Last year, Phil Wyman, pastor of The Gathering<\/a> church in Salem, Mass., trekked across the country with five adventurous friends to Burning Man<\/a> \u2014 a week-long event described by its attendees as \u201can experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance\u201d in the Black Rock desert of Nevada.<\/p>\n At the 2011 Burning Man, Wyman and his merry band of \u201ccrazy friends\u201d built an art installation called \u201cThe Pillars of the Saints<\/a>\u201d \u2014 three meditation towers constructed of wood in the desert, asked people to sit on top of them, listen for a voice (presumably of the Holy), and write what they heard on the walls of the pillars.<\/p>\n \u201cWe entered the event with the assumption that Yesterday\u2019s madmen have become today\u2019s seers, and prophets, and saints; and that it was similarly likely that some of today\u2019s madmen will become tomorrow\u2019s seers, and prophets, and saints,\u201d Wyman wrote of the Pillars experience on his blog last year. \u201cOf course, not all voices people hear are beneficial, but we believed that many of those voices have the potential for transformation and good. As Christians, we came with the assumption that Spirit of God desires to speak to people today, just as the stories of the scriptures tell us happened then. This was the art we hoped God might ride on and whisper through.\u201d<\/p>\n Thousands came to see and to meditate (and listen) upon the pillars. In typical Burning Man fashion, Wyman and company burned the pillars to the ground when the event drew to a close.<\/p>\n This year, Wyman (who you might recognize from photos at the Wild Goose Festival<\/a> last month where he played the \u201cHoly Fool\u201d<\/a> in a Sunday morning worship service),\u00a0 has invited more than 15 friends to join him in the Nevada desert at the end of August for Burning Man 2012 where the group plans to build another art installation \u2014 this one even more ambitious and whimsical than the last.<\/p>\n Wyman & Co., have christened it \u201cTheophony: The Mighty Interactive Faux Theremin<\/a>.\u201d It involves an enormous, specially-built\u00a0 theremin<\/a> placed at the center of a 32-foot canvas-and-wood yurt<\/a>, with walls comprised of a series of 22 four-by-eight-foot murals with themes reflecting the \u201csuccess and failures of spiritual pursuit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe participant will feel a sense of dissonance while trying to \u2018play\u2019 the theremin,\u201d in tune with the chants and ambient music piped through the yurt, Wyman explains. The idea of Theophony is \u201cto illustrate that spiritual pursuit is a discipline, but that even the imperfect attempt is both holy and fun.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019ll let Phil and friends explain their project in more detail in the video below:<\/p>\n