The PDF 23 MOOP Project, 2023

A MOOP map, square by square

The team's poster on the toilet doors said what the photos were for. We built that map from the data: one square for every 20 m of ground the volunteers walked or found MOOP on, coloured by the pieces logged in it. At the first burn, 56% of the squares had no MOOP logged (74 of 132); the busiest held 59 pieces.

"Take a photo of the MOOP in place before collecting on playa. That's it, the app will do all the data keeping from there. Data will be used to create a MOOP map, educational materials, and organize MOOP and Found items."
The team's poster, photographed on a toilet door on Friday, May 26

Playa del Fuego, near Tamaqua, PA

May 25 to 29, 2023 · 132 squares

Walked, no MOOP logged 741 or 2 pieces 413 or more 17

Almond, NY

July 30, 2023 · 46 squares

No MOOP logged 201 or 2 193 or more 7

North is up. The squares are 20 m at both burns; the New York map is drawn a quarter larger than the Pennsylvania one (see the scale bars). Burning Man's own MOOP map colours each block green, yellow or red by how hard the sweep line had to work; ours counts the pieces photographed in each square.

56%

of the ground walked at Playa del Fuego had no MOOP logged. In New York, a one-person sweep of a smaller field, it was 43%.

120 of 131

records the app filed as "other moop" are photos of places, not MOOP: 59 camp signs, 32 art pieces, 14 street signs and 15 toilets and services, the landmarks of the map.

76 in 90 min

One volunteer swept the New York field on July 30: 76 pieces photographed and picked up between 3:43 and 5:13 pm, about one every 71 seconds.

Every day in the data

Most of the work came early. On Thursday morning, before the gates opened, the team logged 28 camp signs and 112 pieces of MOOP already on the ground, 54 of them in a single record of paper. On Friday afternoon Volunteers A and B mapped the city: 83 places in under four hours. After that, single sweeps and a few web reports to the last day. Before and after: two test photos in Rochester in March, and the July sweep in New York.

Pieces of MOOPPlaces mapped

Fri, Mar 3Rochester, NY (tests)

Volunteer A

Sun, Mar 5Rochester, NY (tests)

Volunteer A

Thu, May 25Near Tamaqua, PA

11729

Volunteers B, C · 58 web reports

Fri, May 26Near Tamaqua, PA

5384

Volunteers A, B, C, D · 10 web reports

Sat, May 27Near Tamaqua, PA

477

Volunteers A, B, E · 11 web reports

Sun, May 28Near Tamaqua, PA

Volunteers B, D · 3 web reports

Mon, May 29Near Tamaqua, PA

no app records · 6 web reports

Sun, Jul 30Almond, NY

Volunteer F

Days in Eastern time. Web reports came from the team's QR code page, with no account; the app's records carry a volunteer letter.

The field before the burn. From their photos, 31 of the 112 pieces logged on Thursday morning were shooting debris: spent cartridge cases, shotgun shells and shotgun wads, found before the gates opened. One more shotgun shell came on Sunday. They count as MOOP in every number here; their photos are not shown.

What the MOOP was

Playa del Fuego, PA (240)Almond, NY (76)

Paper

11034

Plastic

579

Other MOOP

3024

Metal

362

Cigarette butts

Pieces by type, as the app or web form filed them. In Pennsylvania, 25 of the 36 metal pieces are spent cartridge cases and a shotgun shell. Other MOOP includes 2 records the team filed as "moop and found", glitter, food and the app's uncategorized. The 2 test photos in Rochester are not in these bars.

59camp signs

32art pieces

14street signs

15toilets and services

Places mapped, all near Tamaqua. We sorted the "other moop" records by their photos; the 11 that show MOOP stay in the pieces above.

What the sources said, checked

The team was called the PDF 23 MOOP Project, and the open-data file names it a MOOP project at regional events. Which events? The sources, and the photos in the data, against the records.

