing over playa ruts while hanging from metal hooks through the skin on his back.

Turkle notes that, "Home pages on the Web are one recent and dramatic illustration of new notions of identity as multiple yet coherent." (p. 259) The Web has freed many to express themselves through personal web pages, making connections of their multiple interests, and finding a coherency in doing so. Granted, many personal home pages aren't that "interesting," but the ability to introduce yourself/selves to a huge potential audience is undeniably appealing. The ability to use your "creative" juices, the freedom of "artistic" expression are an outlet many individuals do not have or are not brave enough to try in their everyday lives.

Likewise, some of the works/expressions at Burning Man aren't that great...but the people doing/performing/exhibiting/sharing are so exhilarated that it's difficult to engender the same critical mindset to which RL gives rise.

I read the following statement by Larry Harvey, originator of Burning Man, after I had come up with my "hypothesis." It was interesting to me to find my conclusions were similar:

And after the Burn, you go back to RL. I found it really hard to leave. I had thought I'd be so glad to get out of the desert after 7 days, out of the dust and back to paved streets, back to the convenience of electric lights, my hair dryer, running water, and the comfort of my own bed. Instead I felt an intense sense of melancholy and loss, accompanied by the sure intention of coming back in '99.

What draws people to Burning Man? Perhaps it is the longing to create a culture rather than be fed one. To be inclusive instead of exclusive. To allow the multiplicity of our fragmented selves a place to find coherence. To do and be more than we are "allowed" in RL.

After the Burn, connections of community are maintained via the Internet. The collaborative camp I will be part of next year (and which is being planned via communication on the Internet) includes a systems engineer from Albuquerque, a Dutch theoretical mathematician from Stanford, a member of technical staff at National Semiconductor in Santa Clara, and a metal sculptor from the Santa Cruz mountains. For the majority of the year, Burning Man becomes digital, experiences and images are shared on web pages and email, and plans are moved forward for getting analog once again next year for another experiment in temporary community. See you there.