Collaboration & Community: Building a Large-Scale Art Project at Burning Man

Google Tech Talks April, 11 2008 ABSTRACT Shrine and TukTuk, two Los Angeles artists in town for the upcoming Yuri's Night celebration at NASA, will be speaking at Google about their work in organizing this year's Temple. The Temple is a tradition at Burning Man, the most meaningful installation to many participants in the yearly arts festival. Shrine and TukTuk will talk about the project, with plenty of burnerly hyjinx to make you laugh and pARTicipate. Speaker: TukTuk Writer, craftsman, builder, networker, and project manager Tucker Teutsch 3.0 tends always to think on a grand scale. After teaming up with his old pal Shrine for last year's Tasseograph: Trash Tea Temple, he swore he'd never do it again. And yet he has a certain reputation for getting things done and has honed his skill as a natural team leader—both as logistics consultant for outdoor festivals and as lead organizer for various theme camps and art installations over the years. People often lose their ability to tell him no, which makes him good at this job. He has a production company in Portland, Ore., and lives there happily with a dog named Raven. Speaker: Shrine Shrine has been a guerrilla folk artist for over twenty years. His paintings and found object/trash sculptures, displaying an accessible and familiar aesthetic, have been featured at numerous galleries and events, and his guerrilla murals dot the Los Angeles cityscape, with other pieces in Edinburgh, London, Chicago, and Portugal, to name just a few spots. He has collaborated, both as a visual artist and performer, with Lucent Dossier and the Do Lab, Vau de Vire Society, and the national and world tours of Panic at the Disco! and Warp Tour. He lives at his home in Pasadena, which is in itself a testament to his love for making beautiful art from trash—although it probably does nothing for his neighbors' property value.