A Fes­ti­val for the Human Cen­tered Soul

Two men by the names of Lar­ry Har­vey and Jer­ry James for­aged onto Bak­er beach in San Fran­cis­co to cel­e­brate the sum­mer sol­stice by burn­ing a wood­en sculp­ture of a man into the night and camp­ing out with a group of friends. After mak­ing this an annu­al rit­u­al, more and more friends and onlook­ers start­ed to show up and join the two every year. By 1991, Lar­ry Har­vey and Jer­ry James had grown quite the fol­low­ing, with crowds of almost 300 every year. Thus, ​“Burn­ing Man” was born. 

In 1997, Har­vey and James moved the event far from San Fran­sis­co, to Black Rock Desert in Neva­da. Here, they had more space, and could avoid com­pli­ca­tions with law enforce­ment over the grow­ing crowd and haz­ard threat. Fast for­ward to the ear­ly 2000s, and Burn­ing Man had become a large-scale cul­tur­al fes­ti­val with a fifty foot sculp­ture of a wood­en man, over 25,000 atten­dees, musi­cal per­for­mances, themed events, and an estab­lished art scene. It was around this time, that par­tic­i­pants of Burn­ing Man had quite lit­er­al­ly begun build­ing an entire com­mu­ni­ty around the dura­tion of fes­ti­val, com­plete with street ven­dors, ​‘neigh­bor­hoods,” ser­vice camps for the sick or injured, and even street names. With so many atten­dees, and the lev­el of infra­struc­ture being built for the event year after year, Black Rock Desert became Black Rock City in Per­sh­ing coun­ty Neva­da in 1999.

A core set of prin­ci­ples to live by while at the event were also cre­at­ed, as a ​“reflec­tion of the community’s ethos and cul­ture as it had organ­i­cal­ly devel­oped since the event’s incep­tion.” And “… not as a dic­tate of how peo­ple should be and act.” Those prin­ci­ples are as follows:

1. Rad­i­cal Inclusion Any­one may be a part of Burn­ing Man. We wel­come and respect the stranger. No pre­req­ui­sites exist for par­tic­i­pa­tion in our community.

2. Gift­ing Burn­ing Man is devot­ed to acts of gift giv­ing. The val­ue of a gift is uncon­di­tion­al. Gift­ing does not con­tem­plate a return or an exchange for some­thing of equal value.

3. Decom­mod­i­fi­ca­tion In order to pre­serve the spir­it of gift­ing, our com­mu­ni­ty seeks to cre­ate social envi­ron­ments that are unmedi­at­ed by com­mer­cial spon­sor­ships, trans­ac­tions, or adver­tis­ing. We stand ready to pro­tect our cul­ture from such exploita­tion. We resist the sub­sti­tu­tion of con­sump­tion for par­tic­i­pa­to­ry experience.

4. Rad­i­cal Self-reliance Burn­ing Man encour­ages the indi­vid­ual to dis­cov­er, exer­cise and rely on their inner resources.

5. Rad­i­cal Self-expression Rad­i­cal self-expres­sion aris­es from the unique gifts of the indi­vid­ual. No one oth­er than the indi­vid­ual or a col­lab­o­rat­ing group can deter­mine its con­tent. It is offered as a gift to oth­ers. In this spir­it, the giv­er should respect the rights and lib­er­ties of the recipient.

6. Com­mu­nal Effort Our com­mu­ni­ty val­ues cre­ative coop­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion. We strive to pro­duce, pro­mote and pro­tect social net­works, pub­lic spaces, works of art, and meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that sup­port such interaction.

7. Civic Respon­si­bil­i­ty We val­ue civ­il soci­ety. Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who orga­nize events should assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for pub­lic wel­fare and endeav­or to com­mu­ni­cate civic respon­si­bil­i­ties to par­tic­i­pants. They must also assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for con­duct­ing events in accor­dance with local, state and fed­er­al laws.

8. Leav­ing No Trace Our com­mu­ni­ty respects the envi­ron­ment. We are com­mit­ted to leav­ing no phys­i­cal trace of our activ­i­ties wher­ev­er we gath­er. We clean up after our­selves and endeav­or, when­ev­er pos­si­ble, to leave such places in a bet­ter state than when we found them.

9. Par­tic­i­pa­tion Our com­mu­ni­ty is com­mit­ted to a rad­i­cal­ly par­tic­i­pa­to­ry eth­ic. We believe that trans­for­ma­tive change, whether in the indi­vid­ual or in soci­ety, can occur only through the medi­um of deeply per­son­al par­tic­i­pa­tion. We achieve being through doing. Every­one is invit­ed to work. Every­one is invit­ed to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

10. Imme­di­a­cy Imme­di­ate expe­ri­ence is, in many ways, the most impor­tant touch­stone of val­ue in our cul­ture. We seek to over­come bar­ri­ers that stand between us and a recog­ni­tion of our inner selves, the real­i­ty of those around us, par­tic­i­pa­tion in soci­ety, and con­tact with a nat­ur­al world exceed­ing human pow­ers. No idea can sub­sti­tute for this experience.

So essen­tial­ly, Burn­ing Man had become a place where once a year, thou­sands of peo­ple would gath­er in the mid­dle of the desert for a week, bring­ing what­ev­er sup­plies they felt they need­ed to sur­vive, plen­ty of sup­plies to ​“trade” while there, and the will­ing­ness to not only live in, but par­tic­i­pate in a soci­ety who’s goal is to place expe­ri­ence before the­o­ry, moral rela­tion­ships before pol­i­tics, sur­vival before ser­vices, roles before jobs, and embod­ied sup­port before spon­sor­ship… And then watch a wood­en sculp­ture burn to the ground and tear every­thing down around it with­out leav­ing a trace…

But what exact­ly makes such an event an inter­est­ing case for human-cen­tered design?

A 10 Year Iteration

For starters, Black Rock Desert is home to one of the harsh­est desert cli­mates in the world. The con­straints of the cli­mate cou­pled with the ever-chang­ing needs of those in atten­dance to not only sur­vive in such con­di­tions, but also com­fort­ably par­tic­i­pate in the com­mu­ni­ty and have an enjoy­able fes­ti­val expe­ri­ence as well, meant that Burn­ing Man would have to under­go sev­er­al iter­a­tions to suc­cess­ful­ly accom­mo­date their audi­ence. In the ear­ly years, this was achieved large­ly by tri­al and error, but the rapid growth did ampli­fy prob­lems with safe­ty, staffing, and inter-com­mu­ni­ty squab­ble. Har­vey and James found that the major­i­ty of these issues could be attrib­uted to the feel­ing of alien­ation at the fes­ti­val, lead­ing to a loss of human connection.

In order increase the lev­el of human con­nec­tion, future fes­ti­vals became vehi­cle restrict­ed (aside from approved art vehi­cles), and suc­cess­ful efforts were made to make Black Rock city more walk­a­ble. The lay­out of the fes­ti­val was changed from a cir­cu­lar sprawl, to a semi-cir­cle shape with the wood­en man sculp­ture in the mid­dle, fac­ing the city so that all could see. Themed camps were dis­trib­uted through­out the fes­ti­val (as opposed to being locat­ed in a sin­gu­lar sec­tion), and zon­ing restric­tions were imple­ment­ed to avoid clash­ing among theme camps through­out the city. All of these changes required a lot more gran­u­lar plan­ning from every­one involved, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that one of the core prin­ci­ples of Burn­ing Man is ​“rad­i­cal inclu­sion.” It is this prin­ci­ple that enforces some of the strictest city-wide infra­struc­ture acces­si­bil­i­ty reg­u­la­tions, thus mak­ing burn­ing man very ​“ADA cen­tric.” I wouldn’t go as far as to say Burn­ing Man is ADA com­pli­ant, con­sid­er­ing the mas­sive dust storms, flash floods, and extreme tem­per­a­tures, but acces­si­bil­i­ty is def­i­nite­ly at the cen­ter of what Burn­ing Man does. All of the rules, reg­u­la­tions, and aids regard­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty at Burn­ing Man is the result of a need being met with the sup­plies avail­able, and then find­ing ways to improve it the next year. 

The fes­ti­val has had a ​“mobil­i­ty camp” for twen­ty years, where more expe­ri­enced (many times dis­abled) burn­ers will lend extra wheel­chairs, scoot­ers, and/​or crutch­es to any­one that needs them. They also run a trail­er sys­tem through the city that will trans­port any­one strug­gling with the long dis­tances. Thou­sands of dis­abled burn­ers attend every year, and some have even high­light­ed how the fes­ti­val frees them from only being seen for their dis­abil­i­ty, or being seen as ​“help­less” or ​“less-than.” Charis Hill, a chron­ic dis­ease advo­cate who attend­ed her fourth Burn­ing Man in 2019 said ​“I need Burn­ing Man for that reminder that I am still a valid, whole human while I’m bro­ken.” All Burn­ers leave with the same qual­i­ty expe­ri­ence of con­nect­ing to your cre­ative pow­ers, par­tic­i­pa­tion in com­mu­ni­ty, con­tribut­ing to the larg­er realm of civic life, and to the even greater world of nature that exists beyond soci­ety that is Burn­ing Man.

The Take­away

Burn­ing Man has evolved to sup­port its cur­rent crowds of up to 80,000. Black Rock City now has its own air­port, radio sta­tion, grid sys­tem, a six­ty foot tall wood­en man, and over 400 art instal­la­tions spread through­out the city every year. Reflect­ing on the his­to­ry of Burn­ing Man does serve as a great reminder of our respon­si­bil­i­ty as design­ers to rep­re­sent and adapt to the audi­ences we design for. How­ev­er, an even big­ger take away worth not­ing — espe­cial­ly amidst the cur­rent fourth indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion — is that at the end of the day, humans need each oth­er. No mat­ter how much the algo­rithms, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and altered real­i­ties become ingrained in our dai­ly lives, loss of human con­nec­tion has proven to yield chaos in our soci­ety. So whether that means you begin to change how you design, what you design, or how you look at design, I think it’s impor­tant to start to con­sid­er how human con­nec­tion plays a role in the future the design of technology.

Resources

Burn­ing Man website

How this EVENT became a CITY (BURN­ING MAN) — YouTube

What is the Fourth Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion — YouTube

Lar­ry Har­vey on how Burn­ing Man Fes­ti­val cre­at­ed art with a social pur­pose — YouTube

Burn­ing Man can be doable for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties — LA Times