Burning Man 2025
As promised, I wanted to share a little bit about our (and our robot's) third Burning Man experience today. As a brief recap, we first started attending Burning Man in 2023, which turned out to be MudMan, so we had a very exceptional Burn as our first. We sometimes hated it, but mostly loved it, and we returned both consecutive years.
The Story of NORA
When we attend Burning Man or regionals, we bring art with us. It's mostly for our sake because we love to create and to see so many different people interacting with our piece. And we also get to improve it on the fly, which is a good alternative pastime for people who don't like to party 🙂
So what's our art? It's a statue of a robot with an AI mind. It interacts in emojis and generated art, and it prints some of the images as souvenirs. We were one of the first AI art pieces on Playa, and at that time, art generation wasn't widely available, so we wanted to bring this ability to the Black Rock City people as a gift. My part was to develop a character that would be approachable and likable, inspiring people to interact and open up with it, which led to the soft, cute, and colorful textile nature of my side of the piece.
In our second year, we chose the theme of identity and the balance between fitting in and remaining authentic. We are both first-generation immigrants, so the theme was very dear to us. This third year, though, we wanted to spice up the robot's personality and make it more engaging, so we came up with the idea that it would bring viewers into its art, but only if they did funny or silly things. We even gave it a new name - NORA (https://burningman.org/event/2025-art-listings/#a2IVI000001LL0r2AG). It seemed to be very well received, and people were talking to it all night, most nights. Here's why most nights...
Instalation
This burn, in general, was somewhat unlucky. We had a new issue with our piece just the day of departure, and then when we fixed it, our RV broke. When the RV was fixed too, it was 6 pm, so we had to decide between an all-nighter at the city gate or installing it one day late. We picked the all-nighter.
At the same time in BRC (Black Rock City), a huge storm (45mph wind) broke out. During our drive, we read about multiple art pieces being damaged, and some just blown away. The storm also didn't help with the wait time, and we were in the city only by 11 am the next day (Sunday). Of course, after that, we had to sleep, so we didn't arrive at the ARTery until Monday morning.
Over the next three days, the weather followed the same pattern: cool and pleasant in the mornings, then windy and rainy in the evenings, which would be fine if we didn't have to install. As our robot is basically a computer, connected to its own solar batteries and also to the internet, I think you can appreciate how nice it would be for its "health" to keep running in the storm. In addition, we didn't waterproof it because well... "the rain on Burning Man is a once in a lifetime event", and we already had ours during the MudMan.
So it came to this dilemma: install the robot too early and it might die in the rain, install it too late and no one will have time to play with it. On the first day, we worked cautiously and only installed the solar panels. However, our impatience got the best of us, and we left our piece almost complete and turned on on Tuesday afternoon. Then the rain came. It went on for hours, and we were certain that was it for our art this year, after a whole year of developing it. Miraculously, though, NORA survived.
The rest of the week went very smoothly, as NORA also had two additional guardians, Brenna (cookie.critter.carousel) and Robert (rpolkow). They helped us with everything from digging in NORA's base to changing printer paper and getting her hair out of the way of the camera. I think partly, the fact that we worked with new people helped us not give up and actually pull through that installation.
Other Art
But what of the other art? Everyone had the same problems with extreme wind, soft Playa and rain. Not all art survived. But here are some of my favorite ones that did.
Un Nuevo Camino, a deeply touching, meaningful and well-executed piece.
El Centro Ceremonial Kauyumari, really amazingly crafted and also you can enter it for a stained glass effect: https://kauyumariceremonial.com.mx/en/stained
The Afterlife, an amazing, colorful, delicate and upbeat piece! I just loved being there; it was even better in real life. How they survived the storm is beyond me!
https://www.facebook.com/theafterlifeproject
Also, this year, there was a whole Temple debate.
It wasn't your regular temple in the sense that it actually wasn't this Tolkien-ish beautiful elf palace, but rather something that looked like an oil cistern from far away. I think that's why so many people didn't love it.
In my humble opinion, however, it faced a general dilemma of modern art: striking a balance between conveying a point and appealing to a broad audience. I mean, inside that temple, it really feels like inside the mind of a person who has been broken to their core and who is contemplating healing. So it was an uneasy place. Perhaps, only a certain kind of grief could be left here, as so many people felt underserved. But guys, how it burned! The cracks became alive with fire, and I had never seen flames higher than this!
I think that's it :) Sorry if it's too long, and sorry if I missed something. There might be one more post about bringing high-tech pieces to the desert, but don't quote me on that. Let me know what you think, or if you went, how it was for you. Talk soon :)