Tag Archives: indiegogo

Jul 21 2014

Orgy On Up

Our post last year, The Ins And Outs of Organizing an Orgy, has been quite popular. The Orgy Dome organizers thanked us for promoting their fundraiser, they met their goal – “if you build it, they will cum”. This year they are raising money for Aphrodite’s Garden, a “couples flirt lounge”, where you can pair up before you dive in.

Nils_Bergslien-AfroditeLast year, 10% of Black Rock City’s population participated in an orgy at the dome. Presumably there are other orgies going on elsewhere too. This means that the population of orgiers, is at least twice the population of underage kids. “Burning Man is kid friendly” might be true for some, but “Burning Man is orgy friendly” is clearly true for everyone, families and grown-ups alike.

Here’s an interview with Lefty and Shade, the Orgyanizers.

Burners.Me: Burning Man says “no spectators”. What about the Orgy Dome? Can you go there if you like to watch, or does entering the dome mean you joined the orgy?
First people must understand what the definition of an “Orgy” is in sex positive culture. A gathering where two or more couples and/or groups engage in open sexual activity within the same space. This consensual, uninhibited indulgence of passions may, or may not, include group sex.  (see our web page www.andthenthersonlylove.com) An orgy is not synonymous with group sex. An orgy may contain group sex or it may not.  When more than one couple or moresome enters the Orgy Dome whether or not they play with others, they are participating in an orgy.
orgyWe practice enthusiastic consent.  Looking is OK, watching requires consent: It is ok and welcome to look around the room at all the sexy people in order to fuel your own sexual mojo.  If you want to intently watch another couple/moresome do their thing – to be an active viewer – then you need to ask.
This leads us into why we are creating Aphrodite’s Garden and expanding the Orgy Dome again.  For many couples this is a new experience or they just want to get out of their crowded RV or dusty tent and they don’t want to play with others. Other couples are looking for a new adventure and to explore new sexual boundaries, while others are polyamorous and actively looking for other like minded couples to play with.  But how do you tell them apart in a dark dome?  Aphrodite’s Garden creates an area for lovers to meet and flirt.  An idea for this year is to have “open to more” wrist bands for couples who are “open to more” to wear. This way effective communication can occur before people enter the dome.  Once inside, the new dome will be large enough to have separate sections for people who looking to join others and those who do not want to be approached by anyone they did not enter with.  No area is a free-for-all. You still must always ask and receive enthusiastic consent before you touch.
Burners.Me: Do you check the age of participants? Have you ever had any problems with underage people trying to sneak in?
 When people enter the reception area they are welcomed by our greeters.  We explain our rules with them and give them a small towel. We have safer sex supplies available as long as our supplies last and we are grateful for those who bring us condom or lube donations. If anyone looks underage we ask for their ID. If they are under 18 or they cannot produce identification we do not let them enter.
1995 mud orgy

before there was a dome: Mud Orgy, 1995

We cannot recall anyone under age trying to “sneak” in. Most burners are very respectful of our rules.  Even most singles who are informed that they are not allowed in without a partner are understanding.  There are a small number of singles (mostly men) who argue how un-burner we are for not letting them in. Those tend to be the same people who don’t understand why you would need to ask before you touch. If we were to let them in we would very soon have a Dome full of single men wondering where the orgy is.  Years ago we had an incident where two men slashed holes in two of our tents trying to get a look inside. They did not see anything, as our tent walls are insulated and decorated to keep the cool AC air in and dust out with felt curtains. But we chased them away too late and the damage to the tent structures was done.

