Cultures of Pangea

Matt and I were talking this morning while we were getting ready to go to the swap meet. He was telling me his dream of making a rainforest dome with misters and jungle features and ruins. I laughed and showed him my last blog. Obviously we share a brain. (The pictures above show the Pangea sign Matt made for the Burning Man Village in 2005. The pictures were taken at Xara Dulzura 2006.)

On the way to the swap meet we talked more and he mentioned wanting to take the Elysium mushrooms out to put them in a very big dome to make a fantasy rain forest where DJs could come to spin and people could dance or lounge around. Maybe it could be something like the Elysian Paradise… I am sure a big dome decorated like a trippy forest would be very well received and would probably help us secure a place on the Esplanade.

We followed on with the possible “cultures” of Pangea. For those who don’t know, Pangea (also spelled Pangeae) was the super continent made up of all today’s continents at the beginning of earth. We thought it may be fun to also have a pyramid similar to the Egyptian pyramids at Giza. Perhaps that could be the hedonistic area with a hookah, belly dancing area, drums etc. Like Cleopatra’s lair maybe! Or we could take it all the way to a kink lair with crosses etc. Maybe that should be its own little “island”.

The final structure we made up in our minds was a smaller dome, maybe a 20 or 25 footer… It would have a white cover on it painted to look like blocks of ice, and be hooked up to a big swamp cooler. Inside would be all white and fluffy to look like an igloo and perhaps have video projected on the inside or outside at various times during the event. Inside it would be awesome to have a snow-cone machine or a blended iced drink mixer like the ones at the bar at Elysium. Talk about a cooling experience and a change of pace from the Playa!

Anyway, those are our ideas for some areas in Pangea. It would be great if different groups would handle building different themed structures and events. Thinking of this sort of reminds me of the books Abarat: Days of Magic Nights of War by Clive Barker. They’re actually children’s books but well worth the read for the creative ideas about the islands of the hours. I highly recommend these books – make sure to get the fully illustrated versions! (If you run a search for Abarat images you’ll get a very brief taste of some of the loony ideas from that book, like a fishbowl hat, complete with fish, and the magician who wears the 6 hats of his contemporaries, and the guy who is sustained by his nightmares drawn directly out of his own head…) The images below are from Abarat, done by Clive Barker.

Feel free to comment and add your spin to all this. As always, you can comment here or if you are in the yahoo group for the 2009 camp, post in there to brainstorm and discuss.