Source	What it said	The data
Wikipedia, Playa del Fuego	Playa del Fuego, "PDF", is a regional burn held over Memorial Day weekend in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. Gates open Thursday afternoon; it ends on Monday at noon.	266 records from Thursday, May 25 to Monday, May 29, 2023 (Memorial Day was May 29), on a field about 5 km from Tamaqua that the file names Barnesville.Matches
Wikipedia, Playa del Fuego; the 2022 AfterBurn Report	Its volunteer areas include "Participation Station" and "Lamp Lighters".	The team photographed a "Participation Station" banner (Thursday 9:45 am, a web report), and two signs printed "Playa del Fuego": "Parking" (Friday 4:40 pm) and "Lamp Lighters" (Friday 5:04 pm, both Volunteer B). The photos are not shown because of the writing on them.The name is on the signs
Wikipedia, Playa del Fuego; the 2022 AfterBurn Report	Saturday night ends with a bonfire, where a wooden pony is burned; the 2019 effigy was "a rearing pony" on a platform, and the 2022 art grants list a "Rearing Pony".	A web report on Friday at 5:41 pm photographed a rearing wooden horse cutout with a horned mask, on a stack of pallets. The data has no photo of the burn, and does not say where it burned.Likely the pony
The team's poster	"Take a photo of the MOOP in place before collecting."	The app marks every record picked up, signs included, so that flag does not prove it. At the Pennsylvania burn, all 88 app records of MOOP have a photo, and the ones checked for this page show the pieces on the ground where they lay. In New York, most of the 75 records kept no photo, and the rest show hands, feet, a vehicle or blur. The web reports, 88 in all, have no picked-up field.Partly
The team's poster	"Data will be used to create a MOOP map ... and organize MOOP and Found items."	120 photos of camps, art, signs and toilets, and 316 pieces of MOOP, all but 3 records with a location: enough for the map above. 2 records are typed "moop and found".Done here
The open-data file	"MOOP project at regional events, Pennsylvania and New York (2023)". An earlier internal label guessed the Philadelphia Folk Festival.	The team's name is "PDF 23 MOOP Project", and the signs, dates and place are Playa del Fuego's, not the folk festival's. The New York day was July 30, near Almond: a printed parking pass for Portal Burn 2023, dated July 27 to 31, was among its pieces.Likely Portal Burn
Burning Man Journal, "MOOP MAP LIVE" (2011)	The MOOP map is made by a line sweep: blocks where the line keeps moving are green, stop-and-go is yellow, and red stops the line.	No line sweep here: volunteers walked their own routes. Our squares count pieces photographed per 20 m, which is close in spirit but not the same measure.Different method

Watch the MOOP map

The story first, then the three places on a map of Pennsylvania and New York. The camera flies to the first burn and plays its five days: the dots are MOOP, coloured by type, and turn grey a day or two later; the small squares and diamonds are the places the team mapped, and the paler shape under them is the ground the team walked while logging. It follows the volunteers on the busiest walks, and a live screen shows the photos as they came in. On Monday the MOOP map builds itself, square by square, in the order the ground was walked, and holds. Then a flight north to the July sweep and its own map, and at the end both burns side by side, each with its MOOP map beside its pin.

Press play for both burns, 134 seconds. It ends with photos of the MOOP and the totals. A click on the timeline jumps there and keeps playing.

Open the map full screen

Who logged it

Six volunteers and a QR code

Anyone at the burn could join by scanning the poster's QR code. At the Pennsylvania burn, volunteers with the app photographed each piece where it lay, then picked it up (in New York, most records kept no photo). Their phones also recorded where they walked, and the replay keeps only the stretches within 150 m and 6 minutes of their own photos. People without the app reported through a web page: those 88 reports have no account and no route. 3 records have no location: they are counted, not drawn. Letters follow the order in which each volunteer first appears.

Volunteer A41 places on Friday and Saturday, 4 pieces, plus the 2 Rochester tests

Volunteer B126 pieces and 49 places, every day but Monday

Volunteer C5 pieces, Thursday and Friday

Volunteer D16 pieces, Friday and Sunday

Volunteer E31 pieces in one 43-minute sweep on Saturday

Volunteer F76 pieces at Almond, NY, in 90 minutes

Web reports88 records from the QR code page (58 pieces, 30 places)

From the burns

24 of the 33 photos on the replay, all from the first burn, checked one by one at full size and cropped to the piece. Photos with people, feet, shoes, shadows of people, cars, tents, writing or names are not shown, and neither are the camp signs or the shooting debris.

