加密飞行 Vol.5 | 我们在沙漠中，发现了一片来自火星的飞地：Marscollege

💡Editor's note/编者按

在编辑这篇文章的过程中，几乎每个人都对我说过类似的话：不想上班了，想去火星/火人节/火星学院(Marscollege)！天知道它究竟有什么魔力。然而，这些逐水草而居的旺盛生命，年复一年地降落在火星飞地，在 Bombay Beach Biennale 展开他们满载奇异道具的魔术工房。人们像大学室友一样生活在一起，搭建共同的住所，教室和花园，开垦因污染而被废弃的城镇与土地。假使未来世界陷入战争与灾难，如何在荒野上寻找生存资源与持续生长的精神活性，则会变成最紧迫而最稀缺的能力。今天我们迫不及待地希望能够远离城市，探索和加入各种 Pop-up city，或许是因为现状并不足以让人满意：过高的生活成本，使人汗流浃背的压力体系，超久的通勤，昂贵的教育……幸好仍有许多人正在为之努力。

In the process of editing this article, almost everyone mentioned similar thoughts: they no longer want to work and dream of going to Mars, the Burning Man Festival, or Mars College! What magic it holds is hard to say. Yet, these vibrant people, year after year, gather in Martian enclaves and set up their magical workshops filled with strange props on the Bombay Beach Biennale. Living together like college roommates, they build homes, classrooms, and gardens, reclaiming towns and lands abandoned due to pollution. If the world falls into war and disaster in the future, the ability to find survival resources in the wilderness and maintain enduring mental vitality will become the most urgent and scarce skill. Today, we are eager to escape the city, to explore and join various Pop-up cities, perhaps because the current reality is unsatisfying: the high cost of living, the overwhelming pressure system, long commutes, and expensive education... Fortunately, many people are still working hard to make it happen.

此文是「加密飞行」专栏首辑访谈策划的第五篇，来自友邻社区 SocialLayer 的 Eggy 和 Jiang。作为一群经常在各地巡游的 “飞行员”，他们所带来的独特视野，正是「加密飞行」所想要展示的：一群从过去降落，置身于此刻，并渴望着挑战和探索更好未来的远航者。我们期待着这种展示，能够飞跃语言与物理距离的障壁，成为未来加密公民同现实之间的桥梁。

This article is the third in the first series of interviews for the "Crypto Flight" column, curated by the SocialLayer community members Eggy and Jiang. As a group of "pilots" often journeying across different places, they bring a unique perspective—exactly what "Crypto Flight" aims to showcase: a group of voyagers descending from the past, living in the present, and yearning to challenge and explore a better future. We hope this showcase can transcend barriers of language and physical distance, becoming a bridge between future crypto citizens and the realities they face.

Social Layer × Uncommons
Reporter: Eggy＆Jiang
Translater: Jane
Edit:0614

「加密飞行」(Crypto Flight)

「加密飞行」(Crypto Flight) 是 Uncommons 的人物访谈专栏，围绕活跃在以太坊及加密世界一线的先锋个体，记录加密现实，生产多元视角，将交谈和日常语言作为方法，化约发生在彼处的遥远真实。取自 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 的 Vol de Nuit(长夜飞逝)，象征密码朋克与加密公民飞向世界尽头的挑战和探索精神。

*本专栏接受投稿，公开招募访谈者和译者，欢迎联系WeChat: RealUncommons 投稿或开设你擅长并且感兴趣的专栏。

"Crypto Flight" is a series of interviews by Uncommons, focusing on pioneers active in the Ethereum and crypto world. It documents the reality of the crypto space and produces diverse perspectives, using conversation and everyday language as methods to distill distant and far-off truths. Inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Vol de Nuit (Night Flight), it symbolizes the challenge and exploratory spirit of cypherpunks and crypto citizens as they venture to the ends of the world.

This column welcomes submissions and is open to recruiting interviewers and translators. Feel free to contact via WeChat: RealUncommons to submit your work or start a column on a topic you are passionate about and interested in.

