When I attended Burning Man in the year 2000 I set up my tripod with my Nikon Coolpix 990 digital camera on the playa near the Man, roughly on the 7am line, about ⅓ of the way from the Man to Esplanade. I took 48 photos at 7.5° intervals. The 48 photos have been blended in Photoshop into a single image 2.5 feet tall and 127 feet wide. Wrapped into a circle and mounted at eye level, this creates a circle about 40 feet diameter. Standing in the middle of the circle and looking out to the horizon, visitors get to see a 360° view of Burning Man as it was in 2000.
To visually match where the pictures were originally taken in 2000, the art installation was placed in the equivalent position on the playa in 2024. Because of how much Burning Man has grown in 24 years, everything is on a larger scale now, but the art was successfully placed in the right location so that when visitors looked at the 2000 Man in the picture, the actual 2024 Man was right behind it. When visitors looked at the 2000 Center Camp in the picture, the actual 2024 Center Camp was right behind it. The mountains in the picture lined up with the real mountains in the distance.
Small test print, 4 inches tall by 19 feet wide.
Center camp.
Small test print, 4 inches tall by 19 feet wide.
The man.
Test print, with grommets, 28 inches tall by 9 feet wide.
Build crew with test print.
Build crew getting started working on the full panorama print.
Installing 500 grommets by hand.
Rehearsal run — Robert’s installation jig.
Rehearsal run — setting the poles.
Rehearsal run — admiring the print.
Rehearsal setup crew.
Installing the poles.
Build team.
The art in the daytime.
The art at night.
The art was primarily a daytime installation.
For safety at night we lit the art with LED lights.
What we didn’t expect was that this turned it into a popular place for people to park their bikes at night,
when they wanted to leave their bike somewhere where they knew they’d be able to find it again.
Interestingly, people seemed to have an instinctive respect for the art itself,
so while the outside became a vast sea of bicycles, I never saw anyone park a bike inside the circle.
Now & Then Art Support Camp in the daytime.
Now & Then Art Support Camp at night.
Final camp cleanup.
Thanks to Maggie, Trent, Karolina, Jeff, and everyone else
who worked all day to ensure we left our camp in perfect condition.
Spotless MOOP inspection!
Now & Then camp (in the middle of this map snippet) is completely clear.
