Back to the Further Future

Image: Peter Ruprecht

Image: Peter Ruprecht

Kestrel returns with a year 2 review of Robot Heart’s tech and music conference.


Last year I took a chance on Robot Heart’s festival debut. Now, one year later, that heart remains a lightning rod for any number of gripes about the social experiment in Nevada, and what it has become. Last week it became a literal lightning rod, as FF was body-slammed by mother nature. Last year the BLM’s shady permit-denial moves and the travel problems created by the “Fight of the Century” threw festival-killer curveballs at the event. This year FF was inundated by a season’s worth of rain in one day – so before anything else is said let’s all bear in mind that this crew of friends-turned festival producers are averaging 3 crises every 12 months.

 

For a fairly long and detailed background on last year’s event, the Paiute, and the infrastructure of FF, refer to my article from last year. For now, here are the basics: Further Future is a 3-day music and tech conference held on private property belonging to the Paiute Indians of the Moapa Valley reservation about 45 minutes N.E. of Vegas. Tickets prices are tiered, but average about $300, and one needs to apply for an invite code by sending a simple, one-sentence message. The code can be used to buy multiple tickets and has nothing to do with what you look like or how much you make. Camping accommodations vary greatly from self-camping to luxury structures. Water and WiFi are free, and there is cashless RFID wristband-vending but almost no branding. Attendance is about 5000 people, spread over a few dozen acres of desert. The bill is comprised of over 100 speakers, studio monitors and musical acts.

 

Bookended by the Robot Heart bus facing dawn, and a more traditional main-stage framing the sunset were a variety of structures. A beautiful outdoor speaker series stage called Booba Cosmica, a Creator’s Lounge to showcase and demo tech, a tight-packed disco called the Void, a pop-up dining hall, a spa, a yoga sanctuary, a surround-sound setup called the Envelope Satellite and a variety of art installs, chill-out pods and customized containers peppered the grounds. There was a general store and a farmer’s market. The event eschewed West-Coast fest mainstays such as flying runs of stretch fabric, flower-of-life tapestries and the “LEDiarrhea look” for simplicity and function. Staging was celestially oriented, and celebrated the natural beauty of the Mojave desert. This year, the addition of hundreds of wooden pallets made for a retro/Western feel evocative of Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” video.

 

It’s eerily similar to the Black Rock desert, but the conditions are less extreme. (Usually.) No open fire. No LEOs besides Tribal Police. Do what you want, consume what you will, but keep your clothes on. Key times are dawn and sunset, the aesthetic is futuristic and silver, people seem to split their time between costumed photoshoots, TED-style talks and dancing. The population is noticeably more ethnically diverse than TTITD and skews both a little older and more European than the crowd at Larry’s party. It seems that news of last year’s success reached foreign shores, and the Cali. festy kids with little to risk who drove the 4 hours from L.A. were replaced to some extent by European couples in their 40’s and 50’s. People were friendly but not as aggressively outgoing as the crowd at The Awesome, and anyone who’s traveled in Europe will recognize the vibe.

 

There are two ways to talk about Further Future –  in and out of the context of TTITD. If no-one had ever heard of the other event, FF could simply exist as the finest small music festival in America and perhaps the world. Perfect sound at accessible stages featuring an expertly curated mix of diverse music with the addition of substantive talks delivered by actual visionaries in a gorgeous natural setting.

 

But the event doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It grew out of a TAZ which itself grew out of a specific historical setting. A very smart friend of mine sums up TTITD as a series of small cultural revolutions connected by a thread best labelled “The Search for White Identity.” Larry and his crew had the brilliant idea of bringing San Francisco-flavored Situationism to “The Middle of Nowhere.” (a White man’s conceit – Lake Lahontan has been an important meeting place for a long time.) The Robot Heart crew brought a very different East Coast and Far-East sensibility to the experiment a decade-and-a-half after guns and dogs had been replaced by techno.

This may have been the source of the rumor that the leader of Anonymous was there. Image: Ruprecht Studios

This may have been the source of the rumor that the leader of Anonymous was there. Image: Ruprecht Studios

I get the feeling that BMorg’s hyper-litigious corporate culture stems from decades of fighting off commercialization of their event, as well as downplaying the suicides, O.D.’s and sexual assaults that perennially threaten the very existence of the experiment. The most extreme example that comes to mind is their recent legal victory (documented on this very site) over a Canadian collective trying to incorporate a common synonym for “combust” into their domain name. I don’t use the word in my writing anymore, and similarly FF’s participants and speakers made little mention of the culture that birthed this new one, and the fear that Larry’s lawyers have instilled in us only pushes us further, faster.