本文为《加密飞行 Vol.5 | 我们在沙漠中，发现了一片火星飞地：Marscollege》的访谈节选。
访问全文请前往 Uncommons 的 Newsletter：
blog.uncommons.cc/cr...

Freeman
Founder of mars.college
Live In Nature Do Yoga Learn To Code

Nico
Founder of agartha.one
XR Artist
Solarpunk Community Builder

Gene
Founder of eden.art
Artist and coder broadly interested in AI and generative systems

Eggy
Ph.D Candidate in Design for Social Innovation
Co-founder of Social Layer

“火”人基因：MarsCollege起源
The "Burning" Gene: Origins of Mars College

Freeman:

I'm from the Bay Area. I've been going to Burning Man for a long time and building larger and larger structures at Burning Man. And so, in 2018, that culminated with, “Pod Mahal” which was a 4 story 24-unit apartment building that was built on pallet racks. And, about this time I moved back from India and somewhere where I came to was that I love the lifestyle of Burning Man.

I love large camps. I love living out in the desert with people. I love building. I think it's wonderful being able to actually create the kinds of innovative structures we dream of. But it's a huge amount of effort for a 1-week event to throw a party for people that I don't know.

And so, after this, I had all of this material. And then I was really interested in exploring how to take everything that we've learned building large off grid camps at Burning Man, but then run it for 3 months and then really explore like what we do. Like if we're going to hang out together in a community like this, how do we use our time in a healthy way to develop socially, develop technically, to start projects and all of that. 

我来自旧金山湾区，多年来一直参加火人节（编按：火人节 “Burning Man”是每年在美国内华达州沙漠举办的艺术文化节，参加者通过创作装置艺术、音乐表演及焚烧大型人形雕塑等活动，倡导创意、社区和“不留痕迹”生活理念。），并在那里搭建越来越大的建筑。2018年，我们的最终作品是“Pod Mahal”，一个用托盘架搭建的四层、24个单元的公寓式建筑。大约在这段时间，我从印度搬回了湾区，并逐渐意识到自己热爱火人节的生活方式。

我非常喜欢大型营地，也喜欢和大家一起生活在沙漠中。我热衷于建造，能够亲手实现我们梦想中的那些创新性建筑是一件非常美妙的事情。但在一周的活动中为一些我不认识的人举办派对，确实需要耗费大量的精力。在那之后，我积累大量资源，并且萌生了一个想法：如何将在火人节搭建大型自给自足营地中学到的一切，运用到一个为期三个月的项目，并真正探索我们可以做些什么。譬如说如果要在一个社区里共同生活，我们如何以健康的方式利用时间？如何在社交上有所发展，在技术上成长？如何启动项目？等等。

Gene:

Actually, those pictures almost by me. In the early 2010, I was fresh out of college, and I was really interested in what were then called hackerspaces and makerspaces. I was an engineer. I was shy. I like these places where people can gather and do technical stuff. Otherwise, I'm sitting in front of my computer by myself. And then, I've had this for a long time workshop practice. So I teach people how to apply coding and especially AI stuff, for the purposes of making art. And so I've been doing these workshops for a long time, but the next step I wanted to do is to make a workshop where I always dreamed of a workshop which felt it had a longer arc that we were much closer. We were maybe even living together, and that it had goals. Because a lot of my workshops would be very transient and quick. 

And, I discovered the stuff that Freeman was doing in India. I went there on a Fulbright scholarship, and I took all those pictures, and I was really inspired. Basically we had this kind of thread about: can we encase a big long workshop inside of pallet racks in the desert in a sustainable way.

