Burning Man 2006 was the first year I brought an "art" project to the Playa - a 50 foot tall bamboo tower with sequenced cold cathode lamps covering the top. This was my third trip to the Playa and was by far the most personally rewarding.

My first year, 2004, I was constantly blown away by what I saw/heard/sensed in this unique environment and had a bonding experience with a fine group of people that I will never forget.

In 2005, with the group from the previous year, we were going to really participate and bring something to the Playa. It started out with a lot of great energy but eventually fizzled out as every single person from the 2004 group found a reason not to go. I was seriously depressed! What to do? What to do? I ended up camping with a group of crafty individuals and helped loft a really big spotlight to the top of a scaffolding tower in our camp! A fun year for sure but not exactly the "art" project I wanted to contribute.

I returned from that experience determined to bring a project the following year, whether it was a team project or one of my own. As it turned out, getting three or four people to commit the time and energy it takes to do even a small scale project was not going to happen - I ended up creating the bamboo tower myself and had a great time doing it. It really had a transformational effect on my experience. All of a sudden I was a participant - an "Artist" and I could talk to other participants about their projects on a whole different level. The Playa is a difficult environment to build anything in and everyone who brings a project will inevitably experience problems that need to be solved with only the materials they have on hand. Some are successful and some are not. I saw plenty of folks with failed projects struggling the entire week to get there stuff working. I guess I was lucky as mine was up and working by mid week!

So here I am, a little more that a month after Burning Man 2006 contemplating another project - and that's what this blog is going to be about:

Tower 2007 - Bigger - Brighter - Climbable