 

We opted for a Saturday entry ($100 off) and that late arrival saved us a couple hundred on flights. Although it meant missing Four Tet, Tennis and WhoMadeWho. Bummer, but we stayed dry in Vegas. As was my experience last year, the journey from the Strip THROUGH the gate took under an hour. So easy compared to DFALT (Discovering Friends And Losing Things.) We set up our little Jucy rental RV and went exploring. I guess now it’s a tradition, but I insisted we made a beeline to the bus. As we entered the grounds, people’s regalia and costumes were on full display.

 

There’s no central Esplanade; rather the fastest way around is actually a curved road on the periphery of the event, with a stunning backdrop of the Moapa valley extending for miles on one side, with and everything else on the inside. It feels like K street around 10 in BRC, right where the outer ring is closest to the edge of our Lake of Dreams, and you can sort of see the shrubs out by 447 and the road the cops use to come in on, so the RH crew are right at home here!

 

People generally respected the fact that the other side of the road was tribal land, but used it as a photo-shoot backdrop. You didn’t get the feeling here that cameras are an issue, and there was a sign at the gate warning that one’s image would most likely be captured. I never, ever carry a camera or take pictures in BRC (other than to document builds and camp stuff) but here I felt like a kid at the zoo, and was glad to have a DSLR. Right as we entered a woman dressed in Dom gear and giant moon-boots was standing on a modded container snapping a bullwhip at a camera drone. You saw a lot of the “rhinestoned generalissimo hat and round shades” style that’s kind of an RH fan mainstay and looks way more “Frank Miller combat-hooker” than the “Haight Goddess and her Silicon Valley Unicorns” look people NOT from the West Coast tolerate in silence at BRC.

 

It’s always hard to tell who made what, but the costumes were fun and varied, and there were fewer normcore types and sports logos than you’d expect. I talked to a super daywalker-type from Minnesota in a polo shirt who was impressed by how respectful everyone was. I explained how I felt that while it wasn’t exactly horrible, the few butts around would cause a riot at the Main Event, and he had a tough time understanding why. For a second time, I witnessed zero shitshow moments/fights/nonsense, with the one exception of a bro who somehow slipped thru the entry code process and drunkenly bear hugged a hanging Hybycozo lantern that came straight down around him like Building 7. The pieces were intact, and they fixed it later, but he ran away into the darkness, hopefully to be bitten by some rattlesnake who’d wandered in, following a 75,000 watt thumping trail to Lee Burridge.

Image: Peter Ruprecht

Image: Peter Ruprecht

I won’t go into great detail about the music, except to say that I have a whole new library of stuff to listen to. Got to see The Pharcyde in the desert. Discovered a new sound in the form of UK act Elderbrook, when we just had to go check out the guy playing solo Fender Jaguar into Ableton plus soul vox on the Boba Cosmica stage. The stages and screens are gorgeous, and the festival sounds like a millionaire stereophile dragged bespoke systems out into the desert (It’s a “funktion-none” situation, from what could tell. The only brand clearly visible on an audio element were the RH logos on the Bus’s mid-stacks.)

 

Last year’s headlining slot (sunset Sunday) went to Bob Moses. This year we were treated to the Easy Star All-Stars playing Dub Side of the Moon in its entirety with a high def “Oz” visual accompaniment (so fun!) followed by HVOB, who, like Bob Moses, bring live vocals and native instrument flavor to minimal electronica. HVOB’s visuals consisted of mostly black and white flowing graphics that I believe were the work of artist Clemens Wolf, punctuated by the band’s simple “checkmark” logo. Minimal, Austrian, disarmingly beautiful, and a perfect companion to Dub Side. When I say the music is expertly curated, I mean the music is. Expertly. Curated.

Image: Facebook

Schmidt claimed that they were concerned about attacks from laser weapons. He was recently appointed to run the Pentagon’s new Innovation Advisory Board, so this may not have been ironic

But what really sets FF apart is the quality of the talks. Everyone knows of a theme camp that organizes a speaker series to help with their placement and give the illusion that the camp is bringing enrichment…but in execution the talks are a joke and everyone makes sure they’re not so loud as to wake up the DJ’s. Further Future’s speaker series had Eric Schmidt answering tough questions. The CEO of Google, ten feet away. As we arrived he was saying that “We are in a time where we know more but feel worse”…cogently acknowledging the existence of a new form of dysfunction that arose from the all encompassing knowledge-sphere his own company had helped to create.

