The Participation Culture and Learning from Burning Man

The bright glowing circle of fire spins in the darkness drawing me through the desert.   Nearing, I see a gathering of people watching, embers washing over them.  They stare into the circle of fire and sway to the rhythms of the nearby Art Car.  In the inferno, logs tumble through the Firewheel.  People dressed in orange coveralls tend the fire and spin the wheel.   It’s here that I finally make my connection with The Man.

It’s been three days.  I am in total overload. But I had not yet connected.  I have however been thinking about this moment for five years.  I prepared for six weeks.  Read the survival guide.  Surfed the bulletin boards.  Bought all the essentials. I even have vinegar water in a spray bottle to neutralize the caustic effect of the alkaline plain we were calling home for these few days.

Now I stand in awe of this natural spectacle. A homemade fireworks display created by the most awesome yet primitive fire.  Ah!  The spirit of The  Man. 

Man? What man?  Of course I’m talking about Burning Man.  You may wonder what – I, George Wiktor—a gentleman of a certain age—am doing here in the middle of a caustic Borax desert in 120 degree heat.

It’s simple.  In almost every brainstorming charrette that we at The Hettema Group have staged in the last couple of years the subject of Burning Man comes up…what does it have to tell us?

For those of you who may have been living under a rock for the last 22 years--Burning Man is not any old arts festival…nor is it a Renaissance Faire for the counter culture.  It is in fact THE art festival and a community that rises out of the Nevada desert for a week.  Fifty-thousand people gather, camp in extreme conditions, and create a participatory, cross-cultural, gifting, open society.  What’s going on here? Is this a lens into the future of group entertainment?  Is this the theme park of the future?

For several years now we, at The Hettema Group, have been immersing ourselves in exploring the intersection of the culture of today and tomorrow and the future of entertainment. How does today’s audience want to experience shows, events and theme parks. More importantly, how does being a citizen of the digital age impact tomorrow’s audience expectation. Will living in the digital age, create a demand for a totally new style of  entertainment?  Is technology a key ingredient? Has there been a paradigm shift?

In order to answer those questions we have to take a short detour to explore a world empowered by the digital. It is clear that today we have moved beyond technology for technology’s sake  into a society facilitated by technology.  Technology has become a utility and a tool to achieve our continuously evolving society.  Computer games internet social networking sites, instant messaging and texting all are aids to creating personal social connections more complex and varied than ever before.  Concurrently there seems to be a growing comfort with-- and possibly a necessity for-- creating individual personas that interact in these digital worlds.

In the game, it is just as important to create your character as it is to play the game.  Some games are actually nothing more than creating a character with ever increasing powers and capabilities to inhabit specific worlds.  Social networking sites are not just about extending and maintaining your circle of friends.  They are also about creating your own persona in your own space to attract visits from friends and others. The result? Everyone is participating in creating entertainment for everybody else. 

This Participation Culture is one of the key differentiators for this new audience.  Beyond technology.  Beyond interactivity.  Beyond clever media delivery.  Beyond 4D immersive shows and environments.   We now have participants in entertainment creating that entertainment for themselves.  More participants means more entertainment as well as more varied entertainment.   

This joy of participation is spilling into the real world.  My daughter reminds me, computers and cell phones are “not the only thing we do, Dad.  We like to get out there in the world.  It’s just that we like to bring the things we do online with us”.  Burning Man is exactly that.  It’s the Participation Culture  brought out into the physical world, a physicalization of the online world.

Burning Man has a reputation of being a free for all; with drugs, nudity, anarchy, and an anything goes attitude.  On the other hand, Burning Man turns out to be  a highly structured, well organized, law abiding, civil society.  A society that encourages self expression self reliance in an incredibly inhospitable environment.  Commercial activity is prohibited and, refreshingly, there are no corporate sponsors. The place operates on gifting with no expectation of return.

But most importantly, participation is the key to the success of this event because participation is a form of gifting.  Everyone is focused on adding to the success of everyone else’s experience.  Whether it be creating an art installation or volunteering in the café or building a lounge in your camp or providing entertainment for everyone, all the participants add to the overall experience.

The Firewheel is a perfect example.  A group of individuals came together to conceptualize and execute a complex  art and entertainment installation  Each night they gather and for many hours operate this primitive and literal fireworks display.  Why?  Well… for no other reason than to provide visual delight to their fellow Burners, to participate on a grand scale, and to add to the overall success of this extravagant event.

Over the last 22 years Burning Man has evolved and today it stands as one of the prime examples of the online Participation Culture is now migrating into the real world.  Those of us creating entertainment as well reality based information attractions need to understand this.  As we create and develop places that look to attract today’s and tomorrow’s audiences, we need to focus on our audience’s fundamental need to participate.  We need to create infrastructure-based attractions that encourage creative participation.  This attraction changes over time as a result because of the direct participation of our audience.  Who knows where the participation will lead?  In our world perhaps we should be designing attractions that evolve through a day.  Each night they re-set to zero and the cycle of participation begins again. It is a big risk.  But if Burning Man is any indication it’s going to be fun, unpredictable and very satisfying.
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This article originally appeared in TEA’s 2009 Themed Entertainment Association Annual + Directory.