(FORTUNE Magazine) – At this year's eighth annual Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, I played chess on an oversized board with life-sized statues of aliens, sat in a homemade stretch VW van, wore silver body paint, and watched a brigade of women careen across the desert on bicycles for the second annual Critical Tits Ride (see photo). And that was in just one afternoon. In its short, outrageous existence, Burning Man has become the cybergeneration's answer to Woodstock. Each year during the week preceding Labor Day thousands of free spirits converge on a patch of the Black Rock Desert to create a nonstop carnival. Every year, Burning Man grows in size; the camps and art installations become increasingly sophisticated and technical, thanks to legions of techies who make the seven-hour drive from Silicon Valley. This year an 18-foot tesla coil branched crackling tendrils of electricity into the night air, a computer-controlled sculpture mixed light and environmental sounds, and Bianca's Smut Shack, a porn Website, served up couches and grilled-cheese sandwiches. The biggest thrill of all came with the burning of the 40-foot Burning Man statue, an old-fashioned fire that closed the festival and lit the sky with rainbow-colored blasts.

--Melanie Warner