I went primarily for the music and the talks about music, and I’m not an excellent judge on the caliber of conversations about the future of high technology. But a friend of mine who is far more knowledgeable than me about such things was also there, and he was impressed by the high level of most of the talks and felt that one could summarize the attitude of most of the speakers down to the idea “that you could harness technology (applied creatively), collaboration, and an orientation towards action and positivity rather than fear and apathy inducing cynicism – to transform the world.  That the future of technology might not be so much killer robots ala terminator but the opening of new frontiers for mankind.” He’s dubbed this view “techno-positivism” and he says that nowhere has he seen a better case for it than at FF.

 

There were as many speakers as DJ’s. The talks were fun, and there were many more questions than time to answer them. I witnessed an humanoid robot engage in an open-domain exchange about gardening. I experienced the Playa in 360 degree immersion through VR goggles (my first exposure to VR). I listened to a Princeton neuro-scientist talk about what happens to you put transcendental meditation masters into an MRI machine. When I suddenly realized I wanted an apple, I could buy one at the farmer’s market. The next day I got to hear the farmer who brought them talk about how we could get insurance companies to incentivize the consumption of locally-grown food. Last year the Soundcloud guys spoke; this year it was a Spotify team member’s turn. The giant, gorgeous display on the mainstage was used to host a mini film fest between acts, and Darren Aronofsky was in attendance.

 

When I talk about music publishing in a VR realm to people, I usually get blank stares in return. Here VR music distribution was a defacto topic of conversation across forums. The off-repeated fear that Oculus will make us all hermits was met with data on how VR can help treat autism. We were told about a project to create a VR sexual assault experience from the viewpoint of both the attacker and the victim so legislators could “walk a mile” in both shoes. The notion that this technology could actually create empathy and bring people together permeated both the Creator’s Lounge and Booba Cosmica. If it got too heady, you were a three minute trot from face-melting beats and just as far from a massage. Festival veterans enjoyed the cerebral moments, and the academics and inventors enjoyed the novelty of speaking in a tent in the desert. It felt both authentic and accidental, but more than anything it felt timely.

 

There were a few misses. Tycho was a no-show at his panel. For some reason, there were bare mattresses everywhere, and I actually preferred the staging and layout last year, where camping was basically inside the festival grounds. This year featured an actual manned gate, and security would either not scan you at all and just wave you by, or alternatively not let you in with a camera, seemingly depending on the individual guard. We paid for an RV pass for our Jucy, but since the van has no hookups, and we were just living in the lot anyway, it seemed like a waste of money, and at $250 split three ways, it’s not just pocket change. Last year felt more like a spontaneous gathering, but then it occurs to me that this might be nostalgia speaking. Am I doing the “It was better next year” thing? Already?

 

My first year I went alone – this year I brought two friends and next year we plan to bring a whole crew. We stayed ’til Monday morning, at which point RH’s friends were doing the “I’m MOOPing, are you?” judge-nudge that lets the strangers know it’s time to leave. (At this point Monday Beatport’s pre-written hit piece was already online. Contrary to popular misconceptions, mangoes are not $7 at FF. A freshly prepared fruit cup is. There was no pizza. Delicious, desert-appropriate portions of ceviche were $6. A McDonald’s-quality salad poolside at the Bellagio is $20. Who’s the 1% meow?)

 

Further Future can be done for less dough than most big festivals, and as more people realize how great this event is, the complaints about it being “BM for the 1%” will fade. The organizers are careful to use language that suggests they are willing to open source their event. They describe what “a” Further Future event is, not what “the” event is. Presumably this kind of “mindful optimism” is portable. It has to be.

 

One last thing worth mentioning is that this event takes place on Paiute land actually owned by Paiute, so some (presumably large) part of the ticket price goes to them. There is no temple, and the RH crew reminds participants not to strip down naked or wear anything Native-American inspired. For the second year, I didn’t see anyone break this rule. The main event, on the other hand, features white people building a temple on former Indian land that turns a profit for other white people.

 

Let that sink in next time you’re feeling sacred out there in the CNC’d shadows at the corner of Twelve o’clock and missing friends. The Paiute are missing a few as well….

