Mission

To bring science to art festivals and advocate for the extraordinary beauty of the universe.

We want to show participants the incredibly glorious vista of the planets through a telescope.  There’s a beautiful moment when the viewer’s worldview expands to include the planets they learned about in school. They’re not just fairy tales or abstract concepts anymore. It’s real. Sometimes this can be terrifying. It’s always awesome. Lines often form. There’s also a calming sense of scale that comes along with observing the sky, making the observer feel small, even humble.

We’d like to show participants the universe and the Solar System to amaze, but more importantly, so they may contemplate the idea that we are witnessing the baby steps that lead to humanity populating the solar system. We’re not just exchanging our gifts and the fruits of our labor at this bazaar, we’re exporting robots to other planets regularly. We’re not just taking from the outposts that sustain us, we’re exporting our philosophies. Should the Ten Principles make it to Mars? Earth is a caravansary on the path to the future. What ideas make the cut as exports?

Black Rock City is a lot like space. It seems like a giant sometimes: hard to navigate, it wants to kill you, it’s more than you can take in and understand. When you set out into the open playa, it’s like pushing off into the white abyss. You land on these beautiful outposts where it's warm and cozy until you set off again into the void.

Burning Man is the ultimate inward observatory. Black Rock City Observatory could turn us inside out. It may be the tourist office for the Rest of the Universe and a place where a curious burner could fall in love with/under the stars. Every great city has an observatory, why should our beloved home be any different?

We aim to humble, amaze and encourage the Burner to make a light in the void as they always do in August, but we’ll encourage them to take it beyond the trash fence and beyond September. Who knows? Maybe, some of these kids will walk on Mars.

---

The idea was first submitted to the Burning Man organization for Fertility 2.0.

This is the original proposal for 2012:

Fertility is taking elements and merging them in a new configuration to give birth to something new.

Carl Sagan said “we are all made of star stuff, ” and he wasn’t kidding. All of the elements in our bodies come from the Earth. The Earth and Solar System coalesced from the Solar Nebula, the remnant of an exploded star. There are two “populations” of stars: 1) new stars creating heavy elements from the bodies of old dead stars or 2) old stars creating Helium and other light elements from Hydrogen. Literally, every atom in you and me was once at the heart of a long-dead star. Stars are the chemical artists of the universe and the inventors of fertility.

Black Rock City itself is a human observatory. Whether we’re looking inward or outward is debatable when we look at our fellow burners. We look inward at ourselves and ask how can we change for the better and be more responsible to each other. We look at each other for inspiration.

Why observe the sky when heaven lies within the great pentagon containing you? I’d like to show Participants the Universe and the Solar System to amaze, but more importantly, so they may contemplate the idea that we are witnessing the baby steps that lead to humanity populating the solar system and that we’re exporting our philosophies there as well. Should the Ten Principles make it Mars?

There’s also a calming sense of scale that comes along with observing the sky, making the observer feel small, even humble. Black Rock City seems like a giant sometimes: hard to navigate, more than you can take in and “the fifth largest city in Nevada.” It is a HUGE accomplishment and my home, but we need to be reminded that unless we take this out into the wilderness, the void, we are being divisive and elitist.  I aim to humble, amaze and encourage the Burner to make a light in the void as they always do, but beyond the trash fence and beyond September.

Showing the universe as art is an admission that the truth is sufficiently beautiful.

When you set out into the open playa, it’s like pushing off into the white abyss. Then you land on these beautiful outposts where its warm and cozy until you set off again into the void. BRC has always been about space and Burning Man is the ultimate inward observatory. Black Rock City Observatory could turn us inside out. It may be the tourist office for the Rest of the Universe and a place where a curious burner could fall in love with/under the stars. Every great city has an observatory, why should our beloved home be any different?

Below are sketches from the very first iteration of B.R.O.: