These YouTube videos are a hoot – two COMPLETELY different ways to describe how to play Sì-Wŭ-Liù, the first by Windy Challey from Games of Berkeley, on a proper game board with MAGIC over her shoulder; the second by U-God of Wu-Tang Clan in some stairwell probably in Brooklyn, with a wad of cash money in hand!

see the full lineup and get more details here.

Chris presented “animal superpowers” which included this helmet & optic-glove system that allowed the wearer to see what an ant might see, as it magnified objects in front (right hand) and below (left hand) by 100x to a screen inside the helmet!

Simon presented telephone telepathy and some of the theory behind this controversial subject:



this last shot was pretty genius, it was Simon’s “2 second lecture” on quantum mechanics, or physics, or whatever he was talking about! loL!

Kunal and Syed are from Babycastles and build and demo indie games – they’re like the zines of big-label game companies, they only do “local” gaming:


including this body-armor-esque suit with an embedded screen and a keyboard that the wearer holds out for the gamer, in an attempt to run a track-and-field.

But I moved my studio out of Flux and into this cute little cottage of a space:

We’ll see how it holds up in the winter and there are some already-emerging issues with the basement, but it HAS a basement, a front yard, and an 18′ apple tree. Very cute.

More on the cottage life in the months ahead – for now: MAKER MONTH HAS BEGUN!

stiles are having a social media competition to give away a Weeke Vantech CNC router – and NY Designs are in the running! (that dog is the secret weapon!)

To help their chances of entering the Final Round of the competition, just click below to view the original video and hit that “LIKE” button below the video! And see some of the people and projects you’ll be helping support if they win this thing!

here’s a link to more info on the contest

It seems like you can’t take a trip to Materials for the Arts without some bucket of awesome being splashed all over you! I recently went to MFTA on an off-shopping day just to see about retrieving some cardboard boxes for moving some studio supplies (which I got – thanks MFTA!), and was greeted with not one or even two walls but an entire winding hallway of graffiti by “ART DE CLARKO” – whom when I google search looks like they maintain a Flickr account. So the next time you go shopping there give yourself some extra time and be sure to give this mural the attention it deserves… bucket of awesome!

So here’s the skimmy. The World’s Largest DIY Event needs some DIY assistance to help spread the word. NYC is made up of five boroughs, each of which are cities in their own right. We have a lot of territory to cover! You help us with a couple minutes of your time, by going to the places you already go and dropping off some postcards and putting up some posters, and we’ll reward you with two adult single-day passes, a $50 value. Want more tickets? Just tell us what you’re willing to do, what neighborhoods and sites you’ll cover, and we’ll work something out!

It’s easy. We will send you a packet of 25 flyers and 200 postcards and you go to all the places you already go (maybe a few more) and pin or tape a flyer on a bulletin board or in a window and a small stack of postcards on the front counter. Of course you will need to ask permission first! Then in a few of the places snap a picture for us and when your done send us a few so we can see the great work you have done.

When your done let us know and we will send you two Adult tickets to World Maker Faire. You won’t have to wait in line for your tickets, save a little cash and you will have helped us spread the word about this great event within your community.

Here are some great places to consider:

Bookstores
Colleges
Coffee shops
Cafes
Toy Stores
Hobby Shops
Craft Stores
Restaurants
Scrap Stores
Community Centers
Hacker Spaces
Tech Shops
After School Programs
Garden Centers
Thrift/Vintage Stores

1)To join, email us your name, address and phone as well as the area you’ll be covering to: streetteam@makerfaire.com
2) We’re looking specifically to cover the following neighborhoods. Have another place in mind? Email us!

Neighborhoods to cover:

Park Slope
Gowanus
Sunset Park
Ditmas Park
Kensington
Williamsburg
Bushwick
Greenpoint
NYU
Parsons/New School
Hunter
SVA
Columbia
Pratt
East Village/Lower East Side
Long Island City
Sunnyside/Jackson Heights
Astoria
Ft. Greene
Navy Yard
Jersey City
Hoboken

While you’re out:

1) Snap and send us 3 pictures of locations you have placed World Maker Faire flyers and/or postcards. We’ll post ‘em up here!

2) Please don’t post flyers/postcards at any location w/o asking permission or if not permissible

3) Please don’t post flyers/postcards all in one place. We are trusting that you will be a good World Maker Faire street team member and will spread these materials out throughout your community

source photo from Free Williamsburg

The Color Wheelz in Long Island City project was a resounding success! We made around 15-20 new installations in and on the Color Wheelz van, and talked with another 50-60 people passing by, visiting the neighborhood, taking a daily constitutional, or otherwise enjoying a really lovely day in Queens!

painted linoleum arrows lead pedestrians passing through the nearby intersection to the van; I also installed some triangles across the street to get people to glance eastward and see our activity

artist Julia Vallera talking with passers-by, describing the project, talking about Flux Factory, notions of neighborhood and community, color, and participatory art

a wonderful shot of the Manhattan skyline from 45 Road and 21 Street in LIC – that building tip is the Chrysler Building, and that van is the Color Wheelz!

the Bigger Bird public sculpture (yellow thing), the Citi building, and the Color Wheelz van parked on 45 Road

[full photo set on my Flickr]

You can imagine that if today the 12-story spherical globe structure known as the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park still holds the distinction of being the Biggest World on Earth, back in 1964 that certainly was a title of acclaim! And with the recent repairs – after 15-20 years without operation – of the fountains surrounding the Unisphere, there’s the feeling of a new hope in Queens! Check out the awesome videos below for some remarkable footage of the Unisphere during its birth, including Robert Moses addressing the city, some “high-speed computers” doing mathematics, wind-tunnel tests and awesome construction shots!