 

…And if you are one of those for whom that land by the temple is sacred, and you’re feeling the crunch of ticket scarcity, whatever you do, don’t look West to the music nerds climbing their bus project. They don’t have any extra tickets from Bmorg. Nope, if you’re feelin’ that The Man has altered his contracts with you and made it harder for you to access your sacred land – you should write to him. The Paiute can tell you how that goes…

 

Image: Peter Ruprecht

Image: Peter Ruprecht

TTITD’ers are not all the same. We’re not all fire spinners, or DJ’s, and some of us even play guitar. There can be a kind of Etsy-conformity to our culture, and although I’m decidedly not wealthy, at times I felt like I “fit in” more at FF than BM. If you’re into the whole desert TAZ thang, but you’re not a fire-jock, this is the fest for you. If you’ve ever had a festy friend with their heart in the right place tell you to “add some color to your wardrobe” this is the fest for you. If you like your conversations about energy flow to happen with a guy who’s put lab instruments on Tibetan monks…then I’ll see you in the Further Future.

 

The other thing moves your heart. Further Future fills your brain. This is a transformational festival where people with the resources and skills to transform the planet interact with people who have already transformed their personal lives. To that extent, where the Impossible City in the Desert saves individual people, Further Future has started a conversation about how to save the world.

 

I’ll close with my tech developer friend’s words about FF:

 

“I find the internet hate directed at the so called “Burning Man for the 1%” to be almost embarrassingly unproductive.  These are not the 1%’ers we should be fighting.  These are the ones we should be talking to, working with, cross-pollinating with. Lumping them in with the Martin Shkreli’s of the world based solely on their net worth is just not the smart move here.”

 

There was a neon art piece out by the bus that read “This Is Just the Beginning.”

 

I hope so.

 

-Kestrel.


burnersxxx:

Thanks Kestrel for another fine guest post. And thanks to photo artist Peter Ruprecht for these images, he says:

The future is not something that happens to you but rather the fabric with which you shape your destiny. It is part raw material, part pre-built. It is up to us to learn to navigate the challenges, successes and shortcomings in a manner that makes the journey worth the result and the result worth the journey. It is that perfect dance of embracing your future, accepting your past and loving your present. Thanks all for your gifts out there…thanks Further Future and Robot Heart!

I took some cellphone video of Eric Schmidt’s talk. Like always at these things, you look around and see lots of professional photographers and fancy camera setups, filming away. Where does all this footage go? Seemingly, not on YouTube. Anyway, it’s shaky, it’s shitty, but it’s better than nothing…

 

Burning Man Spin-Off Makes Solid Debut

Further Future, a festival in the Nevada desert put on by the crew behind the Robot Heart art car, happened last weekend about 40 minutes outside of Las Vegas.

It takes a lot of time, effort, money, and logistics to get a major sound stage to the Playa every year. In the case of Robot Heart, the situation is even more complicated because the stage moves around. Once Robot Heart parks and the music gets going, it’s kind of stuck – because of the crowd of 10,000+ people and 100+ art cars surrounding it. It’s hard enough moving out of there on foot, let alone turning the main stereo off and driving away.

What do these sound camps get, from bringing what to many is one of the fundamental elements of Burning Man? Nothing. No money. Barely even thanks. Instead they get Larry & Co bitching because they posted DJ set times, BMOrg complaining about the infrastructure headaches (for example, large numbers of people far away from portapotties), and they have to pick up literally tons of MOOP left by the Bucket List Broners.

Given all that, it’s not at all surprising that sooner or later sound camps say “we might as well do this professionally, with higher standards of safety and sanitation, and get paid for it too”. There is a long history of sound camps throwing year-round events off Playa to raise funds that facilitate bringing their equipment, DJs, and crews out. In this sense Robot Heart are no different, and have been throwing parties for many years.

Further Future went, well, further…with a selection of luxury amenities on offer for those who could afford it. The Robot Heart camp contains several billionaires, but you don’t have to be one to dance at their bus or attend their festival. Some of the online detractors have made a big deal about the “invite-only” nature of the event, but that seems to me a wise move to keep initial numbers controllable. For a first-time event, anything could go wrong, and probably will – better to have 3,000 disgruntled patrons, than 50,000. Although there were some hiccups, Further Future generally went pretty smoothly, and was very much enjoyed by most of the attendees. It was not difficult to get an invitation, regardless of body type or financial status.

The venue was changed at the last minute, after the Bureau of Land Management rejected a permit to use a access road to the festival site “out of the blue”. They chose the same medical provider as Burning Man, Humboldt General Hospital – who then got ditched by Burning Man, a decision that also came “out of the blue”. We know that BMOrg have a cozy relationship with the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada, who they pay millions of dollars a year to. BLM Special Agent Dan Love, who has a long history with Burning Man, appeared near Las Vegas running the historic Bundy Ranch Standoff. Apparently there was more than a little hatred directed towards Further Future at last month’s Global Leadership Conference.

