Aaron Antrim’s blog

One of the most impressive and talked-about art installations on the Black Rock City playa this year was called “Crude Awakening,” so I thought I’d dedicated a whole separate post to this installation. Especially because I took a huge number of pictures of it.

Here’s a picture of the 90 foot tall oil rig that I didn’t take (from a Wired blog post, where you can get a lot more info about the project. For example, the detonation of the piece will created 2.4 gigawatts of energy, which Das Mann and Cusolito say is enough to “power the entire Bay Area for one minute.”

Here’s a picture I took from the top of the platform. It was cool that people had the whole week to interact with the piece in different weather conditions, times of day, states of altered consciousness, etc. before the finale when the piece was blown up.

Now, you may have caught that this project was detonated. Here’s the video from YouTube:

Then, early next morning, post oil apocalypse tribes had formed around the burning embers to watch the sun rise after the all-night “end of oil” party:

The worshipers:

Now, to those of you to whom this pyro-spectacular seems like a gigantic, hypocritical, but really fun waste of energy (that’s me included) — fair enough. But it’s interesting to look at the estimated climate impacts of Burning Man from a group called Cooling Man. Notice that less than 1% of greenhouse gas emissions from the even are estimated to have come from fire art on the playa. The vast majority is from travel to the event. After witnessing the power of the Crude Awakening explosion (the heat was extremely intense, and the playa was lit up like day), it gives me an appreciation for the amoung of energy being used in our internal combustion engines.

Lots more photos in my Burning Man gallery.

aaron :: Sep.24.2007 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »

It’s been three weeks since I returned from Burning Man in Nevada. It was an eye-popping experience with great highs and lows. I’d definitely want to go again.

I went crazy with the camera while I was there, to do what I could to capture the Salvador Dali-like surreal landscape and art out in the desert.

I posted 213 images in a Picasa gallery.

Here are a few select images, inline in the blog.

Above: a panorma of the Black Rock City playa. Click for the magnified view, and you’ll be able to drag this panorama around. It’s made up of about 7 images. Didn’t get it exactly right in places, can you see where. Also, notice how some of the subjects moved while I was snapping pictures. See the doubles of the guy in salmon jacket on a bike, also the woman with pink hair, far right?

Cool treehouse, huh?

I want to put all my pictures up here, but really it’s just a teaser to try to get you to browse through the whole album.

aaron :: Sep.24.2007 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

A few weekends ago I went backpacking to Caribou Lakes in the Trinities with my friend Brandon Hemenway.  I’m finally getting around to stitching together a few panoramic shots.

Caribou Lake is at  41° 1′12.54″N, 122°58′31.48″W.

Here’s a panoramic image (this is at least 6 stitched-together images) of the view of Caribou Lake and Caribou Mountain from the pass to the south.  Click the image for a larger view.

In Google Earth, you can see Caribou Lake from behind the pass this photo was taken from.  Also, my panoram will show up as a spot you can click on in Google Earth pretty soon.

My attempt at a panoram looking the other way off of the pass, towards Emerald and Saphire Lakes, was less successful, because the light was different in all directions and I didn’t figure out how to lock in manual camera settings.  Also, I missed a few spots!

But, here’s the view from Google Earth.

More to come!  Also, look forward to Burning Man photos.

aaron :: Sep.05.2007 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »