Burning Man is an arts, culture, and alternative lifestyle festival. But to call it a festival insults the enormousness and intensity of the event. For many people, the word “festival” conjures images of dorks dressed in medieval attire pretending to be elves, goblins, wizards, and knights. For some it elicits flashbacks to Woodstock. In these situations, the festival is “festive,” meaning that it’s fun and people are there to have a good time–and nothing else. Little effort is wasted on anything beyond pure enjoyment.
Burning Man is not as gentle. Yes, it is multitudes of fun, but it also requires hard work. Not just in preparation, traveling, and setup, but toiling through nearly every day. The dry playa that transforms into Black Rock City is barren–at night it is like the surface of the moon. It offers you with nothing but gravity and dust. Yet in this otherwise inhospitable nook of our planet, a culture teams with energy and joy for a brief flash every year. It is here where you can let everything go–your reality and yourself–for a week. It is here you become in touch with who you are–and who your neighbors are–as you attempt to sustain yourself through days and nights of heat, cold, wind, dust, and a complete lack of water or other resources. Everything must be brought in, and everything must be taken out at the end. It is at this time that you discover what you really need and what/whom you appreciate the most.
It is for this discovery, and to be witness to some of the most off-the-wall, outside-the-box, and challenging arts ever seen or heard, that people make this pilgrimage every year. Even in this desolate place, they feel safe. In a place that offers nothing, they can take in the essence of humanity’s potential.
I’ve been to Burning Man three times now, and it didn’t take long for me to appreciate the awesomeness of the invention known as “EL Wire.” Short for “Electroluminescent Wire,” this stuff, for me, brought the imagery and possibilities visualized in the movie “Tron” into reality. Most of you know I’m a Tron geek, so you can surely imagine how this stuff makes me as happy as a little girl. Never seen it before? Here is a picture of some EL Wire costumes from Burning Man:
Some elaborate friends at Burning Man
EL Wire is flexible and generates no heat, yet emits a vivid and almost-eerie glow when powered. EL Wire can be driven with nothing more than a few AA batteries, so it’s easy to conceal the electronics in a costume. It’s also cheap. While I don’t remember the American prices, I know it’s about 3€ per meter in Germany.
Despite it’s instant association with the visuals of Tron, EL Wire technology didn’t exist in 1981 when Tron was being made. The circuitry costumes were simply black and white spandex outfits. When the films were processed, the post production crew was able to illuminate the film from behind with colors like blue and red to give the characters their signature look. Obviously this sort of thing was impossible to do in the real world.
In the new movie “Tron: Legacy”, the production decided to make use of EL materials instead of using the complicated and expensive methods used in the original movie. Instead of wire, EL strips were used to create bold lines and angles on the actors’ costumes. While not as intricate or circuit-like as the original movie (much to my dismay), it offered a cleaner visual impact that matched the hyper-real computer-generated scenes of the new movie. Unlike the original Tron, you can actually see the faces of the actors being illuminated by the suits since the lighting was real:
See them glow...
The second time I went to Burning Man, I decided to get into the EL Wire scene myself. No other costume I could imagine would be a more accurate representation of my inner child. I purchased some wires and proceeded to sew them onto an Ableton hoodie and a pair of shiny denim jeans I’d bought on Hollywood Blvd. I also took a purple wire and affixed it to my Camel Pack including wrapping the wire up the drinking tube. The effect was good, but the clothes were so permeated with playa dust that it wasn’t a good idea to wear them for any other occasion. Incidentally, they did not come with me to Berlin. It’s been at least 5 years since I wore any EL Wire at all.
As many of you have seen in blog posts and on Facebook, I have recently acquired a new hobby of playing with microcontrollers, specifically the Arduino platform. I used it to make my TB-303 swing and to control my MIDI instruments via my iPad (without using my computers). I’m currently working on an Arduino-powered synthesizer made from four Commodore 64 8580 SID chips. But once I discovered that there was an EL Wire Sequencer board for the Arduino, I had the idea to apply this to a new costume for Fusion Festival. Being in Berlin, I would not be in a position to go to Burning Man, and it sounded like Fusion Festival would be the closest thing possible here in Europe.