Were these two surprise decisions – that occurred at about the same time and both related to possible competition for Burning Man – completely unrelated coincidences? Or was there some behind-the-scenes Nevada politicking going on?

On April 21 the Reno Gazette Journal said:

Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell and other top Burning Man officials this week are speaking on behalf of the Burning Man nonprofit while in Washington, D.C.

Officials are meeting with both federal and state BLM representatives, asking that they consider issuing a permit that would allow for an increase in attendance starting in 2017.

On April 18 the Las Vegas Review Journal broke the news Further Future Festival Scrambles For New Location. So in the same week that BMOrg are meeting with BLM state representatives and their bosses in DC, the BLM decides to make life hard for Further Future. Hmmm…

Luckily for Further Future, the Moapa Indian tribe stepped up, and provided a site that was bulldozed flat in 10 days for the event.

The festival received a lot of publicity, the reviews were mostly positive:

LA Times: Further Future Goes Deep Into The Desert For A New Kind Of Festival

Las Vegas Weekly: No Sleep Till Further Future: My Night At the Electronic Music Festival

Vice: Further Future’s Debut Proves You Can’t Buy Instant Vibes

Mixmag: Snapped: Further Future in the Nevada Desert

Forbes: Burning Man’s Cool Kids Break Off To Mix Music And Tech At New Festival

The Huffington Post published an interview with FFFounder Robert Scott:

Tell me about the inception of Further Future. Who’s the core team? How did it come about and what inspired the name?

Robert: The main members of the core team with whom the public and industry will generally interact are Jason Swamy, Michael Calabrese and Benjamin Alexander and I. As individuals our team members generally prefer to remain somewhat in the background, with our focus being on benefiting the development of the endeavor and the community over our own personal status, if that makes sense. The Further Future concept is something that we have been talking about and evolving for several years. A Further Future event aspires to be a gathering of people with the common goal to spend time together celebrating the infinite possibilities of the future, without necessarily being shackled to the dictates of the past or the cycles of present-day society. We want to combine the connective power of music and art to bring people together in a place where they can shed their anxieties and fears, and touch a natural state of happiness. This, while immersing ourselves together in a culture of open thought and inquiry sharing ideas and aspirations with leading minds in the fields of art, business, science, technology and thought.

We feel there is a yearning in our world for a mindful and directed optimism, the sort of self-belief that empowers a society to transcend its flaws and scars and make great leaps into the future. We have also in our own lives been drawn to and awed by great thinkers and dreamers, artists, scientists and entrepreneurs, who can see past the future and beyond the horizon (into the Further Future). If we could bring such minds together in that environment, just think what amazing conversations and ideas we might witness and what new possibilities might be born.

Morena: Is the goal for Further Future gathering to expand or do you want it to remain small and intimate?

Robert: We have quite a few ideas for what we will do next with Further Future, although it’s not our intention to ever build this into an enormous event. We definitely value the intimacy and community that comes from a smaller event comprised of people who are truly invested in what we are all trying to do.

Las Vegas Weekly noted that there was a large amount of live music, for a crew known mostly for progressive house DJs and that “Robot Heart sunrise sound”:

Its chief component and draw was its music slate, one of the most progressive you’ll find for an American festival. Given the Burning Man pedigree of promoter Robot Heart, Further Future could have exclusively booked DJs. But instead, it booked a considerable complement of live acts, a decision that showed depth for a new festival, cultural relevance given the slowly building trend of electronic musicians opting to perform rather than play their material as a DJ (see: this year’s Coachella and Ultra Music Festival) and a commitment to being more than a party.

By the reports made by Van Insurance, the festival was marked by tragedy outside its gates, when Fest300 co-founder Art Gimbel was killed in a car accident on the way to the event.

Our condolences go out to Mr Gimbel’s friends and family and the Fest300 team. Fest300 gave Further Future a glowing review despite the death, describing it as Beautiful People Partying On Mars:

Further Future, the invite-only, first-year Burning Man offshoot that was once shrouded in mystery, pulled off a stunning debut this past weekend in the Nevada desert. Straying far from the see-and-be-seen vibe of Coachella and the opulence of the likes of TomorrowWorld or EDC, Further Future curated an intellectual aura, featuring an eclectic, cool array of musicians (Com Truise, Damian Lazarus + The Ancient Moons, Warpaint, Nosaj Thing, and more showed) who played well past sunrise, a selection of high-minded speakers (like Zappos head Tony Hsieh, the founders of SoundCloud, Google [X]’s captain [Astro Teller], and Zoe Keating) and luxury accommodations like a gated campground called Habitas, spa treatments, and gourmet feasts – all in a Mars-esque setting full of beautiful, well-accessorized partiers.

