Welcome to Burning Man Earth
Mapping the Cultural Genome
Would you like to fly over Black Rock City, zoom to your favorite theme camp, zip out to deep-playa art installations, and connect with your fellow participants, year round? Welcome to Burning Man Earth: a 3D virtual representation of Black Rock City as it existed any given year. It's available year round, so you can learn what was done, how, and connect with who made it happen. Burning Man Earth is a mapping of the Burning Man cultural genome.
What you see here is in its embryonic phase ... we have populated BRC with the basics: the city layout, infrastructural buildings, the Man, art installations, and porta potties. To reach its full potential, Burning Man participants must populate this virtual city just as we do the real-world BRC. Just send us a "placemark" (which might contain your location, photograph, information, etc.), and/or an image of your camp or art installation, and we'll include it in Burning Man Earth (learn more below).
Note: The following files are simply the beginning for this year's event. Additional files, extending the scope, will be made available on this site, and automatically through the Network Link.
In the near future, we will be adding previous year's events as a permanent archive. They will be available for review (and contribution) using a "Time Slider".
Get Started: Follow These Easy Steps
- Download and install the latest version of Google Earth.
- Download and open the network link file to be transported to Black Rock City, 2007!
- For best results, uncheck "Terrain" in the left column under "Layers". To activate this 2007 overlay, open the drop down box for "Burning Man 2007" and select the desired resolution (none, low or medium). Unless checked, you will only see the default image of Black Rock City 2006.
- Finally, add images of your theme camp or art installation (see below).
- Black Rock City, 2006 Data
- Geomapped "What, Where, When" Events for 2006
- Black Rock City Post Office
- Conexus Cathedral
- Camp Modules that you can use to build your virtual camp
Send Us Your Theme Camp or Art Installation Placemark!
- Find your camp or art installation location in Burning Man Earth.
- Click "Add Placemark".
- Provide your theme camp or installation name, and any details you'd like.
- Then, right-click on your new placemark in the "Places" window, and send it to bmanearth (at) burningman (dot) com.
- Optionally (and ideally), attach to the email a photograph or a 3D image of your camp using SketchUp. Please keep the file size (number of polygons) to a minimum!
- You can also download 3D models of common camp elements so you can build your virtual camp and send that to us.
More Information and Resources
System Requirements: this version of Burning Man Earth requires a lot of system memory and a high end video processor. You can tune the performance of Google Earth ... learn how. We are also working on a version that will perform better on lower-end computers ... stay tuned for that.
Please send questions, comments or suggestions to bmanearth (at) burningman (dot) com.
Burning Man Earth Screen Shots (2006 Data Set)
Thank you for participating in Burning Man Earth ... the playa, year round! 
