Bringing AI to Burning Man Art with Kevin Clark of Reared In Steel

Episode description

Some of the most striking art on the playa is wired as much as it’s welded. On this episode of Remotely Local, Ryo Koyama and Mike Johnson sit down with Kevin Clark, founder of Reared In Steel, whose fire sculptures have been lighting up Burning Man for more than a decade. His pieces range from the 26-snake Medusa to the 80-foot Flower Tower and the 110-effect, MIDI-controlled Fire Cathedral.

Kevin tells how he got hooked on Burning Man in the early days of the temple movement, helping Jack Haye and David Best. He explains why scale matters when you’re building in the middle of the desert. Mike, who built the control systems behind the pieces, walks through how the tech grew from push buttons to Raspberry Pis, relay banks, MIDI, and remote access from the playa. That includes the night a stranger plugged in a homemade keytar and played the Fire Cathedral.

They also get into Guma, the climbable Burning Man 2025 piece Kevin built with his daughter, including the story behind the viral bike crash. Kevin talks about teaching teenagers to weld, why he sees AI as a tool for getting ideas out faster rather than as the finished art, and why he’d happily put a few robot welders on the crew.

Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:33 Mike and Kevin’s friendship and the naming of Reared In Steel 02:08 What Reared In Steel does and the early Burning Man builds 02:51 Burning Man temples and getting involved early on 05:23 How big these sculptures are and why scale matters 07:04 How the technology behind the art has evolved 08:23 Building the Fire Cathedral and its most unforgettable moments 12:51 AI as a tool for artists 17:58 Guma and how it became one of Burning Man’s most talked-about builds 23:16 What’s next for Reared In Steel’s technology 25:48 Why physical AI still needs hands-on skills like welding 31:24 What “physical AI” really means and the social media challenge 34:45 The AI hot take

Links

Watch the video version of this podcast (includes the crash clip): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsIO-rHsD8o

Reared In Steel on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rearedinsteel/

Guma dino crash video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HHFIPKMISc

Remotely Local: https://remotelylocal.com

Some of the most striking art on the playa is wired as much as it’s welded.

Ryo Koyama and Mike Johnson talk to Kevin Clark, founder of Reared In Steel, about building large scale fire art for Burning Man and how AI and technology are starting to work their way into that process.

Bringing AI to Burning Man Art with Kevin Clark of Reared In Steel

Episode description

Persons

Mike (mycal) Johnson

Ryo Koyama