As the world becomes more and more saturated with corporate-run behemoth festivals, boutique fests will continue to pop up all over, in order to offer more intimate, bespoke experiences. Despite its infancy, we think it won’t be long before Further Future becomes a leader on the new festival frontier

Image: Stacie Hess/Fest300

Image: Stacie Hess/Fest300

Gypset Glamping Tents

Gypset Glamping Tents. Image: Stacie Hess/Fest300

It seems like those who made the trek out to the Moapa Indian Reservation generally had a good time, and were prepared to forgive a few teething problems in a first-time event.

pink_panther said:

Spinoff gatherings like this are becoming more common now that Burning Man has reached capacity and become more mainstream. Each one has its own unique vibe and offering. Further Future was the name of this one, and is clearly a Robot Heart creation, but there’s also Envision, Lightning in a Bottle, and many more.

The burn has been a big part of my life, but going forward I would rather take the time and energy it requires and direct that to international travel to my bucket list of exotic locations. These simpler gatherings offer a great way to keep the flame alive, so to speak, and to try something new.

Further Future apparently signed a 5 year lease with the Moapa River tribe, so this event will likely grow quickly. This year was about 2,500, but I bet next year is closer to 5,000. The event was far from perfect, but it has a lot of potential. I imagine I’ll do it again next year.

teo said:

I really enjoyed this festival, it was small very intimate, the weather was fantastic, and the food was excellent… those Tacos were out of this world. I think it was a very interesting experiment. It was great that no mainstream artists where there. I hope they can keep Skrillex and Diplo away from this festival and all the mainstream artists. It was a very convenient location driving back and forth from Vegas only 40 minutes, no traffic and overall and despite that they were finishing the setup on the last minute, I never felt this level sensation of freedom before in any other festival as I did in Further Future. Kudos to the organizers.

Scott had some constructive criticism:

A few off the top of my head notes and opinions…
-It felt like an album from a band that needed to focus on doing less. Don’t make a “meh” 20 track album when you can focus on doing 10 really good songs.
-It didn’t feel like a rich-guy festival it was accused of being although it had a very different feel overall than on-playa. Generally more serious and reserved, but not bad. Still great things and people.
-With all the open space compared to the number that went, it felt barren.
-Clearly, the most social and bubbly people in any of the camps were those in the self-camping area. Those in the paid-for tent camping often looked… Well, unhappy.
-The music should have been going before the event even started on Friday, but barely any was going until late late into the night/early morning (Or when it was, there were long breaks in between). Further, no disrespect to the DJ or artist at the time, but there was head music on the main stage when it should have been good beats. So many were wandering around looking for thumpy beats.
-The fact that they were behind schedule was obvious from the get-go. It seemed that instead of focusing on getting multiple stages going at the same time, they should have been focusing all the manpower on one, then the next, then the next…
-The supplying of water and showers were both great. The water truck guys were great too.
-The police presence felt almost non-existent.
-Nobody I met, including myself, was ever asked to show a ticket/parking pass/etc. to get into the event.
-The taco/burrito truck in the self-camping area was serving up decent stuff at a decent price.
-For how many comfy couch-like seats were provided, they didn’t provide shade. it would have been nice to have more shade and community structures around the event.

The day beds were comfortable, but not very shady

The day beds were comfortable, but not very shady

shadow_billionaire shares what it was like to attend the festival in style:

The helicopter access ran pretty smoothly, in a brand new Eurocopter. Further Future had even provided a sound-track for the ride, a classy touch. One of the co-passengers did not have their wristband on them, so after landing they had to arrange a ride out to the gate to pick it up. A minor inconvenience, but the last thing you want after an expensive chopper ride in is to leave the event to go line up at Will Call, this defeats the purpose.

We had a brief wait in line at the reception desk to find out which tent was ours. It took about 20 minutes, so much faster than Burning Man’s Will Call line. At one point a beautiful girl wearing very little came up and said “we noticed you guys standing in line, so we’ve arranged to have some day beds brought over if anyone would like to sit down”. I thought this was very considerate, and indicative of the attitude Further Future showed to their customers: they cared. 

The glamping tents left a lot to be desired. Perhaps we should have chosen the more expensive Gypset option. On arrival, the canvas structure contained a lamp that didn’t work, an empty mini-fridge, and a cardboard box with a strongbox inside. Later, some pillows arrived. Guests were required to track down their own inflatable mattress, and carry it to the tent once it had been inflated. A topsheet appeared at some point during the night, but there was no blanket or pillowcases. They managed to get the lamp working, but then the air-conditioning failed. The A/C consisted of a large plastic tube filled with air, with a couple of holes ripped in it with a knife. There was no lock on the door, and people kept opening the tent flap constantly – perhaps because they were still trying to finish the rooms off. There was also very little privacy, you could hear every word in all of the neighboring tents. 