除了那张“Pod Mahal”的照片以外，其他的照片都是由我拍摄的。2010年初我刚从大学毕业，对当时被称为“黑客空间”和“创客空间”的东西非常感兴趣。我是一名性格有些害羞的工程师。我喜欢人们可以聚在一起做技术相关项目的地方，否则就只能独坐在电脑前工作。此外，我有长期组织工作坊的实践经验，教人们如何将编程，特别是将人工智能技术应用于艺术创作。我举办这些工作坊已有很长一段时间，但我一直希望能进一步发展，创建一个更长时间的工作坊，让大家之间更加亲密，甚至一起生活，并朝着明确的共同目标努力。我的很多工作坊都是非常短暂而快速的。

后来我发现了Freeman在印度的项目，并获得了富布赖特奖学金，前往那里拍下了这些照片，受到了极大的启发。于是我们在想，能否在沙漠中用托盘架搭建并举办一个长时间的大型工作坊，并以可持续的方式来运行。

Freeman:

After building “Pod Mahal" and having all of this infrastructure now, I met an old friend of mine who had discovered this ghost town, way out in the California desert about an hour east of Palm Springs called Bombay Beach. The Salton Sea there on the left had gone toxic and there were years where there were just dead fish and you couldn't sell a house in Bombay Beach. And so people just walked away.

And then when he discovered it, you could buy a place in Bombay Beach for a couple $1,000 and he and a couple friends started doing these annual art fairs there called the Bombay Beach Biennale. And then that started attracting artists that would do Burning Man style installations, but where you could buy your own camp essentially. And then, it was decentralized in the sense that you didn't have to ask any org for permission to do what you wanted. You could control your destiny. And so we bought a compound there in town. And at the same time, we bought 20 acres just outside of Bombay Beach, which, where we would build

在建造“Pod Mahal”和这些基础设施之后，我遇到了一个老朋友。他发现了一个加利福尼亚沙漠中的鬼城，位于距离棕榈泉以东约一个小时路程的地方，叫做 Bombay Beach Biennale。由于索尔顿海逐渐变得有毒，有几年时间海里满是死鱼，这里的房子几乎无人问津，人们纷纷选择离开。

他发现时，只需几千美元就可以在 Bombay Beach Biennale 买下一处房产。于是他和几个朋友开始在这里举办一年一度的艺术展，称为“ Bombay Beach Biennale 双年展”。此后越来越多的艺术家被吸引前来，创作类似火人节风格的装置艺术。而且你可以在这里自购营地。这里的模式是去中心化的，你无需向任何组织申请许可，能完全掌控自己的创作。因此，我们在镇上买下了一块地，还在海滩附近购置了20英亩的土地，计划在那里进行建设。

Gene:

When we first started and we were discussing this idea: how are we going to convince people to come? We don't have anything to really show. Part of the inspiration was part of the Bombay Beach story was that we could bootstrap this to this whole scene that was happening there that was connected to the Biennale. And because I've been doing these workshops, I have this kind of network of people on the Internet that know me for workshops.

And so the first year was basically inviting mostly just my friends, people that I know on the Internet to come and hang out for almost any amount of time. And then this is how we advertised it: come do nature, art, yoga. It was really the dream from India, the Yoga dream. But in California with this whole workshop layer that I was going to lead on. And then I made some cute images, like, of people in the unit. 

最初对这个想法的讨论是关于意愿的。当时没有什么可以展示，部分灵感来自 Bombay Beach Biennale 的故事，我们认为或许可以借助那里的氛围连接到Biennale。我也一直在举办工作坊，网络上有一批因此而认识我的人。第一年我们实际上只是邀请了我的朋友和一些在网上认识的人，大家可以随时来这里，或者待一段时间。这就是我们的宣传方式——接触大自然、进行艺术创作、做瑜伽。这个想法源自于印度的“Yoga Dream”，随后在加州，我加入了需要进行带领的工作坊元素。我还制作了一些可爱的图像，比如人们在一起互动的场景。

沙漠中的外星飞地
An Alien Enclave in the Desert

Freeman:

This is how we start and still fundamentally what it is, we're building a camp out in the desert. And so, the camp is some combination of we're still big on pallet racks, we build some large structure every year as kind of our academic building. And people come in with either livable vehicles or, or RVs. And so we will have a number of van life, a residential area going around Mars as well as a number of structures that we build, that we host events and stuff. So we have and we've every year we build the whole thing. And then in April, we break it all down. And so we have a bit of the Burning Man “leave no trace”. And it allows us to iterate that every year it's different than it was the year before.

