Crimson & Lime & Violet

Crimson is the fire — the deep vivid crimson-to-orange of the fire art installations that are the most iconic and most technically spectacular element of the Burning Man festival. Burning Man (held annually in the Black Rock Desert of northwestern Nevada, approximately 110 miles northeast of Reno, since 1986 — the event moved to Black Rock City in 1991) is an annual week-long event and temporary city (Black Rock City) culminating in the ceremonial burning of a large wooden effigy (the 'Man' — first burned on Baker Beach in San Francisco in 1986 by founders Larry Harvey and Jerry James). The fire art tradition at Burning Man: the event's most celebrated and most visually spectacular tradition is fire art — the hundreds of fire sculptures, fire performance artists, fire-breathing art cars (mutant vehicles — the most elaborate and most technically ambitious motorized sculptures in the world), and fire-themed camps that create a continuous spectacle of controlled fire during the night hours. The most celebrated fire art at Burning Man includes the Temple (the most emotionally significant structure at Burning Man — a large wooden temple, distinct from the Man, burned on Sunday evening with an atmosphere of collective mourning and catharsis rather than celebration), fire-spinning performers (poi, staff, hoops — with crimson-to-orange flame trails), and the most elaborate fire sculptures commissioned by the Burning Man Arts organization. Lime is the LED — the vivid electric lime-green of the LED lighting installations that have become the most technologically dominant element of the Burning Man night environment since approximately 2005-2010 (when affordable high-power LED lighting became widely available). The LED art and personal expression tradition at Burning Man: Black Rock City at night (from approximately 9 PM to 4 AM each night during the event) transforms into the most dense concentration of LED art in the world. Every art installation, every mutant vehicle, every pedestrian uses LED lighting — the 80,000+ participants create a city-wide light show that covers every possible color, with the most dramatic and most immediately photographically striking single color being vivid electric green (the color of the most powerful green laser pointers, also widely used at Burning Man, and of the most vivid green LED installations). Violet is the desert sky — the pure deep violet of the Black Rock Desert sky at the darkest hours of the Burning Man night. The Black Rock Desert (an ancient dry lakebed — playa — at approximately 1,200 meters elevation in northwestern Nevada) provides the darkest and most pristine night sky visible from any large temporary gathering in the United States. The specific violet quality of the desert sky at 2-4 AM in the Black Rock Desert — away from all electric light (the city of Black Rock's lights are directed inward, and the surrounding desert has essentially zero other light sources) — creates the most dramatically clear and most vivid deep-violet night sky experience possible in the continental United States. The Milky Way is visible in extraordinary clarity from Black Rock, creating the specific deep violet-to-blue-black of the most vivid unpolluted night sky.