All of this could have been manageable, but unfortunately a communication breakdown between the helicopter company and the event’s organizers meant the luggage that we paid extra to have follow us out in a car never showed up. No blanket, no pillowcases, no door, no A/C – OK, we can try to make a go of it anyway; but having no luggage either was just too much. We took a limo back to Vegas on Friday night, rather than sticking around for the return chopper we’d booked the following afternoon (since there was nowhere to watch the fight at the festival).

We did not sample any of the spa treatments, but it looked like many FF-ers were. The organic smoothies were delicious, it was nice being able to get food and drinks whenever we wanted. The music was varied and interesting, underground rather than mainstream. I heard no dubstep, no Diplo and Skrillex, although we did leave early so maybe that came on later. The Robot Heart stage was open to anyone who wanted to climb up on it. There was no feeling of “exclusion” at the festival, despite the high-end amenities on offer. It was not like you could order Cristal and lobster there though.

The cashless system generally worked well. It was useful the way you could link multiple wristbands to one account, and automatically top them up. It was somewhat strange the way your remaining account balance was displayed with each transaction, and the tipping was awkward. A fixed 20% gratuity would have been easier for everyone.

We did not notice any bad attitude from anyone, workers or patrons. Everyone was friendly and seemed to enjoy being there. It was clear that the organizers put a great deal of effort into the festival, and probably were prepared for a larger crowd. This did not seem to be a one-off, and we would definitely go to check the event out again. Next time, we would stay in an RV rather than a “luxury” tent.

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The glamping tents are to the right. The lit up tent to the left is maybe the spa; not sure about the chopped-up container

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The A/C vent

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Secure your valuables – if they made it off the helicopter

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Pillows, but go find your own mattress

We also have received a quite detailed review from Kestrel, that will be published separately as a guest post.

Is Further Future a threat to Burning Man? It doesn’t seem so, since it is on at a different time of year, in a different place. The experience is not the same without all the art cars, bicycles, fire, and the massive city of home-made art. Many Burners insist that Burning Man isn’t even a festival. As an EDM festival, Further Future has many things it offers that are better than Burning Man. It seems like there is plenty of room for both events to flourish in this big, wide, world.

My impression is Robot Heart put a lot of effort into this festival, and did pretty well for their first time – especially given the last minute shafting on their permit. The vibe of everyone there was very friendly and cool, not exclusive at all. The music was great. Sure it did not have 70,000 people, but that was never their aim – Burning Man took a decade to get to 4000 people.

Is it a “transformational festival”, where people can go to act out a different version of themselves, and perhaps come back as a changed person? Probably not – but neither is an official Decompression. Can you enjoy music, art, Nature, and meeting cool, like-minded new people? Absolutely. Is it only for rich people? Definitely not, it costs less to attend than Burning Man.

Since Burning Man has accepted a higher percentage of virgins than any other group of Burners (around 40% for the last 4 years), it has become difficult for its experienced fans to return. So the culture needs events like this, in order to keep growing around art and passion. There was a lot of love at Further Future, as opposed to how corporate and elitist the nay-sayers complained that it would be. Kudos to Robot Heart and their team for trying something new, trying hard, and making it really good. Attention to detail, quality music, quality art. Sure there’s room for improvement…and their attitude suggests that they want to improve. Can we say the same about BMOrg?

Thanks to Peter Ruprecht for these great photos.

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Why I Love Zombie Movies

by Whatsblem the Pro

The Other White Meat -- Image: Whatsblem the Pro

The Other White Meat — Image: Whatsblem the Pro

Zombies. The shambling, hungry dead.

The initially-tiny cult phenomenon that was George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD has been massively reprised and expanded over the years into a full-blown touchstone of mainstream culture. . . but it isn’t just the grotesque thrills of gore-horror that give the genre its legs. Beyond and below the surface of GRRAAARR BRAINS lies a durable contemporary allegory that has struck a resonance in the hearts and minds of a certain kind of person for over half a century.

FREE PUSSY RIOT!!!!!!!!!!!

