Kyle, the Nut, and Envy

What do these words have in common? They are the result of a real, spontaneously created, Burning Man virtual Theme Camp based around a live video presentation of the Burning Man festival in September 2009.

Hosted by Ustream, the live video link displayed a pole-mounted camera near the center camp location. During the week that was Burning Man, this camera was run, at times, in an automatic 360′ pan. When the camera panned across the support tower, users noticed that one of the support bolts was missing it’s nut. From that point forward, people in the chat section of the stream began to make comments about the missing nut, to the point where the unofficial symbol for the group WAS the nut. Talk about spontaneous performance art!

But that’s not all…. Apparently someone named Kyle went missing on the playa, and his mother dropped by the official radio station, Burning Man Information Radio (BMIR), which also happened to be playing on the video stream, and put out a request for Kyle. Voila! We now have the second meme for the stream, “Kyle.”

Combine these two together and you wind up with stories of Kyle stealing the missing nut, Kyle missing one of HIS nuts, the nut kidnapping Kyle, etc…. much fun was had by all.

The last great meme of the stream may be the long-term creation of a REAL theme camp, Camp Envy, named after the folks watching the stream, envious of the other folks in the desert. This ‘camp’ grew over the week and now has its own Facebook page, it’s own dedicated web page (still looking for a web designer, btw), and probably a real on-playa presence in 2010.

The video stream brought together thousands of people from around the world, many who wanted to be at the event but could not; this is technology at its finest.

Next year, in Black Rock!

Links:
FACEBOOK CAMP ENVY
USTREAM chat room
campenvy.com
-greg
(sdmedia on the ustream system)