Burning Man 1998 -- The Art

Part 1 -- Introduction and The Camps	Part 2 -- The Art	Part 3 -- The People
Part 4 -- Events and the Desert	Part 5 -- The Man and the Burn	Part 6 -- Exodus
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Photography Page	Panoramic Photography Page

The Art

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Please note. These are my worst photos. Please visit other years marked above, they get better with time.

Aside from the camps there are the more over "installations" out in the central desert area. These are put up to be away from camps, or in some cases because they are to be burned. (No burning within the more clustered camp areas any more.) Some of the better art can be found among the installations. Here we see a 2001 monolith alone in the desert and a strange structure made of CDs and silvered albums.

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This is the "Nebulous Entity" a large project undertaken by a huge group of people. It moved, played endless strange music, glowed and was quite impressive. The people who built it also dressed up as aliens and had a strange tented processing center that people lined up to go through. You can see it clearly left of the entity in my giant center camp panorama.

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Left is the "air hug" -- a tunnel with the sides covered with all sorts of brushes of different textures. Like a car wash in some senses (but dry.) Best walked through naked. One of Kathryn's favourties was the garden of 6 foot tall Pez dispensers with the heads of alien beings.

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This is the Temple of Rudra, a complex structure built by many, to be the site of a grand opera on Saturday night. The opera was delayed until about 4am, primarily because of weather and other troubles, though the incorrect rumour circulated that they wanted its climax to sync with the total lunar eclipse. Bad luck, and many, including myself, missed it. On the right is a film shot of the temple after it was burnt.

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Left is a giant cloth structure that I found attractive. On the right you see the Tree of Life, which stood between the center camp and the Man. The tree spouted fire, but also rained water down during the day, which made it a popular place for people to go and stand.

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One of the structures that impressed a lot of people was the Temple of the Burning Book, which most people called the Taj Mahal. It was made of stained glass, 30 feet tall, and it glowed brilliantly at night. People performed music on its stage. To the right is a loch ness monster of paper mache, mounted in the desert, swimming towards the man.

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On the left, the artists wanted their work to be framed so it would appear to be in some other place. On the right, I sit on my bike by a giant structure of feathers.

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One group installed a large high-voltage tesla coil. At night they had it send out sparks, and also set things on fire for a wonderful display. Because the conductivity of the air can be well calculated, you can get quite close to the sparks without much risk. Other displays that ran all the time included tons of people with fireworks, and lots of fun with lasers.