(9/1/05 - 9/4/05)
Continued from the previous small page 1, this is "SMALL PAGE 2".
Below is "Thunderdome" (built and run by the group "Death Guild"), which has been a recurring art project at Burning Man for at least the last 6 years, and one of the most famous. It is a life-sized replica of the "Thunderdome" from the movie "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner. In that movie, two men would battle to the death using various lethal weapons inside the Thunderdome. Here at Burning Man, two buddies fight with nerf bats, which is very funny, but EVERYTHING ELSE is pretty much life-size and identical to the movie. The photo below is Thunderdome during the day, mostly abandoned.
Below is Thunderdome at night, with spectators (like myself) climbing the walls to watch, and two buddies fighting with nerf bats. There is thunderous heavy rock and roll pounding away at all of this, with flashes from cameras and all the spectators dressed in their crazy outfits. This is *MY* kind of frenetic art, it makes me happy to know there are artists on this earth that can actually make stuff that isn't boring and pretentious. Van Gogh Paintings bore me, Plays by Shakespeare don't excite me, but spending a few hours watching Thunderdome is a GREAT way to spend an evening.
A picture of the outside of Thunderdome. The spectators are climbing around to get a good view, just like in the movie "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome".
My buddy James Fleishman near the Thunderdome wall. James is a super-star enterprise salesman at MailFrontier (the company where I work), although in the pink hair, alligator shirt, and leather pants, and glow sticks, I don't think our customers would take him very seriously. :-)
Two women hitting each other with with nerf bats. Notice they are suspended from the roof with bungee cords, just like the combatants in the movie "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome".
Click the player below to play the MPEG movie I recorded of two people battling it out inside Thunderdome, 2005 at Burning Man. (MAKE SURE YOU TURN ON YOUR AUDIO so you can hear the audio).
Or click here to watch the same movie of Burning Man's Thunderdome (MAKE SURE YOU TURN ON YOUR AUDIO so you can hear the audio).
The picture below is of an art project SPOOFING the above "Thunderdome". It is called "Thumperdome" and is a tiny little version with stuffed rabbits swinging around in it with weapons. Very funny. In the picture below, people are getting the bunny rabbits to fight.
In the picture below, this guy rolled up in the pickup truck shown below, jumped in the back where you see him, and started playing the heavy rock song "More Human Than Human" by "White Zombie" over a nice loud sound system. At the same time, his guitar actually spits propane past the pilot light you see, making the first "flame throwing guitar" I've ever seen (play the movie a little further below). All this was a tiny performance out in the playa area for about 7 or 8 of us that happened to be there. That's one of the crazy things about Burning Man-> there were 35,000 people there, and only the lucky 8 of us were standing in the right place at the right time for this particular performance. And I'm pretty sure we 8 missed a thousand other events during this 2 minute gig. But seriously, it was worth it, this guy absolutely RULED!! (Play the video below to see.)
Click the player below to see a movie of this guy on the back of a pickup truck with a guitar that spits propane by the lit torch you see here. He put on this performance for the 7 or 8 people here, it was awesome! (MAKE SURE YOU TURN ON YOUR AUDIO so you can hear the audio, it ROCKS!).
Or click here to watch the same movie above this guy playing a flame throwing guitar on the playa (MAKE SURE YOU TURN ON YOUR AUDIO so you can hear the audio).
Below is a big robot I saw parked during the day. The next picture down is the robot spitting fire roaming around the playa at night.
Below is the same robot pictured above, but at night (which is why the photo quality is terrible) and it is spitting fire and driving around. Below it is also fully standing up, and you can see how much height difference is possible.
Below is a picture of a "Mother and Daughter" sculpture. At night the mother pours flames into the outstretched hands of the daughter (see the next picture).
Below is the same sculpture as shown above, but at night and you can see a little of the flame that is pouring out of the mother's hand down into the daughter's hand. There is a thick kerosene sort of pouring down out of the mother's hand, and it ignites and then pours into the daughter's hand.
The "Mother/Daughter" sculpture above is of a mother and daughter walking along. Leading up to the main sculpture are "burning footprints" that the Mother and Daughter left as they walked through the desert. The picture below was taken without a flash to capture the flaming footprints.
Same picture as above, but with a flash to see a little more detail.
One of the flaming footprints. The artist floats some sort of burning oil on top of water to get a nice level burning effect. He was walking around at night "feeding" the feet more water or fuel to keep them lit.
This is a picture of the street named "6:00" in Black Rock City. The photo was taken around noon. Because of the heat, people stay in shade and relax during the very hottest hours of the day, but a few can be seen wandering around.
Random fish like art car.
Wandering through Black Rock City almost every other "camp" has something interesting in it. This one below is about average, and happens to include an inflatable play house. For every photo you see on this web page, there are 50 other scenes I missed or didn't have the camera with me, or couldn't snap the photo fast enough. Do a Google search for "Burning Man Pictures" to see a million other better photos than mine.
Random art car with an Egypt theme.
The "Fandango Camp" is a large camp at Burning Man that is here every year. I know Melissa Criqui and her husband Steve Jankowski that are part of Fandango, so I was here visiting them.
Below is a picture of Steve and Melissa I shamelessly stole from their Burning Man photos.
Melissa and Steve told me where to find "Therapy Camp" where some of my friends and co-workers from MailFrontier were camping. Below is a picture of Therapy camp, with Emil on the left and Christine on the right.
Below is a picture of Gleb Budman and Emil at their Therapy Camp.
An art car of a big spider.
Art car with an orange octopus.
I'm not sure what this art car is.
Inside the "Black Rock City" as I was bicycling by I saw this dance party. The music comes from the big black speakers on the left of the picture. All the people were dancing. Use your horizontal scrollbar to see the whole panorama. This kind of a party just sort of breaks out, you can find 20 of these going at any one time, and you just have to stumble across them. You can see the interesting costumes of people in the picture below.
Below is a picture of an interactive piece of art. People sit and "swing" in this Ferris Wheel which then drives it slowly across the playa under human swinging power.
Random churchy clock tower. Later I saw this structure burn at night, it was beautiful.
Random little art car which is a life-raft-type thing.
The next two pictures are of a hanging box with a creature/man imprisoned in it. At night it would light up.
Close up of the imprisoned creature/man.
Random "Bring out your dead" art car. Has a skeleton hanging from a noose on top.
A small ship party bus art car type of thing.
I think this is "The Dreamer" by Pepe Ozan. At night it would glow from inside.
Panorama of "The Temple" at Burning Man. This structure has been rebuilt every year for the last 5 years, and it burns on Sunday night. Up until this year it was always designed and built by the artist David Best, but this year for some reason David allowed others to build it but did not participate. During the week, people can walk up, take a piece of wood, write a dead person's name on it (somebody they loved that they want to let go), and toss it on the pile. By Sunday night, it's one humongous pile of kindling, and really burns well. Use your horizontal scrollbar to see the whole panorama. During the day (like seen below) this temple is very quiet (like a library) and a few people are sobbing and crying while writing notes to loved ones that have passed on.
Art car with grapes.
This is "El Diablo" which is a jet engine powered flame thrower built by Jack Schroll from Oakland, California. I *really* wanted to see this thing fire up, it is supposed to be spectacular. However, I did not see it fire up (much to my disappointment). It was supposed to light up at 10pm every night, but I just never saw it.
THIS IS THE END OF SMALL PAGE 2 of 4 -> Click HERE TO GO TO PAGE 3.