Earthdance

About Project

Client: Earthdance International
Subject: event websites and global mapping
Period: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009

Earthdance is a world of communities, working and playing together to create a culture of peace, through music and epic dance events, synchronized global link-ups, and social activism.

The Earthdance story begins in 1996, when London-based musician and event producer Chris Deckker (Medicine Drum, Return To The Source) had a vision – in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt – of a synchronized, multi-location psytrance dance party.  On October 4th, 1997, the first Earthdance Planetary Dance Party for Peace materialized – with 22 locations in 18 countries, in support of Tibet. In 1999, Earthdance moved its base to San Francisco, aligned its mission with the annual United Nations Peace Day, and began partnering with other international peace events, organizations, and companies. In 2001, the Earthdance non-profit organization was founded to coordinate the annual charity festival. And in 2003, the Earthdance company was formed to develop year-round Earthdance projects, and provide support for the non-profit org and festival.

From its psy rave roots, Earthdance has grown to become one of the largest globally synchronized music and dance events, having been held in over 1,000 locations in 80 countries.

My Task

Since very near it’s early origins in 2000, I worked with Earthdance to create compelling community websites, rich media, and unprecedented global networking tools in support of what was the original globally synchronized and intentional dance party!

I designed, developed, and innovated the central community website for the popular global events in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004.  I designed the first EarthDance event print flyer in 2000.

In 2001, I introduced a novel idea: to create an on-line interactive global networking map for the Earthdance global community, allowing everyone to see the actual network of events, and facilitate coordination with each other.  At the time (years before Google Maps or anything like it), the notion of an on-line interactive map was an unprecedented achievement–and Mythic Systems was the first to accomplish this significant innovation of on-line interactive mapping.  The Earthdance Global Network Map (GNM) was perhaps the very first interactive map of the earth to ever be published on the Internet.  The Flash mapping application was re-designed and improved year after year for each event, and in 2005 we provided a special version of the map for the foundation of the Earthdance Community Network initiative.

Result

From its psy-rave roots, Earthdance has grown to become one of the largest globally synchronized music and dance events, having been held in over 1,000 locations in 80 countries.