First is only pallet racks. Those TVs were gifted to some of our Martians the 1st year. They got 100 free TVs from a hotel that was throwing them away and had them shipped from New York to us. We put a bunch of them up and made this thing we called the portal, and it was this wall of pixels that we would put art and stuff on and do yoga inside. 

在沙漠里建造营地，这就是我们最初的方式，至今依然。我们的营地包括一些托盘架，每年搭建一些大型结构，作为我们的“学术大楼”。人们也会开着可居住的车辆或房车前来，因此营地中也会有一片围绕Mars College的露营车生活区，以及一些我们建造的设施，用于举办各种活动和聚会。每年我们都会从头搭建整个营地，并在四月时将其拆除。类似于火人节的“不留痕迹”理念，让我们能够每年进行改进和迭代，让每一年的营地都与前一年有所不同。

最初只是托盘架。第一年有人送给我们一些Martians（编按："Martians" 是指Mars College 的成员，意思为“火星人”，以呼应 Mars College 的名字。），100台被酒店丢弃的电视。他们把这批免费的电视从纽约运了过来。我们将这些从纽约运来的电视组合在一起，做成了一个称为“传送门”的装置，一面像素墙，我们在上面展示艺术作品，还可以在里面做瑜伽。

Freeman:

It's 3 months in a pretty intense environment where the relationships are deep. That's one of the real benefits of having such extended, isolated experiences that we have multiple partnerships in a number of ways that got established there.

我们在这个相当严酷的环境中度过了三个月，彼此建立了深厚的关系。这样长时间且与世隔绝的体验带来了巨大的好处——我们在那里和不同参加者建立了稳固的合作关系。

Nico:

Basically, every year, we learn something from the past year, and we try to experiment with a different kind of structure. Every year, it's been slowly expanding a little bit. Every year, there's more people coming, more programs, bigger structures. In 2022, we had 4 buildings. And a massive courtyard in the middle where we do group dinners and have presentations at night. People got married. There were multiple marriages. 2 of them met there. And in 2023, is the first time when we tried to have majors. And the 1st major we had was creative AI, and then where we tried to put more infrastructure into the academic curriculum of Mars. And in some pictures of 23, the structure got a lot bigger. And we actually have 2 structures.

And then in 2024, we have a much more dedicated curriculum now. And in 2024 is the 1st year where we started having departments. So we have a department of desert fabrication, which is about making landscape art, department of culinary institute, where you actually learn how to cook like a chef, department about AI, department about music, and making 3D modeling, and rituals, and a whole wide spectrum of content from technology to spirituality to physical art and music and everything in between.

我们每年都会从上一年的经验中学习，并尝试不同类型的结构。每年项目都在慢慢扩展，更多的人、项目和更大的建筑。2022年时我们有四栋建筑，中间有一个大型庭院，用于集体晚餐和夜间的演讲活动。人们在这里结婚，举行了多场婚礼。有2对夫妻是在那里相识的。2023年，我们首次尝试设立主修课程。第一个主修课程是“创意人工智能”。我们还尝试将更多基础设施投入到 Mars College 的学术课程中。

2024年，我们的课程更加完善，并且首次设立了多个系别。我们有“沙漠造景系”，专注于制作景观艺术；“烹饪学院”，在这里可以学习如厨师般烹饪；还有人工智能系、音乐系、3D建模系以及仪式研究系。课程内容涵盖从技术到精神修行、从实体艺术到音乐等各个领域，内容丰富多样。

Freeman:

That it's a similar format like an open calendar. And so the departments were trying to encourage people to put more effort into their offerings. But ultimately, it's very much a function of the people who come and what they're excited about and what they want to offer.There's no permanent teachers. It's just like everyone brings something. But it's as a model, Edge is organized from this way that it's a nice easy scalable way of organizing something. 