(these photos courtesy of LIFE)

Flux Factory is a not-for-profit arts organization supporting innovation in things. Until November of 2008 we were located on 43rd Street near Northern Boulevard, in an industrial wasteland – surrounded by warehouses and bordered by the edge of the Sunnyside Yards. After our eviction by the MTA to pursue development on the East Side Access project, we spent some time in limbo before eventually relocating to the Dutch Kills sub-neighborhood of LIC, on 29 Street just north of Queens Plaza. Both of our facilities were located in LIC, yet the two are worlds apart in terms of operation and our interaction with the surrounding community. We’re learning there’s still lots to learn from LIC!

Inviting artist Julia Vallera and her Color Wheelz project to Long Island City is part of that learning process, an investment back into our community and an exploration of identity of the surrounding neighborhood at large. LIC is a very large neighborhood! Like the Queens borough, LIC is extremely diverse and is not typified by any one singular identity, ethnic group, language or architecture.

The John F. Murray Playground presented itself as an ideal location for this exploration and understanding because of its location and relationship to other spaces: it is equidistant between the Pulaski and Queensboro bridges – structures that lead to other boroughs and worlds unto their own; it is sandwiched between an Avenue and a Road, and between two Streets that are somehow numerically 10 streets apart, typical of the street-ordering system of this borough; on one side of the park one is greeted with incredible skyline-views of Manhattan, on the other the irony of the tallest building in NYC outside of Manhattan all by its lonesome surrounded by much lower mixed-use neighborhoods.

The Playground itself also includes a little bit of everything: a dog run, handball and basketball courts, public art (Bigger Bird), game tables, sitting areas, a ballfield and playgrounds for children of all ages. It is my hope that the Color Wheelz van will allow all who interact with it to explore and express their relationship to this playground, to the surrounding neighborhood, to our wonderful city within a city!

Nick Normal for Flux Factory
http://fluxfactory.org/

Julia Vallera and Color Wheelz:
http://www.juliavallera.com/
http://coloriumlaboratorium.com/

this text will be made available at the project site as a trifold – download PDF

MAP | TWITTER | PROJECT BLOG | JULIA’S WEBSITE

Color Wheelz is designed to transform a 1997 Ford van into a traveling, participatory installation. This van travels through the five boroughs of NYC filled with playful activities, which facilitate exploration into how color relates to community . Visitors at each destination adapt the inside and outside of the van using an array of color related items. These items include glowing neon wire, cling paper, velcro shapes, magnets and fabric. Visitors may turn on neon wire, cut shapes out of cling paper, apply velcro to the seats and walls and/or choose from an assortment of colorful fabrics to cover the interior. They consider the color of objects that surround them, such as buildings, people, clothes, food and nature. These observations inspire color patterns and designs that represent the current environment. Visitors of all ages are welcome and encouraged to create things they never thought they would or never thought they could. Every visitor’s unique color story is archived and supplimented with their personal audio recording or a written record. Meet us at one of our locations to participate in this funfilled exploration and be sure let us know how you think color relates to culture, communication and perception.

It seems I’ve been taking 3 photos of potential-stitch environments and settings now for some time, but even I didn’t know I was doing this – it wasn’t planned anyhow.

I haven’t taken anything with 4 photos – for some reason 3 seems to capture the landscapes or crowds I encounter. Looking back it all started with the Sunnyside Yard panorama I put up a couple weeks back, which got reblogged at a couple other places. That wasn’t even a very good stitch because, again, it wasn’t shot with intent to be a stitched photo – it was just something put together for the sake of giving a wider perspective in a single frame. And of course stitch photography is nothing new these days. I used to do this stuff by hand, but now it’s the click of two or three buttons or menu commands – and frankly I don’t care if some data gets blurred out, smeared, rubbed or removed – these aren’t meant to be pro, they’re just meant to capture moments of places I’ve been. Captions to follow.

