Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 100%, Humboldt-University of Berlin (English Department), language: English, abstract: This is a book about Burning Man - its history as a re-enactment of the American Frontier and its cultural significance and symbolism for the post-modern, post-western, post-rational society. As a European, Burning Man has always struck me as an event of the Wild West where almost everything was possible and acceptable and where a community reinvented civilization anew. Like the typical Western stories and movies, Burning Man is a story of humble beginnings in the isolation of the desert. The growth from a primitive to complex society seen in the numerous institutions and services we see today in Black Rock City was also accompanied by a surge in rules to safeguard the health and well being of its citizens. Therefore, Burning Man serves as an echo-land of the American Frontier myth. At the same time, Burning Man is the event of the 21st century that foretells the undergoing changes of Western society and mankind. After 3000 years of left-brain-hemisphere dominance induced by the phonetic alphabet and later typography, the age of electric and electronic media finally brought us back to right-hemisphere modes of perception and cognition. Participation and a new emphasis on ritual are just two examples of this new awareness wherein the space/time dimensions have changed dramatically from linear to acoustic. With this essay I want to give something back to the Burning Man community and hope that maybe some feel inspired to think of Burning Man in a new historical and global context. Anyone interested in American history and the countercultural precedence of Burning Man as well as Burning Man as the Marshall McLuhan's Global Theater will definitely find some interesting insights. This is the master thesis as part of my American Studies Program at Humboldt-University in B

Analyzing the work of Burning Man, the SF Institute of Possibility, the Jejune Institute, and other groups, this book is a how-to manual for designing transformative or "psychomagical" experiences.

_____________ 'It is almost impossible not to fall under the spell of Eustace Conway ... his accomplishments, his joy and vigor, seem almost miraculous' - New York Times Review of Books 'Gilbert takes a bright-eyed bead on Eustace, hitting him square with a witty modernist appraisal of folkloric American masculinity' - The Times 'Conversational, enthusiastic, funny and sharp, the energy of The Last American Man never ebbs' - New Statesman _____________ A fascinating, intimate portrait of an endlessly complicated man: a visionary, a narcissist, a brilliant but flawed modern hero At the age of seventeen, Eustace Conway ditched the comforts of his suburban existence to escape to the wild. Away from the crushing disapproval of his father, he lived alone in a teepee in the mountains. Everything he needed he built, grew or killed. He made his clothes from deer he killed and skinned before using their sinew as sewing thread. But he didn't stop there. In the years that followed, he stopped at nothing in pursuit of bigger, bolder challenges. He travelled the Mississippi in a handmade wooden canoe; he walked the two-thousand-mile Appalachian Trail; he hiked across the German Alps in trainers; he scaled cliffs in New Zealand. One Christmas, he finished dinner with his family and promptly upped and left - to ride his horse across America. From South Carolina to the Pacific, with his little brother in tow, they dodged cars on the highways, ate road kill and slept on the hard ground. Now, more than twenty years on, Eustace is still in the mountains, residing in a thousand-acre forest where he teaches survival skills and attempts to instil in people a deeper appreciation of nature. But over time he has had to reconcile his ambitious dreams with the sobering realities of modernity. Told with Elizabeth Gilbert's trademark wit and spirit, The Last American Man is an unforgettable adventure story of an irrepressible life lived to the extreme. The Last American Man is a New York Times Notable Book and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist.

A collection of essays from people who have been a part of the annual countercultural festival Burning Man, including those who attended the first beach effigy burnings in the mid-1980s to recently participating artists, musicians, architects, sociologists and lawyers. Original. 3,000 first printing.

The first edition of Sound Art Revisited (published as Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories) served as a groundbreaking work toward defining this emerging field, and this fully updated volume significantly expands the story to include current research since the book's initial release. Viewed through a lens of music and art histories rather than philosophical theory, it covers dozens of artists and works not found in any other book on the subject. Locating sound art's roots across the centuries from spatialized church music to the technological developments of radio, sound recording, and the telephone, the book traces the evolution of sound installations and sound sculpture, the rise of sound art exhibitions and galleries, and finally looks at the critical cross-pollination that marks some of the most important and challenging art with and about sound being produced today.