Burners.Me: Do you get visited by the Health officials? Cops?
 We have not been visited by health officials. All we provide are big tents, no food or drinks, We just provide the space – the people who cum create the orgy.  I guess if you build it, they will cum. While cops walk by often, in our memory we were only visited by cops once when our founder Jennifer Steele was giving a class on “Getting to Know Your Asshole.” The Dome was packed and overflowing into the street.  So they stopped by to make sure everything was in order nothing was in public view.  She was just talking but no one could see inside past the crowd anyway.
Burners.Me: What do you do with people who seem intoxicated? 
With intoxication, if both or one look too intoxicated to make an informed consenting decision we do not let them in the dome and ask them to stay in our large reception area so we can monitor them to make sure they safely sober up.
Burners.Me: What do you say to people who say “Burning Man is just a big orgy in the desert?
There are 60,000 people at BRC and with a little over 7,000 people using the Orgy Dome we have a long way to go for a desert wide Orgy. But as we have always said to people in the default world – Burning Man it is what you think it is… and a hundred things more, you just need to open your eyes and look.  Bring supplies and leave expectations.
We hope these answers help you.  We greatly appreciate all the work you do for the BRC community.  Below is some info about our camp and the Indiegogo campaign. (http://igg.me/at/orgydome )
****
With Love & Fire,
Shade & Lefty
****
…and then there’s only LOVE is a place of fire, fun, and passion on the playa since 2003.
We are known for our 24 hour air conditioned Orgy Dome where all couples and moresomes can escape the dust and heat of Black Rock City. We are a part of the Black Rock Power Co-Op Village and are traditionally located on the corner of 4:00 and A.
We pride ourselves in creating a sex-positive, consensual space for couples and moresomes to play during their stay at Black Rock City.  The Dome is a safe, inclusionary, and exploratory environment.  All couples and moresomes who are adults, are welcome in the Dome – straight, lesbian, gay, bi, polyamorous and monogamous. We welcome the combination of love in all forms.
We estimate that around 7,000 people used our dome during Burning Man last year and we once again had lines to get inside, with couples waiting for others to leave the dome so they could fit inside.
The Playa is a wonderful place where people have life changing experiences.  For many people our Dome is one of them.  Many couples leave the Orgy Dome asking us where they can go to experience something similar.  We are proud of what we offer the residents of Black Rock City.
Due to increased popularity, we have been slowly growing and improving our dome over the last three years.  Thanks to generous contributors we expanded our dome in 2013. Good thing, as we had record numbers and we estimate that we will continue to grow.
Planning is underway for 2014 and we want to increase the size of the Dome again – sometimes bigger is better.  We are also looking at incorporating a meeting area for people who are open to more. We want to call this space Aphrodite’s Garden.  A place where couples can get in the mood or meet other like mined couples. Aphrodite’s Garden is a place where love can grow.
Every dollar donated counts!  Every penny we receive will go into making the Dome better for 2014 and years to come. Our ever growing popularity and the smiles and thank you’s we get is the fuel that keep us at ATTOL coming back year after year.
Jul 18 2014

Big Art That Will Blow Your Mind

Fest300 have published a story on some of this year’s larger art installations.

We’ve covered some of these already:

Embrace Embrace

Temples, Temples, Everywhere

Temple Deal Falls Through

2014 Art Grant Winners Announced

Temple Debacle Highlights Hypocrisy

The only one that will actually get burned this year is David Best’s Temple of Grace.

______________________________

Re-blogged from Fest300:

 

BIG ART THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND AT BURNING MAN 2014

Article by: 
Published: July 15, 2014
Photo by: Josh Haywood

Soon the desert will bloom with art. Like a lunar cactus that only flowers once a year, the Black Rock Desert will blossom with the weird, wild, and wonderful during Burning Man. Here are a few art projects we are excited to see, and you can contribute to their success.

The Embrace by the Pier Group

The Embrace By The Pier Group

From the artists who imagined a sand-locked shipwreck comes an enormous Embrace  fit for those fleeting Playa moments that seem eternal.

“It’s planned to be a space where people can sit, reflect, look up, feel the wind through the sculpture, and think about life and love,” says Matt Schultz, the project’s lead artist.

The sculpture is a monument to relationships, both present and past. Schultz’s stepfather died unexpectedly in 2011, and the persistent feeling of absence inspired Schultz to reflect on the moments in relationships when people know they are loved.

Embrace is also meant to explore the idea of collective consciousness, the shared beliefs and ideas that unify a society. To this effect, each of the figures’ heads will be accessible by spiral staircase and will each hold about 20 people, who will have a view out to the other head, the event, and the expansive desert. This design feature is intended as a metaphor for shared experiences and viewpoints.

You can help.

The Temple of Grace by David Best

Grace 400

One of the most renowned temple artists is no stranger to Burning Man. After the proposed Temple of Descendants got sidelined, David Best stepped up again. Known for his masterpieces The Temple of Juno, The Temple of Forgiveness and others, this prolific temple artist is very loved by Burners.

