Burning Nerds research poster, art and data collection session at Center Camp´s Future Friday
Jukka - Pekka Heikkilä
In case you are coming to BRC, warmly welcome to attend Burning Nerds research poster, art and data collection session with presentators affiliated to MIT, University of Southern Denmark, Estonian Academy of Arts, Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart, Aalto University and University of Kentucky.
When? Friday from noon to 4pm, Center Camp. Welcome also to participate in discussions about all kinds of science related activities and interests, starting at 2pm, long table.
Session abstracts
Enacting Post-Anthropocentric Narratives at Burning Man 2024
University of Southern Denmark / Patricia Wolf, Bryan Yazell, Ella Fegitz
Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart, Germany / Christoph Kunz
PACA (Centre for Mobilizing Post-Anthropocentric Climate Action) is dedicated to mapping narratives in society that reject the dominant, growth-driven ideology that accelerates anthropocentric climate change. Researchers at PACA have previously identified flash-fiction writing as a tool for identifying the storytelling genre conventions and narrative devices that inform the imagination of climate change (and its future impacts) among a given group. The research project expands on this prior work by adapting the flash fiction workshop format to not only identify this prevailing social imaginary (which tends to be apocalyptic and dystopian) but to co-develop with participants radically hopeful visions of the future and to explore pathways for making such visions compelling and inhabitable. Over the course of two workshops and an analysis phase, PACA researchers will: lead volunteer citizen scientists at Burning Man in a flash-fiction writing workshop that will, among other things, identify the stories’ features and affective qualities; cluster the produced stories based and produce musical triggers based on the preceding discussion; facilitate a workshop with volunteers that incorporates the incidental music and enacts the stories.
Examining procedural and substantial strategy
An Artistic Live Poster by Karoliina Jarenko´s Clown character Estrella Gobellini
Strategy is usually defined in substantial terms: explaining how an organization aims at reaching its goals. Strategy could also be defined in procedural terms: what are the values, principal or processes, that an organization is going to follow in order to fulfill its goals. A nerdy clown Estrella Gobellini investigates the relationship between the ten principles and Burning Man’s strategy in a Live Poster Performance.
Counting Carbon: SLOW x Ravens Temple
Estonian Academy of Arts, MA Circular Design / Eva Reiska, Kaisa Moora, Katrin Lepa-Ruben, Maris Vahter
Part of a study program students of MA Circular Design of Estonian Academy of Arts are collecting data to calculate a carbon footprint of the art support camp and Honoraria recipient art installation SLOW x Ravens Temple. The poster will explain which data will be taken into account and calculators that will be combined to get the final carbon footprint. The aim is to have more accurate data and also visually see the impact of being a participant of Burning Man. It also gives a baseline to make future decisions and encourage more camps to calculate their impact.
Un-fixing the City
University of Kentucky / Matthew Zook
I explore Black Rock City as an example of unfixed urbanity. Conceptualizing BRC in terms of permanence/temporality, fixity/mobility, materiality/digitality, and individuality/community allows me to theorize around evolving types of cities and societies that recombine materiality, mobility, digitality, and community in new ways. This builds on long-standing work on the non-spatial and relational dimensions of cities and society and applies it to the case of Black Rock City as an extreme case study. Arguably, in recent years, unfixed urbanity and society have become more pronounced as social and work practices adopted the affordances enabled by IT, such as digital nomads, the normalization of video conferencing, remote work, and E-citizenship. The experimental quality of Burning Man allows one to explore how ideas of permanence/temporality, fixity/mobility, materiality/digitality, and individuality/community are negotiated and practiced. This is not to suggest that Burning Man represents the next stage of cities. Rather, by studying it, we gain important insight into how urbanity might be reworked and remade.
The Will-O’-Wisp Adoption Network: A research study exploring the patterns of cooperation and serendipity at Burning Man
MIT Media Lab / Ziv Epstein
Black Rock City fosters unique forms of serendipitous encounters and cooperative behavior, but what are the social and spatial dynamics that allow for this? We conducted a large-scale field experiment with N=600 “Will-O’-Wisp” vessels in 2022 to map the networks and geographies of gift giving by observing how and where the wisps passed from person to person. Wisps traveled across an average of 3.42 people, mostly within half a mile of the gift giver’s camp. In a follow-up survey, we observed that people in general were more likely to give wisps to friends than strangers, but people who received wisps from strangers were more likely to give wisps to strangers. We also received rich qualitative stories that affirm the glimmering possibility of doing art and science together on playa. Together, the project suggests new methods for understanding patterns of gift giving and serendipitous encounters, with implications for urban planning (placement) and the diffusion of rituals.
Dynamics of Participation and Self-Management in Open Strategy Processes
Aalto University, School of Science, Finland / Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä
This research project delves into the intricacies of open strategy by investigating the challenges and dynamics of participation and self-management in strategic processes across diverse organizational contexts. Focusing on the Burning Man community, the project examines collaborative processes and practices between the central organization and self-organized ‘regional’ communities, providing unique insights into participatory goal-setting. By studying self-managing tech companies like Reaktor and Futurice in Finland, as well as Wikimedia's crowd engagement strategies, the project explores the design and implementation of participatory strategies. More information and team background: https://openstrategy.fi/
Transformative narrative data collection with Story Sharing Cubes and data illustrations
Burning Stories Collective / Aalto University
Burning Man is a place of magic and transformation, where each of us experiences the event in unique and powerful ways. During Future Friday we invite you to reflect on a story that has truly mattered to you—perhaps a moment that challenged your perceptions, opened your mind, or simply left you in awe. This art-meets-science research project aims to understand the profound experiences at Burning Man, and your contribution can help us explore the transformative power of this event.
The ongoing Story Sharing Cube project by Burning Stories collective has collected 184 stories from 9 transformational festivals, addressing the challenge of collecting qualitative data long after the transformative moment by capturing it in situ, during the transformative experience itself. Selected transcribed data prompts are illustrated to provide insights from the festival participants ́ psychedelic experiences. The session also features human-AI-human art made from the collected stories and research database of 290 Burning Man research abstracts.
2024 Future Friday FB event & Burning Nerds events
https://www.facebook.com/events/1023058252203901