All of the art at the festival is what might be called “home made.” It more or less has to be, because there isn’t really a category for “consumer fire art.” Every piece at the festival was there by the love and ingenuity of its inventor-artist-builders. This is fun, but it might also represent an important do-it-yourself philosophy, a technological anti-consumerism.

Just to be clear, I did not conceive, design, or build 2πr. That honor belongs to Nicole Aptekar, Reed Kennedy, and Mella Piercey. But I work with them as a member of the Oakland arts collective Interpretive Arson, and I’ve been involved in making or running a number of different arty, firey projects (such as the infamous Dance Dance Immolation). Judging by the huge number of other projects at the Fire Arts Festival, and the even more widespread attendance at the annual Maker Faire DIY technology expositions, I am far from unique in my geeky, makey proclivities.

If technology is one of the major sources of power in the world, then it is vital that we make it democratic. Technology demands specialized knowledge and experience; it is usually seen as something belonging to an elite or privileged cadre, something not the concern of the average citizen. In reality, technology is easier to learn about than it has ever been, stupendously hackable, reasonably cheap, and lends itself to entire subcultures of experimentation and play. And I think we really want and need our modern citizens to play with and learn about technology. Although technology has not universally been a blessing, ignorance of powerful things is far more dangerous than their knowledge.

Is throwing huge plumes of fire into the night a part of this? Most certainly yes! When I’m not just going WHEEEE! I see at least three interesting lessons in the tale of the Fire Arts Festival:

First, fire art is is real technology. It requires computers and software, pushes the limits of DIY manufacturing techniques, and must be designed and constructed with real engineering, because compressed flammable gasses are none too forgiving of sloppiness.

Second, the very notion of do-it-yourself fire art for public consumption can challenge the way we think about safety, responsibility, and risk. In the first world in general and in the litigious United States in particular — a country which suffers not only from an overdeveloped sense of tort law but also from  liability concerns arising from lack of universal health care — we tend to believe that it is someone else’s job to keep us safe. To a certain degree this is true, and that’s why certification and regulation and signs that warn us about high voltage can be a good idea. But ultimately the responsibilities and tradeoffs of safety and risk must be personal, and the process of designing and building a fire toy for the general public to play with makes this stunningly clear. Likewise, the act of playing with someone else’s dangerous game can lead you to think carefully about why you should believe that this or any other activity is safe — and whether it’s ok anyway. Like traveling to a different country where the citizens have made strikingly different risk tradeoffs (and you can ride on top of the trains), interacting with dangerous art pushes us outside of known territory, forcing us to become aware of the millions of safety choices that have already been made for us.

Finally, art is an end in itself. I once heard a critic of 60′s counterculture quip, “is face painting and free dope the best that they can offer?” I think this critic lived a joyless life. Yes, the democratization of technology is an important effect of “maker” culture. But that’s not why we do it.

I am wary of whining about how the good old days were better, but there might really be truth in the idea that community is on the decline in the modern world. In his famous essay Bowling Alone (later expanded into a book) sociologist Robert Putnam documents the decline of “togetherness” in modern America, citing various statistics on club and church and civic function attendance. I can’t agree with him for sure, because I’ve only lived in one set of times and places, and I’m suspicious of nostalgia. What I have seen personally is a wide variety of cultures in a various stages of togetherness or apartness, and everywhere the same patterns. The village becomes the city, the old deep allegiance to family becomes unfashionable, and religion ceases to be the central pivot of communal life. It’s no secret that the traditional social institutions have new and lesser meanings.

This is not a moral judgment. I am in no way claiming that things used to be “better.” Anyway I’m too much of an optimist to believe that humanity’s best days are behind us. But community is important. Communities share resources to take care of one another; there must be someone I can carpool with, there must be someone to look after my kids, there must be someone to pick me up from the hospital after my surgery. Communities provide us with new ideas and people, and force us to accept diversity. Communities are a source of friends and lovers. And most miraculously, community can create meaning out of nothing at all.

I am told that the village once provided all these things. I am told that everyone had an extended family network to care for their needs. In some places and for many people, village and family are still the main sources of belonging. But many things have been changing, for centuries now, first in the industrialized countries and increasingly in the developing world. Urbanization has been going for 200 years and shows no signs of stopping; the majority of the people in the world now live in a city. So the village really is in decline, and ease of transport and the lure of far-away gold fragments families on a practical if not personal level. Community is no longer automatic; a support system for daily identity can no longer be assumed.

Which means that if we want it, we have to go get it. This is a new idea in culture. We understand that we have to sort out food and shelter for ourselves; we talk about looking for work. We also see that we need to belong somewhere, yet we don’t talk about looking for community. Or making it, because true community requires a reciprocation that is antithetical to the consumer mentality. Markets are specifically designed to be impersonal.

There is the beginnings of language for this. In San Francisco one hears the phrase “intentional communities.” They are just that: communities created intentionally. A new word for an old idea, as anyone who has ever started a club knows. And the point is that we need something that is no longer a given in the modern world. We need to find people to associate with and learn to care for. We need to build new villages, new families that will flourish in the concrete hustle of a city.

This is, I think why we see subcultures and counter-cultures in cities. These are the modern tribes. This is the way we identify our friends in a wasteland of millions. The lost suburban children knew this, and so we got punks and hippies and hipsters and goths and geeks and gangs and ravers. All of these people are identifiable on the street, by what they wear and how they walk and talk, signals that tell us about their values. But tribes and their semiotics are not truly necessary. Clubs, schools, non-profit organizations, artistic collaborations, a dojo, a circle of party friends, even good old neighborhoods can all be communities. Just don’t expect your urban family to come into existence without you looking for it, making it, deciding that you want it and going out to get it. That is a new idea, a cultural value not quite yet recognized as necessary.