With this in mind, I constructed an Arduino-controlled EL Wire costume that is capable of flashing the various wires based on music it hears. I have a small Electret microphone sewn into the hood of a black sweatshirt. It goes down to a pack at my waist which houses an Arduino with two shields on top: the EL Escudo (an EL Wire control board) and a Spectrum Shield (a board that can split audio into 7 preset frequency bands). The Spectrum board splits the audio from the microphone into 7 values which I process in the Arduino. When I see sharp, quick peaks in values, the Arduino sends a signal to the EL Escudo that makes it flash one of the wires. The program incorporates auto-gain control such that the flashing works at a wide range of volumes without needing any manual adjustment, and I also added a fade-out when a wire is turned off so that it would look more natural instead of being abrupt. In all, the whole assembled unit is probably no larger than two packs of cigarettes. But it must be powered by 8 AA batteries to generate 12 volts as required by the power inverter. As it turns out, EL Wire needs something like 100+ volts AC in order to work, so the inverter must step-up the power from the batteries. Nonetheless, batteries last a long time because the current drain is slow. With wires connected to the hoodie, the whole contraption looks like this:
The EL Wire Hoodie
Click the following link for a video demonstration: EL-Wire
Yes, it’s not as elaborate as the costumes shown above in terms of complexity and use of color, but it brings a new level of techno-geek that isn’t present in most thanks to the audio sensitivity. And even though it’s not really an homage to Tron at all, it does echo the more minimal approach of the latest movie. And from far away in the middle of the night, I’m sure it looks really bizarre.
So with my costume in hand, I headed out to Fusion Festival this last Thursday with a bunch of friends from work. Our plan was to arrive Thursday evening and leave Sunday evening (some of us had to work on Monday). During the week leading up to the festival, while I was spending my evenings soldering, programming, and sewing, I was keeping an eye on the weather. It became quite clear to me that Fusion was going to take place on one of the worst weekends possible this year. The days leading up to Fusion were beautiful–the Wednesday before was 29?C in Berlin–super warm! Yet the following day was supposed to hit 16? as a daytime high. And it was supposed to rain. In fact, it looked like it was going to rain the entire 4 days of the festival.
Sure enough, Thursday morning was cold an rainy. It was raining when we arrived and, much to our dismay, they would not let us take our van up to our camping site. So we had to hump all our gear from the van up to the campsite which took about 15 minutes each way. In the rain. In the mud. Fortunately, I’d “prepared” and bought a huge poncho at the Trendy Army Store which kept me dry during the trek.
Thankfully, the rain ended Thursday night and we were able to go out and about. I had my EL Wire hoodie on and we quickly discovered that we could not get to to any destination in good time if I had it on. Too many people kept coming up and asking me about it. For, you see, I was the only person out of the tens-of-thousands that were there that had an EL Wire costume. Somehow, the visual magic that was the norm at Burning Man had not made it across the Atlantic. People wore costumes–usually just weird combinations of random things–but they were all dark in the night.
This all turned out to be a benefit on Friday night when our group split up to get food. When we arrived at the rendezvous point and we didn’t see the other part of our group, I switched on my hoodie and we were found within 5 minutes. By this time, I’d also sewn some EL Wire down the sides of some black army pants so I was now more like a glowing stick-figure or astronaut.
And this is where things started going downhill.
I can’t really hold it against Fusion Festival that it rained nearly the whole time and ruined the fun. They can’t control the weather better than anyone else. But I was absolutely flabbergasted by the fact that they turn all the music down at night. That’s right: A massive 4-day multi-stage event at a privately-owned piece of land 2 hours north of Berlin that used to be a Russian airbase has to turn the music down at night. There was evidently a village 4km away which must have complained about the noise in previous years.
Now, some of you may have just done some quick math in your head and may be asking “What? This festival is loud enough to cause complaints from people 4km away? Doesn’t that mean it was ridiculously loud to begin with?” Answer: Yes, but now. Indeed, these stages are equipped with massive Funktion One sound systems which, when run at full bore, could shake the shit right out of your body. Thankfully, they never turned them up that loud, but they do crank them up to the point where you are totally enveloped by the sound and are experiencing it physically rather than only with your ears. It is this total envelopment of the music that makes it so good, and that was completely lacking at night…right when I wanted to be experiencing that the most with my costume flashing away. Evidently, this reduction of volume is known to people who have gone to Fusion before and I really wish someone would have told me about it beforehand. I swear, the music was SO quiet that I’m not going to be bothering to go to Fusion again for I feel ripped off. In fact, even if someone told me beforehand, I probably wouldn’t have believed the magnitude of quietness they were describing. No joke: we could stand right in center of the dancefloor and talk to each other in a normal speaking voice. So shouting–no effort. It was as if the DJs were just background music at a house party. If I had been playing at the event, I would have been pissed off at the lack of sound.