这些课程类似于自由安排的日程表，各个学系的设置主要是为了鼓励大家在自己提供的内容上投放更多精力。最终仍然很大程度上取决于参与者的兴趣和他们想要分享的内容。这里没有固定的导师，每个人都带来自己擅长的内容一起分享。Edge也在使用这种模式。它既简便又易于扩展，非常适合用来组织活动。

Nico:

One big part of Mars college is community building. As we were talking about earlier because you're in a semi isolated space with a lot of people and for a long time. So in the end, you really, really get to connect with people very intentionally and purposely. And the activities are designed to curate these connections. Anyone's welcome to propose their own workshop. And, you're living with these roommates like in a college style camp. And everything is walkable in a small town, and people collaborate, help each other out, and attend various gatherings all the time. So there's always things to do. You're either working on your own project, or there's someone proposing some group projects somewhere that you can just hop in and learn something new and hang out.

Another key takeaway is that this model allows us to educate in a very accessible and low cost way. Because the area is really remote, we're not really paying city level rent. We're not paying hotel fares. Everything is relatively cheap. We have a lot of fun, say, public people with a background in their own expertise that bring things like AI, robotics into the scene that are sharing this knowledge openly to anyone that's in this space.

社区建设对Mars College来说很重要。正如我们之前提到的，因为你会在一个半隔离的空间中与许多人长时间相处。所以，最终你会非常有意识地与他人建立深刻的联系，而活动的设计也是为了促成这种联系。任何人都可以提议举办自己的工作坊。人们像大学宿舍那样与室友们一起生活，在这个小镇上，一切都在步行范围内，人们经常合作、互相帮助并参加各种聚会。总会有事情可以做；专注于自己的项目，或者加入其他人提议的团队项目，随时学到新东西，结交朋友。

另一个重要的收获是：这种模式让我们能够以低成本、易于参与的方式进行教育。我们无需支付城市的高额的生活成本，一切相对便宜。同时我们也吸引了许多拥有各自专业背景的公众人士，把人工智能、机器人等知识带入这里，向所有在此空间中的人开放和共享这些知识。

And Mars really has a culture of offering. Because it started as an offering from the initial founders, people started giving out their private land and for the whole community to share. So that culture has encouraged all the new members of this community to want to share whatever they have. So people contribute all the time with their effort, with their resources, and with their space to kind of try to make the whole thing better. It just became an unspoken rule. We don't force anyone to have to contribute, but everyone's contributing, you feel called to do so as well. 

Mars College 有一种“奉献”的文化。因为，最初它是由创始人作为一份礼物奉献出来的，人们开放自己的私人土地，供整个社区共享。这种文化鼓励所有新成员分享他们所拥有的一切。人们不断投入自己的精力、资源和空间，让整个社区变得更好。这逐渐成了一条不成文的规矩。我们不强迫任何人去贡献，但当每个人都在付出时，你也会被感召着去这样做。

And, another big part of this project is to really encourage self-reliance.Because we are living off grid in this open desert. A lot of times the first task you have when you come here is to learn how to build something. If you come here with just a suitcase, you have to learn at least how to put up some basic structure, maybe for yourself. And you're in this open desert and some are remote, you are very immediate to your basic needs, you have to think about water, think about your food, and think about planning ahead. So there's a level of survival challenge in this whole exercise.

And another thing is that we're also testing interplanetary survival, so if one day the world falls apart and there's only desert left, this is some sci-fi idea that we think it's interesting to be brought into space.

这个项目的另一个重要部分，是鼓励自给自足。生活在沙漠中，这意味着在脱离公共设施的开放环境里。很多人来到这里的第一个任务，就是学习如何建造一些东西。如果你只带着一个行李箱来到这里，至少得学会为自己搭建一些基本结构。你身处荒野，远离城市，需要直接面对基本需求的问题，考虑 水、食物并提前规划好这些。因此，在整个体验中带有生存挑战的部分。 此外我们也在测试星际生存的概念，所以如果有一天世界崩溃，只剩下沙漠，那么这种科幻般的生存方式或许能为未来的太空探索提供一些有趣的思路。

银河系漫游2025
Galactic Odyssey 2025

Freeman:

So in 2025,we're exploring how to create more intentionality around how we spend time here. I'm blown away with everything that's happening in the AI space and interested in how to actually have a longer curriculum so that people can really create projects. And so there's a little bit of an orientation around that. 