A rearing wooden horse with a horned mask, Friday May 26 — Wooden horse, horned mask

A blue ribbon, Saturday May 27 — A blue ribbon

Art: a dome of inflatable rings, Friday May 26 — Art: a dome of inflatable rings

A burn scar, Monday May 29 — A burn scar

Orange cord, Friday May 26 — Orange cord

A cardboard tube, Saturday May 27 — A cardboard tube

Art: a unicorn head, Friday May 26 — Art: a unicorn head

A white plastic lid, Friday May 26 — A white plastic lid

Orange twine, Sunday May 28 — Orange twine

Pink plastic shreds, Thursday May 25 — Pink plastic shreds

Art: a frame of firewood, Friday May 26 — Art: a frame of firewood

A cigarette butt, Saturday May 27 — A cigarette butt

A scrap of paper, Thursday May 25 — A scrap of paper

Paper scraps in the grass, Thursday May 25 — Paper scraps in the grass

A cigarette butt, Thursday May 25 — A cigarette butt

Clear plastic film, Thursday May 25 — Clear plastic film

A foil scrap, Thursday May 25 — A foil scrap

A cigarette, Friday May 26 — A cigarette

A red plastic bit, Friday May 26 — A red plastic bit

Paper in the grass, Friday May 26 — Paper in the grass

A cigarette butt, Friday May 26 — A cigarette butt

A plastic wrapper, Friday May 26 — A plastic wrapper

The photos marked Art show artworks by Playa del Fuego participants (Fire Pony Creative Society). The artworks belong to their artists and are not covered by the open data license.

About these numbers

343 records and 438 items in the open-data file (a photo can hold more than one piece). 120 of the records are photos of places, sorted by their photos from the app's "other moop" label; the other 223 records hold 318 pieces of MOOP: 240 near Tamaqua, 76 near Almond and 2 test pieces in Rochester. The 2 test pieces were not at either burn, so they are left out: the 316 on this page and in the replay are the pieces at the two burns.
Days run in Eastern time. Three records carry UTC in the file's local-time column; they are counted on their Eastern day.
The file does not name the events. Playa del Fuego is named by two signs in the team's photos that carry its name, the team's name (PDF 23), the dates over Memorial Day weekend and the place near Tamaqua; Barnesville, the town in the file, is about 5 km from Tamaqua. Portal Burn is named as likely, from a parking pass among the July pieces.
Shooting debris: 11 records (32 pieces) show spent cartridge cases, shotgun shells or shotgun wads in their photos, 31 pieces of them on Thursday morning. They stay in the counts under the type the team gave them (metal, plastic or other). Their photos are not shown.
The replay marks where the rearing wooden horse was photographed on Friday. Where the pony burned on Saturday night is not in the data.
MOOP map squares are 20 m on a side, laid on a grid at each burn. A square counts when a volunteer's route passed through it or a piece of MOOP was photographed in it; places do not count. Routes keep only the stretches within 150 m and 6 minutes of the same volunteer's photos, so a square marked "no MOOP logged" was walked while the volunteer was logging.
223 km is the straight line between the two burns; Rochester is 293 km from the first and 96 km from the second.
Six volunteers used the app (A to F). The 88 web reports carry no account, so we cannot tell how many people sent them.
No tents, needles or human waste were recorded.
The records are open data: RubbishOpenData, events-2018-2026.csv (CC BY 4.0). No names, accounts or photos; locations to about 11 m.
The 33 photos on the replay and this page were checked one by one at full size, cropped to the piece, and carry no location data. The New York sweep has none to show: 75 records, most with no photo kept, the rest showing hands, feet, a vehicle or blur.

316 pieces of MOOP at two regional burns, mapped by a volunteer team in 2023