“The Temple of Grace is intended to be a spiritual and sacred space for memorials, reflection, celebration, and to commemorate life transitions. It is the latest in a long line of temples going back to 2000, which started the tradition of the temple built as a spiritual center for this art festival. It is a special work of art given to the community, and is a spiritual refuge where thousands gather, each to engage with it in his or her own way. The community comes to write their memorials and place tokens of their transitions, and it is burned at the end of the festival in a tradition of releasing them by the immolation of the temple.”

Contribute here.

Paha’oha’o by Kahai Tate

The Volcano

Sacrifice yourself in a giant volcano slide. You are a virgin no more. And this fire god approves when you hurl your flesh into the fire.

“The Hawaiian translation of Paha’oha’o is transformation,” as described by Indiegogo. “Transform into something more beautiful or elevated. In Hawaii, eruptions are viewed as beneficial, as acts of creation, and Hawaiians often see their lives mirrored in the level of volcanic activity.”

Get involved.

The Celestial Mechanica by Jessica Welz

Celestial Mechanica2

In our minds it’s the Dark Crystal meets Playa in this universal installation. Celestial Mechanica  will allow its participants to travel to a whimsical world that is our own world. You have not seen our world in this way and you will be amazed. It is a kinetic mechanical representation of our own solar system. By just walking a few steps one can travel great expanses and explore this amazing place; you are the spaceship.

Participate.

Pulse and Bloom by Shilo Shiv Suleman, Saba Ghole, and Rohan Dixit

Pulse And Bloom

Synchronize your heartbeat with up to 25 other burners with a mechanical reactive lotus flower garden.

“Pulse and Bloom is an interactive art installation that visualizes the heartbeats of participants with the hope of syncing human heartbeats in a rhythmic pattern,” says the artists. “Composed of 25 mechanical lotuses arranged in a circular matrix shape with LED lights embedded inside each lotus, Pulse and Bloom is activated when individual participants physically interact with a lotus. Each lotus is equipped with a pulse sensor that, when pressed by a participant, translates their heartbeat into flashing LED lights within the lotus. As more people begin to interact with the different lotuses, visualizing their heartbeats in flashing lights, we will begin to see the effects of each person’s heartbeat on the other and the effect of meditative synchronicity unfold.”

Hayam Sun Temple by Josh Haywood

Temple Of The Sun

A sun temple for Burners and sun worshippers—sometimes the beauty is in the details.

As Josh describes it: “‘Hayam’: a filigree temple of light and shelter, a spiritual retreat resting lightly on the Playa, a tiny tessellated palace named for love and open to the sky, a miniature caravanserai to welcome the weary traveller.

The Hayam embodies the spirit of Islamic geometry: intricately interwoven patterns and repeating themes that speak of infinity. Geometry is the language of the universe; in the very small the infinite can be found.”

Hybycozo by Serge Beaulieu and Yelena Filipchuk

Hybycozo

Beautiful, golden, laser-cut 3D shapes will form in the desert sands of Burning Man. In the artists’ words: “Much like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, these sculpture are meant to provide a map and a definitive set of instructions for interacting with a reality as subjective as plans to destroy the earth to build a hyperspace bypass may seem. We hope each Hyperspace Bypass Construction Zone will amaze and inspire all beings that it comes into contact with it.” We have a feeling they will.

Donate here. 

Coup de Foudre Musical Lightning by Matt Faulkner and David Brown

The Tesla Coil

Stuff we love: giant Tesla coils and lightning bolts you can dance under. Enough said.

Here’s how Matt Faulkner describes the work: “Coup de Foudre is a large-scale electrical art piece for Burning Man 2014. Drawing on recent Tesla coil innovations, Coup de Foudre will produce large (10 foot) arcs of lightning that can be modulated to produce sound and respond to music. An idiom for love at first sight that translates literally to bolt of lightning, Coup de Foudre seeks to evoke awe for beautiful and dangerous forces.”

Support this project.

The Vulvatron by the Clitterati


The Vulvatron is a mobile art piece designed by a group of female artists in San Francisco.

