BLACK ROCK CITY — Here we are at Burning Man, deep in the Nevada desert. It's billed as an arts festival, held every year in the name of counterculture, mind expansion, loving your neighbor, and paying a lot of money for coffee at an event that purports to have a noncommercial, barter-based economy. Black Rock City, the festival's temporary locale, is laid out in a rough half-circle, with streets labeled from 2 to 10, in the style of a clock face. The vast, open expanse of lung-clogging, sunbaked wasteland in the center is reserved for a very special type of self expression: large projects that cause their makers massive frustration, huge amounts of debt, and the destruction of every sort of personal relationship in the space of a few dust-filled, windswept days. Yes, folks, we're talking about art.