P LAYA P OWE R Technology finds an unusual home aT Burning man
by ASHLEY HENNEFER
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Tara Davis wears a light-up “scoodie” that she designed herself. The colors are programmed to change in sequence.
16 | RN&R |
AUGUST 22, 2013
rom the sky, Burning Man at night is an oasis aglow in the middle of a dark desert. Thousands of lights attached to clothes, bikes, furry boots and hula hoops light up the playa for the week-long festival. While Black Rock City has long been hailed as a place to reconvene with nature, technology has a special place and purpose, bringing together hackers and makers who see the event as the perfect opportunity to experiment with innovative and sustainable gadgetry. And if Burning Man is known for anything, it’s experimentation. Burners have long found creative uses for technology and electronics, incorporating it into themed camps and art installations. This freedom has attracted a fair share of geeks, such as Larry Page—Google’s CEO—who wants a Burning Man-type event specific to technology. “I like going to Burning Man,” he said in an interview with gadget blog TechCrunch earlier this year. “An environment where people can try new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What’s the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world?” And Burning Man has responded similarly, hosting a series of “maker” workshops earlier this year on making solar stoves, musical instruments and art from recycled materials. And it’s also seen technology as a learning opportunity, and a way to bring together science and art for kids. The Youth Education Spaceship (Y.E.S)—an exploratory creative installation that helps children learn about art and science— started at this year’s Maker Faire and will eventually settle at Burning
Man, where kids will be encouraged to study and play on the playa. But until Silicon Valley can find its own place to prototype and develop with the same freedom, there’s always the Black Rock Desert.
h i p p i e m ag i c Most Burning Man technology falls into one of four categories—clothing, transportation, art and food. There’s often plenty of overlap. Making functional pieces takes months of preparation. Tara Davis, co-founder of Firefly Lighting and “high duchess” of PolyEsther’s Costume Boutique, makes electronic wearables throughout the year, but her skills are especially in high demand during Burning Man season. Davis and her boyfriend, Patrick Tebbutt, started experimenting with electronic playa wear by making hula hoops. They then learned how to make clothes with features like blinking lights. Much of what they create is programming-intensive. “It usually starts with thinking, ‘This would be cool lit up,’” Davis says. Davis is an experienced seamstress and clothing designer, and incorporates controlled light-emitting diodes (LEDs) into items such as corsets, furry vests and scoodies (hoods with an attached scarf). She uses Arduino, an open source microcontroller popular among hackers and makers, to program the wearables. Arduinos and Netduinos come in different sizes and forms, and can be used in conjunction with other microcontrollers to make some complex ecosystems within an outfit. Most of what Davis, Tebbutt and their friend, Kurt Dukatz, create focuses on light, including a 6,000 LED screen that pulses with music. They plan to feature the screen at their camp. Davis also plans to make more responsive clothing using Bluetooth integration, allowing for input—like a voice command or physical movement—to have a function. She envisions clothes reacting to certain phrases—like a scoodie with lights that turn yellow if the wearer speaks the term “Porta Potti.”