“The Vulvatron is an interactive, immersive environment that celebrates the female experience in us all. Through an immersive multi-media experience, the Vulvatron explores the feminine identity and acts as an advocate for feminist issues. The project’s form is inspired by the often politicized and stigmatized vulva. There are two 20’ tall projection screens in the shape of labia. Our video artists will project images on these that are evocative of the feminine – human forms, elements, abstract geometric shapes, and so on. In addition, people will be able to stimulate the lighting effects of the Clitoris by touching sensors located within the installation.”

Help make it happen.

For more incredible projects and ways to support them, check out the full list of 2014 Burning Man Honorarium Art Installations

Jul 15 2014

So Ridiculous It’s Cool

The Atlantic has a story about a giant brain made out of steel, that will be hooked up to a Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine. Parts of the brain will light up, to “teach us” how brains work. Now if it could just teach us how consciousness works at the same time, it might have some useful scientific meaning. But I digress…

Dr. Brainlove is an enormous, drive-able jungle gym that will light up in ways that mirror actual brain function. Scientists and engineers are constructing the humongous steel brain based on an MRI scan of neuroscientist Natalia Bilenko’s actual brain…developers say they’re already getting questions about whether Dr. Brainlove might tour around to museums, science festivals, and the like

Natalia Bilenko holds a model of her brain in front of Dr. Brainlove. (photo: Asako Miyakawa)

Natalia Bilenko holds a model of her brain in front of Dr. Brainlove. (photo: Asako Miyakawa)

…”A giant brain out of steel,” said Karen Robinson, an electrical engineer who is part of the team building the structure. “It’s just so ridiculous but also achievable if you have the set of skills this group of people have. That makes it a really cool thing.”

The team behind Dr. Brainlove is associated with Phage Camp, a Burning Man group that tries to infuse the festival with science—including giving lectures and setting up mobile science exhibits. (Another group of scientists associated with the camp is building a giant Tesla coil rigged up to a DJ booth so that people can “dance under freaking lightning.”)

Robinson and her fellow brain builders got blueprints for the 14-foot-tall and 24-foot-long steel structure from a company called Digital Permaculture, which draws up steel-grid model plans and provides the double-layer struts necessary for construction. (The steel structure alone will cost about $6,000, and Dr. Brainlove’s designers are still hoping to raise about $10,000 on crowdfunding site Indiegogo for the overall project.) 

The Dr. Brainlove team finished connecting the more than 600 individual struts this past weekend. “It’s all these steel bars that have to be bolted together and each one of them is unique so they’re all very carefully labeled and numbered,” Robinson said. “I find it interesting because we do so much work with mass-produced things that are very standardized. So this is a very, very different process where everything is sort of unique.”

The brains behind the brain; photo: Asako Miyakawa

The brains behind the brain; photo: Asako Miyakawa

…the brain structure, which weighs more than a ton, will be attached to an old Blue Bird school bus. “We chopped the top off so it is now a flatbed school bus,” said Nicholas Christie, a structural and mechanical engineer who is working on Dr. Brainlove. “It looks really cool. We’re going to mount the brain on it.”

Once the brain’s in place, the driver’s seat of the bus will be located in the prefrontal cortex—a delightfully meta detail that reflects the kind of executive function that occurs in that part of the brain. Dr. Brainlove will also be wired with colorful fiber optics and custom LED lights that are designed to look like neural pathways. (“We have a lighting wizard,” Christie says.) 

The brain crane. Photo: Asako Miyakawa

The brain crane. Photo: Asako Miyakawa

The brain’s operators will be able to light up certain areas of the brain to show people different parts of it. The lights will also be used for function—as a geographical marker at night—and for fun. “In some situations we’ll want to have them moving to the music more like a dance party,” Robinson says, “and then sometimes we will talk about epilepsy or something and have it be a strobe light.“

Because art cars make the best geographic markers! And who doesn’t want to spend their evenings at Burning Man learning about epilepsy from a strobe light.

The team is also toying with the idea of having lights respond to music in a way that would mimic a person’s real-time brain activity in response to that sound. And already there are ideas about what projects the giant brain might inspire in years to come. There’s talk of designing a skull encasing for the brain, or a spinal cord, or even a mega heart—one big enough to crawl through that’s pulsing with compressed air.

Any real plans will have to wait, Christie says. “I don’t have the brain capacity right now,” he said.