David Guetta and Nicki Minaj May Have Ripped Off Burning Man at the Billboard Music Awards

Article by: Laura Mason|@masonlazarus

Wed May 20, 2015 | 00:00 AM


Recent Festival Artist Spotlight interviewees Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu, the design masterminds behind Burning Man's HYBYCOZO , may have just had their creativity totally ripped off during this past weekend's Billboard Music Awards – by none other than superstars Nicki Minaj and David Guetta.

During the music duo's performance of "Hey Mama," Minaj is seen dipping low, twerking and aggressively rapping her new hit while audience members gyrate and Guetta supplies the drops. But amidst all the commotion, you'll notice in the video above (starting 2:15 in) huge glowing geometric orbs laced with cutout designs lighting up as the bass hits.

Look familiar to you? They looked familiar to Filipchuk and Beaulieu as well – so much so that the pair contacted THUMP after receiving numerous calls from friends alerting them to the possible design theft.

According to THUMP, Filipchuk says, ""It was so egregious that people who weren’t even that familiar with the project sent us messages asking us if we did the stage design.”

Before you shrug the accusation off, consider HYBYCOZO's unique compositions; their sculptures are so large they are used as chill zones at Burning Man and other festivals like Further Future, and are covered in geometric, tessellated and laser-cut polyhedron designs, welded together to created huge triambic icosahedrons. Now, view the video and see an eerie similarity as the camera pans across the stage, revealing large polyhedrons tessellated with laser-cut shapes.

"We zoomed in and the composition of the pattern matched exactly [a circle in a pentagon] on a grid of lines coming out of the corners," Filipchuk tells THUMP. "The shape itself even had the same thicker darker edges, glowing from the inside and matched the distinctive laser-cut repeating patterns that we are known for."

Furthering this suspicious resemblance is the fact that Minaj and Guetta's video for "Hey Mama" is undeniably Burning Man-inspired. No one knows yet who is responsible for this absolutely uncanny stage design that may or may not be a complete rip-off, but the artists are hard at work trying to find out.

Stay tuned for updates on whether Minaj, Guetta, their design teams, or Billboard itself responds to the artists' accusations.