在2025年，我们正在探索如何更有意识地规划花在这里的时间。我对当前AI领域的发展感到震撼，并且希望能够设置更长的课程，让人们真正有时间去创建项目。因此，我们在这方面进行了相应的调整和方向上的引导。

Gene:

There's also a sense in which all good things want to keep expanding and growing. And we thought about how do we do that in a way that we're going to find good and healthy? And more and more of the people who have been coming to Mars College are returning. So there's more alumni and some people have gotten properties in town. There's more autonomy among Martians. There's also this drive to try to seed all these other activities and keep Mars as weird and Martian as possible and explore decentralization.Mars is in some ways almost functions like a halfway home for people that are just new to the area.

The first thing you come to is you have a tent in the desert, and then you level up your own hospitality and get more situated. And then and now the community around us has grown. There's a perennial community that didn't used to exist. Like intentionality decentralization, we've gotten more structured every year. We have more momentum. A lot of things happen now, even everyone knows that certain things will happen.

有感于所有美好的事物都在不断扩展，我们也在思考如何以一种健全且对我们有益的方式成长。越来越多曾来到 Mars College 的人选择再次回来，校友越来越多，有些人甚至在镇上购置了房产. Mars College 的 Martians 有更多的自主权，也在努力培育其他各类活动，保持 Mars College 的独特性和充满“火星风格”的感觉，并探索去中心化的模式。在某种程度上，Mars College 几乎是刚涉猎这个领域的人的一个“中途之家”。

当你第一次来到这里时，只是带着一个帐篷扎根在沙漠里，随后逐步提升自己的生活条件，逐渐适应这里的环境。而现在，我们周围的社区也在不断壮大，形成了一个以前不存在的常驻社区。就像有意的去中心化一样，我们每年都变得更有组织，积累更多的动能。现在，很多事情已经成了惯例，大家都知道有些活动一定会如期发生。

Nico:

There's possibilities of people that have attended Mars College previous sessions, for a while, they are encouraged to also self-host their own camp. Basically decentralizing the idea of Mars College with a bunch of local camps where each camp has their own rule of operating, their own studying theme, their own intention, and maybe their own offering to the rest of people attending Fort Myers College. So these are the general ideas, but we'll release more updates when it comes closer to the application time. One last thing, long term goals of this project is really to create this shared space to intensely team bond a group of really close friends with cohesive identity and visions, and that can continue to grow independent from the original founders of Mars College. We're really interested with the idea of pop-up college, pop-up cities. It's really innovative in a way that it fundamentally changes how education is taught and how community is built. That's a bit of a long-term vision.

曾参加过 Mars College 以往课程的人们，都被鼓励自发创建自己的营地，基本上是将 Mars College 的理念去中心化，在多个地方设立营地，每个营地都有自己的运作规则、学习主题、活动宗旨，甚至向 Mars College 的其他参与者提供不同的资源和支持。这是大致的构想，但会在申请期临近时发布更多更新。最后，这个项目的长期目标是真正打造一个共享空间，让一群拥有共同身份和愿景的密友能够紧密相连，并且可以在不依赖 Mars College 创始人的情况下持续发展。同时，我们“Pop-up college”和“Pop-up cities”也很感兴趣。这种模式在某种程度上创新性地改变了教育方式和社区建设方式，是我们的一个长期愿景。

全文 Shownote
 “火”人基因：Marscollege起源
The "Burning" Gene: Origins of Mars College
沙漠中的外星飞地
An Alien Enclave in the Desert
银河系漫游2025
Galactic Odyssey 2025
寻找息壤
Searching for That Soil
荒野上的生产
Production in the Wilderness
为什么是火星?
Why Mars?

Social Layer × Uncommons
Reporter: Eggy＆Jiang
Translator: Jane
Edit:0614

👇文中图片来源
X @genekogan
@freemanindia
@Syntonikka
marscollege.substack...

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