FREE PUSSY RIOT!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m not talking about the multiple individual subtexts that some zombie movies – and all of Romero’s zombie movies – carry with them. There are a number of clear themes that emerge from these films; xenophobia and racism, feminism, consumerism and the emptiness of life lived solely in material pursuits. There are pointed questions posed about relational heirarchies, about the moral and ethical problems that pure science faces in the presence of military concerns that weaponize every discovery possible, about leadership and autonomy, about Communism and Capitalism, about the innate goodness (or badness) of people in general, and about the very warp and woof of the fabric of society as a whole.

All of these subtexts have the potential to be interesting and thought-provoking for any particular viewer, but none of them are the kind of thing that might make you want to go out and actually prepare for the Zompocalypse as though it could really happen. . . and yet there are people who do so, often with a glaring display of tongue-in-cheek, but sometimes in what seems to be total earnestness. A large part of that impulse is no doubt attributable to the not-very-subtle subtext of the end of civilization and the imminent crumbling of social order and the rule of law, but for me it’s deeper than that.

Aww, don't shoot, he looks so happy -- Image: Hammer FIlms

Aww, don’t shoot, he looks so happy — Image: Hammer FIlms

Other monster genre films leave me cold; I’m not wild about graphically violent horror in general although I can certainly take it. The point is that I don’t watch zombie movies to see rotting flesh being ripped apart by bullets, or to see the living torn limb-from-limb in the teeth of the dead. Even the goriest, ghastliest vampire movies make me yawn with all their brooding, overly-studied cool, although I certainly understand the wish-fulfilling empowerment fantasies they inspire in others. I find serial-killer slasher films dull and unrewarding, too, for the most part.

Why? Because here’s the thing about zombies: they’re not few and far-between, like vampires, or werewolves, or serial killers. When the Zompocalypse comes, the living are absolutely overwhelmed by the dead, and in no time, it is the survivors who are the rarity, not the monsters.

What does this make them?

For me it’s simple: the zombies, vastly outnumbering the living as they do, become the status quo. They, not the survivors, are the typical form of human life on Earth. The living, with their use of language and tools, their emotions and their emotional connections to each other, and their willingness to eat things no normal person would touch, are freakish, abnormal rarities.

And what is it that the zombies – i.e., the normal people – are constantly trying to do to these oddballs and outliers living on the fringes of their world?

Fine, go ahead and eat me -- Photo: Nate 'Igor' Smith

Fine, go ahead and eat me — Photo: Nate ‘Igor’ Smith

One of two things: infect them with normalcy, or turn them into a product, to be consumed.

If you’re an artist, and you earn your living by making art, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re beholden to nobody; you’re even free to some extent in a way that no corporate ladder-climber or blue-collar serf could ever be, but life can be peculiarly hard for you, and people often don’t understand you very well. Sometimes, especially if they’re family, they put pressure on you to give up your aspirations and leave the difficult, lonely path you’ve chosen, to join the herd and pursue cookie-cutter notions of worldly success that, to your way of thinking, resemble a kind of living death. Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure most of those people in your life are nice folks with nothing but good intentions, but in our allegory they are best represented by the zombies.

What happens if you’re a successful artist, and the public gets to probing and clawing at you with their nerveless, idiot fingers? What happened to Michael Jackson? I’ll tell you what happened to Michael Jackson: starting with his own father when Michael was just an innocent tot, the normal people commodified him, wrapped him in plastic and bought and sold him as an item of consumption, like the neatly-packaged ground beef they sell at your local supermarket, isolated from its origins, sanitized for your protection, a natural thing made utterly, completely unnatural. They ate Michael Jackson.

DPW's Vaughn Solo is ready -- Photo: Jessica Reeder

DPW’s Vaughn Solo is ready — Photo: Jessica Reeder

Sure, Jocko is an extreme example, but the same is true of almost any famous artist whose name and face are in the public eye. Most of us dream of fame and fortune, but how would we really feel if we were unable to simply walk down the street like an ordinary person without being pursued and mobbed by random strangers?

The real beauty of zombie movies is that although the allegory that pits heavily outnumbered freaks against a status quo juggernaut is a sort of depressingly accurate commentary on what we, as real-life freaks, are up against, it all takes place in a consequence-free environment. This is where the subtext departs from reality and offers us our reward in the form of some satisfying wish-fulfillment: you can shoot the bastards in the head, and nobody will get mad at you. Hell, you’ll probably get a pat on the back and maybe even build some camaraderie with your co-freaks by pulling that trigger.

Note that you have to shoot a zombie in the head, in the brain, to make it stop. This is because our struggle in real life is a struggle of ideas. We can’t literally kill all the normal people in order to secure our own survival as artists and weirdos; we have to kill the normal ideas in their heads instead. We have to kill the way they think.