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In this current implementation, I am Boulder - a Temple builder.  I’ve been a Temple builder since 2016, which also happens to be my first year at Burning Man.  I now work Gate Perimeter and Exodus during the event.  Highway Cleanup and Special Forces for DPW:Resto after everyone else is done.  Our version of Brigadoon, Black Rock City.  

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I’ve built the city, from Fence Day to BLM MOOP tests.  I’ve built 4 Temples.  I’ve sent hundreds of people to the purgatory that is D Lot.  I’ve got clean up stories too gross to share.  (You might be able to ply some of these from me with a shot or two of Jameson.)   Sixty or so days, where most people visit for 10 days or less.

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All that changed with this version of the Multiverse.  Listening to “In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up”, by Ministry, I find myself unemployed with nothing at all to do the entire summer.  Most of my close friends and fellow volunteers/employees are in the same boat.  No festivals, no income, no Burning Man.  All the art projects I’m involved in are on hold.   That’s what I did previous to Burning Man.  Event Production.  No events, no production.  Maybe I’ll queue “Dead Man’s Party” in honor of Larry next.

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So in a previous implementation.  The one before event production.  I was in IT.  Pretty much everything in IT - web sites, custom shopping carts, server and network administration, hardware, software development, systems engineering, wireless, iPhone apps - everything except Android apps (just don’t care for Java).  But my degree was in Virtual Reality programming way back in 1996.  Yeah, we had VR way back then.  It was cool on a Pentium, but not as cool as nowadays.  

 

While Hollywood was promising “Lawnmower Man”, Pentiums just couldn’t kick out anything close.

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Head mounted displays and power gloves got held up in licensing and patent issues.  The market pretty much stalled and went underground or militarized.  So I ended up in the military industrial complex for a spell.  We weren’t a good fit for each other, so I moved on.  And with it, my degree and career slowly dwindled to complete and utter burnout.

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[Cue “Unquiet Grave, Vol 1”]  Even before the current pandemonium, [you thought I was gonna say it didn’t you?] that so quickly evaporated the summer festival season I found myself in a similar spot.  Not burnt out, but still pondering what I was doing with my life.  You have the liberty of really meditating on that when you have a seasonal job and the entire winter off.  

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Enter Al.  A good friend and partner from the ol’ college days.  Hadn’t seen him in 20 plus years.  Until he showed up on Playa a couple years ago.  Was visiting him this winter, listening to him tell old college battle stories to his girlfriend.  And it hit me that we did some really cool shit back then.  And that I really enjoyed it.    

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So I sat with that for far too long, postponing the inevitable.  Settling in to the cognitive dissonance of utter burnout with the excitement I felt about VR.  Here I sit, with a VR project.  Fortunately they took all the hard math (that I barely remember) and have reduced to some sliders on a slick GUI.  Not sure I would be as excited if I had to code all the graphics engines like we did back in the day.  It’s still dissonant, but it’s not as bad as it could have been.

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Got involved with the Everywhen crew a couple years back.  Worked with some of them back in ‘16 on the Temple.  They were building the Water Temple for UnScruz.  Lake, Buck [fellow Temple builders] and I headed to South Bay to help out, as we do.  We ended up building the Temple for the Monterey regional as well.  Then we took it on the road to the big Gerlach regional in the dust - joining up with Chapel of Chimes by Michael Verdon.  Burned stuff.  It was great.

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Rebranded again as Everywhen and applied for an honoraria grant.  No joy there.  And then the fundraiser got canceled.  And then everything got canceled.  But the MultiVerse would not be stopped.  BMOrg (really a bunch of brilliant volunteers (which is mostly what the Org really is)) came up with this idea of VR universes, and multiple copies, so it’s like a MultiVerse - get it?  

Funny thing… I know this guy that knows some VR stuff.  And he’s part of a crew that’s going to be on Playa anyways[crazy talk!].  But there’s at least 80,000 or so would be ticket holders that won’t be getting dusty.  It’s for these people that eVRyWhen exists. [Cue: “Wish You Were Here” - Pink Floyd]

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With that, you are invited to find us in whatever MultiVerse we happen to appear in.  While it won’t be the same, there will be white outs, blinky lights, clashing music stages, maybe bacon, and if you are lucky you’ll find your own Fiona.  (No you won’t.  It’s not going to be a multi user experience.)

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I hope you enjoy experiencing eVRyWhen more than I did making it.

Cognitive dissonance aside, it was actually really fun.