Burning Man Experiment

As the first ever online personal profiling application, MindTime has long been using technology to bring people together in learning about how their minds impact their lives.

In the summer of 2008, we designed and built an interactive art installation at the Burning Man Festival to involve people in physically discovering and teaching each other how each thinking style brings value to the world through its influence on our perceptions and beliefs.

mindtime at burning man

The Mind's Shrine was created as a human computer that records and displays the responses of participants about their beliefs on pressing matters in relation to the way they each use their minds. By matching people's beliefs with the unique and essential values that each thinking style brings, people were encouraged to learn about how to see opportunities for collaboration with others who see the world differently.

The entire experience was an adventure, to say the least. From brainstorming through applying for permits; sketching, engineering, and sourcing materials; construction and packing a 12,000 square foot exhibit; setup and take down in the desert; and daily maintenance of the exhibit and talking with participants about their experience at the Shrine and their experiences in life; we certainly learned about ourselves as much as we taught others. So who would believe that after two weeks of blazing sun, gypsum, and sand storms we would be jazzed to do this all over again immediately?

From the beginning of setup through the end of clean up, many people shared their thoughts and feelings with us. People spoke about this for hours at their camps, sharing insights into their differences and the value inherent in them. Couples told us how the experience of the Mind's Shrine deepened their understanding of the role they each play in the relationship and the value inherent in it.

People asked us to please bring this to their schools, communities, and businesses, to stimulate discussions about issues that are important to them within the Shrine's simple model of how to understand the value of all members of a group.

We were thrilled.

On the drive home across the Nevada desert we hatched a plan to improve the installation, and truck it around the country to these very communities.

Even more thrilling for us was the realization that this installation manifested a wonderful extension of our online project of the last two and a half years—our project of mapping the world of thinking.

The number of people who expressed interest warmed our hearts. We had spoken about taking the Shrine on the road before Burning Man, but with the level of interest we experienced on the playa we are especially keen to make it happen. (One of the gifts the playa brought to us this year was a wonderful facilitator who expressed enthusiasm for helping us in these efforts).

If you’d like to see The Mind's Shrine come to your community, school, university, or corporate campus (a gentleman from Google was the first to ask about bringing this installation to the workplace and giving talks, even as we were still setting up), please contact us.

We are already engaged in rethinking a number of aspects of the Shrine, and plan on building these in the months to come. Our own experiences in the desert gave us valuable insights into how to improve the experience of The Mind's Shrine for all visitors.

For those of you who we met on the playa, thanks for taking the time to talk with us and share your thoughts and comments. We so appreciate your enthusiasm and interest.

MindTime® and The Mind’s Shrine® are registered trademarks.