But, no, this was not the ultimate fail of the trip. The music being quiet was lame, the rain was unfortunate, but the last item was inexcusable. Here we were dancing at the Turmbrühne (Tower Stage) with thousands of others:
Massive fire from the top of the tower at the Turmbrühne dancefloor.
While down in this mass of people, while having a good time dancing with friends–my costume flashing to the beat–I hear a loud explosion behind me. Directly behind me. I see the flash in my peripherals. And I feel it. I feel it most on my right pinky finger. We all look around to see what happened–only to see nothing–when I then look a look at my hand. Four fingers were OK, but my pinky was covered in blood. Between the friends that were with me, we were able to wipe it up and clean it off with wet wipes, dry it off with a tissue, and bandage it up.
For you see, someone at this “festival” of arts and music–and whatever other message they may profess–had brought fireworks and decided to ignite them in the middle of the dance floor. Yes, that very same dance floor you see above–with all those people. Some complete psychopath figured it would be appropriate to bring violence to the event and cause distress, discomfort, damage and potentially worse to a group of people just trying to have fun. I was the unlucky one caught in the crossfire.
After I sat down due to the adrenaline coursing through my veins (which were filled with ice-cold blood at this point), I came to realize just how lucky we all were. How did that firecracker get there? Without anyone standing there to set it off, the only explanation I have is that someone lit the firework and threw it into the crowd of dancers. We are all fortunate that I was standing the way I was when that thing went off. Had I been slightly more in one direction or the other, the firework could have exploded right beside me, potentially deafening me in one ear, could have sent shrapnel into the side of my face, or could have even blinded me. It could have exploded closer to someone else–it could have even landed on one of our heads and exploded there! The more I think of what had narrowly been avoided, the more sick I become thinking of this slime of a person who shares the same Earth as I do. And this is the best thought that I have.
The worst thought that I have was that this was done with malice. Here I am at this festival, the only person in EL Wire–essentially standing out like a sore thumb–and I am the only person within the destructive blast radius of a firecracker. Did someone see me and hate me so much that they chose to do this to me? While I suffered a would to my pinky, did this really represent a botched attack? Were they hoping for something more destructive?
No matter what the answer is to any of these questions, the answer still remains the same: This is an occurrence that never would have happened at Burning Man. I’m not saying that nobody gets hurt at Burning Man–people do get hurt there. But when injuries occur, it’s because someone did something stupid or accidental to hurt themselves, or was simply in the area when an unintentional accident occurred. Never would someone drive into the waste of the Nevada desert just to ruin the fun for other people. Yet someone here had the pre-meditated idea to do this, for there were no fireworks for sale at Fusion Festival. These were bought beforehand, carefully packed and transported to the festival. Someone carried them with them out on the fields with a lighter. Someone did this intentionally.
Therefore, in conclusion, Fusion Festival is an absolute failure. It is nothing. It does not even deserve to be described in the same breath as Burning Man except when illustrating what Burning Man is not.
For now, I have resolved that the only event such as this that I would possibly attend in the future is Burning Man itself. There’s no point in looking for a substitute–such a thing does not exist and those that try come in a far second to the real thing. I’ll save myself the trouble. I’ll save myself the vacation hours. I’ll save my limbs.
Perhaps the weather was a warning sign. I did, honestly, consider not going when I learned of the forecast. Nevertheless, it did provide the impetus for our group to leave the festival a day early. Had I had my own car, I would have been gone that very night. I’m glad I didn’t have to twist anybody’s arm to go–I surely didn’t want to ruin the fun for anyone else. And for those that did stay behind, I hope their experience turns out better than mine.
My pinky with a fresh coating of Neosporin.
Recent Comments