dprogram • Burning Man - Desert Visions


Home > 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 View Video Clip Extract from dprogram Volume 1 "We lead lives that are deadeningly passive. Everyone is sorted out in a seperate stall, like cattle in a feed-lock. Every time anything like real culture is produced by a creative community it's expropriated and flogged in the media and turned into a cliche - it used to be six years, now it's six months it's getting down to six weeks." Larry Harvey Larry Harvey is the co-founder of The Burning Man Project, a unique four day experience held in Nevadas' Black Rock desert. It attracts artists, musicians, rave sound systems and thousands of other participants to celebrate the burning of a forty foot tall neon and wooden man. John Law is the Technical Director for The Burning Man Project. He is also a long term art activist and member of San Franciscos' Cacophany Society - a group infamous for its anarchic theatrical 'happenings' downtown. The First Great Space Station on the Internet Larry Harvey It becomes a realm of virtual reality. There is no context other than what we bring to the environment so it is possible with the help of a few props, a little inspiration to fashion your own reality - to make your own world. Not only that but at the same time you're a member of a community where everybody else is freely doing the same thing. Not only can you enjoy that kind of liberty but you can feel connected to others who are doing the same thing. Its got another property though - its not completely free. We're subject out there to the laws of nature. Black Rock is all about immediacy, that desert is an arena in which vast natural forces collide. The weather there is incredibly volatile, huge dust storms, half-mile walls of plummeting dust moving across the plain, mini-cyclones, thunderstorms that happen with incredible swiftness that rain through clouds of dust creating gobbits of mud that fall on you, that can dissolve the desert crust into a vast mire of mud in an instant! We go through these things every year and suddenly people are shocked out of their little individual worlds and their sovereign egos are dwarfed by the majesty of forces which are completely beyond them, and they're sharing this experience instantaneously with everybody else. We have a large group of people who are the Desert Rangers led by the semi-mythical, wholly mystical Danger Ranger who has the ability, in fact, and nobody can explain it, to bi-locate and appear in two places at the same time. I've seen this happen but I can't explain it myself. The Black Rock, as you look at it at night, spangled with fires across the plain each one like a web site. Each one a self created world - which you can freely navigate anywhere you want, there are no boundaries to restrict you which is very like peoples' experience - or at least their ideal notion of what cyberspace is. There is one great difference, of course. In cyberspace you're anonymous, in cyberspace you don't have to look at anyone face to face. In cyberspace you don't have to confront any immediate physical needs. Whereas the desert is all about immediate experience and the challenge of survival together, I think that's what cyberspace needs. I think in some sense, we're like the first great space station on the Internet. I've wanted to do for years The Worlds Smallest Net in the desert. This would be typical of the kinds of installations that we do. I'd like to make an installation that connected two computers through an insulated wall and two black canvas chutes that led into this chamber. People could go in and they could have conversations with people that they're never going to see face to face, never touch, never really know in immediate physical terms. They could have their conversation, leave by separate chutes and never see one another. It would be live, on the net. In a way you know cyberspace is a wonderful idea but it will never lead to community unless its grounded in some sense of survival, real survival in the immediate world together. Its a wonderful tool for putting community together, but as a meeting ground, for human beings it's in fact rather alienating. But that tool is serving us very well. Home > 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 email • mail order credits © dprogram 1996>2008
	Originally broadcast on UK television's Channel 4, dprogram is an award winning, mind expanding trip featuring rare and exclusive interviews with leading edge personalities from areas like cyber culture, consciousness research, parapsychology, music and art. Volume 1 includes: • Dan Mapes CEO of San Francisco's leading edge virtual reality design company SynergyLabs on the metaphysics of VR. • Jah Wobble Musician and founder member of Public Image Limited on Cockney mystics, creativity and the inspiration of William Blake. • Dr Sara Parker UC Berkeley scholar on the New Age 'colonisation' of Native American spirituality. • Bishop Joey Head of the First Church of the Last Laugh - the worlds fastest growing snack relgion! • Burning Man A unique four day experience exploring creativity and consciousness in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. • Willis Harman Former president of The Institute of Noetic Sciences on their 'conventional research into unconventional areas'. • Dr Edgar Mitchell Founder of The Institute of Noetic Sciences and Apollo 14 astronaut on parapsychology experiments in space. • Nick Pope of the British Ministry of Defence on why he had to change his mind about the UFO phenomenom. • Peter Russell Author, on the global brain, spirituality on the net and our part in the evolution of the planet. • Ann & Alexander Shulgin Pioneer researchers into psychedelics and the mind, on the politics of ecstacy. And more... Running time: 70 mins. £19.99 plus Post & Packing. Post & Packing rates: For the UK add £3.00 For Europe add £4.00 For the United States and the Rest of the World add £6.00 ORDER ONLINE Snail Mail Orders: Make a Cheque, Postal Order or International Money Order payable to Digital Media Labs and send to: Digital Media Labs 8 Manson House 16-17 Manson Place London SW7 5LT United Kingdom Customer Service Helpline: +44 (0) 20 7225 0861 Please Note dprogram is only available on VHS PAL. To play this tape in the US you must use a multi-region video machine capable of playing PAL format tapes. We are currently working to provide dprogram on DVD. If you would like to be notified when this becomes available enter your email address below.