( probably the best stitch of this bunch, this is a view from the Pulaki Bridge between Queens and Brooklyn; that’s a sliver of Brooklyn on the left side, mostly Queens in the foreground with Manhattan in the background – I love overcast days like this, the buildings have a really solid and stoic feel to them, with great color )

( this was the crowd inside the Casa Galicia in Astoria, Queens – before the match that Spain eventually won! This was about 40 minutes before the match even began, so you can imagine another 100+ people eventually crammed into this room! )

( also not a great stitch because it wasn’t conceived as one, still these views offer some great dichotomies: in particular I love the little sinkhole in the bottom-left in contrast to the towering buildings of Manhattan and the Citi building in “downtown” Queens )

( a recent art performance piece by Douglas Paulson and Santo Tolone – there are 32 pieces but some of their heads are chopped or obscured – two “players” and one announcer, that’s 35 people total )

( and the first 3-photo stitch, celebrating the Sunnyside Yard’s 100th anniversary this year )

The mailer doesn’t specify but the Color Wheelz collabo is curated by moi! I met Julia Vallera about 3-4 months back and thought her project would be a great way to “craft” Long Island City, and for its inhabitants – of which I am one – to better understand our dynamic city-town.

…

This month:

Going Places (Doing Stuff) III
Flux Thursday
#24hCycle
Color Wheelz
Room I + Room II
2009 SP Weather Reports

Going Places (Doing Stuff) III

You get on a bus, you don’t know where you’re going, and then something happens!

You’ve probably heard about our amazing bus tours. If you haven’t, click here to learn more! We have four more tours coming up this summer:

August 7 Josh Bernstein, Moses Gates, Matt Levy & Moira Williams: Wild Tilly’s Circus Story
August 14 David Horvitz: 500 Golden Buddhas and the Speed of Water
August 21 Marie Lorenz: Ghost Ships of the Kills
August 28 Margaret Coleman: Demonstrations of Aptitude

Going Places (Doing Stuff) III is made possible in part through support from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Carnegie Corporation, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Flux Thursday!

Join us on August 12 for this month’s Flux Thursday, our monthly potluck and salon. Dinner starts at 8 pm, with presentations to follow. Resident artist Sarah Tosques will present work from Iceland and New York, and Man Bartlett will be talking about his recent and upcoming performance art. We’ll be there – will you?

Man Bartlett: #24hCycle

Friday – Saturday, August 13-14, 8pm – 8pm
Flux Factory Gallery

What do the news and laundry have in common? Probably nothing! But we’ll be tasked to see how the two play together… over the course of 24 hours in August.

#24hCycle is envisioned as an absurdist summer party, a communal laundry washing experience, and a reading/discussion of the most up to the second news. It’s an excuse to do laundry. An opportunity to become sickly saturated in the news. Laundry will be aired and hung to dry, accumulating in the gallery space around us. Arguments will be lost and won. Our comforts may be met with discomforts, and vice versa. Our private articles of clothing will be made public, and public news articles will be made personal.

You may also bring clothing that you’d like to get rid of; the artist will be donating it to a local organization in need. Some refreshments/libations will be provided, but you’re encouraged to BYO: laundry, laptop, beverages.

For those who cannot be there in person, a live feed will be streamed, and developing interactions will be encouraged online at manbartlett.com/24hCycle.

Flux Factory artist-in-residence Man Bartlett creates performance-based works that take one task to the extreme for an extended period of time, while encouraging dynamic physical and virtual participation. These performances have taken place in diverse locations, such as a Best Buy, Winkleman Gallery, a former factory building in New Jersey, PPOW Gallery, and the Whitney Museum.

Color Wheelz

Saturday, August 14, 11am – 5pm

Flux Factory, in collaboration with artist Julia Vallera (MFA Parsons), would like to present Long Island City with Julia’s Color Wheelz project. Color Wheelz is designed to transform a 1997 Ford van into a traveling, participatory installation. This van travels through the five boroughs of NYC filled with playful activities, which facilitate exploration into how color relates to community. Visitors at each destination adapt the inside and outside of the van using an array of color-related items. These items include glowing neon wire, cling paper, velcro shapes, magnets and fabric.

The Color Wheelz van will be parked at the John F. Murray Playground on 21 Street between 45 Ave and 45 Road (map) on Saturday August 14th from 11am to 5pm – JOIN US as we visually craft Long Island City!

Room I + Room II

August 27 – September 6
Opening and performances Friday, August 27, 6-9 pm

Flux artists-in-residence Astrid Bussink, Kate Shaw, and Sarah Tosques are collaborating for an end-of-residency exhibition, showing new works including videos, performances, installation, photos and painting.

Room I

Still from The Art of Crocheting, by Astrid Bussink and Sarah Tosques

Astrid Bussink, a Dutch artist and documentary filmmaker, and Sarah Tosques, a visual artist and educator from Montreal, have collaborated to create a video installation and performance called “The Art of Crocheting.” A decade apart in age, they examine shared concerns as artists and individuals, personal pursuits, dreams and their effects. Astrid Bussink will also be presenting part of an on-going project called Constructions of Happiness.

Room II

Kate Shaw is an Australian painter that cheats on the medium with collage. A new series of her layered, brightly colored, marbled landscape paintings will be premiered at Flux Factory! The exhibition contains paintings, artist’s books, and video inspired by a recent road trip through the southwest and looking at how different cultures intervene with and interpret nature. Other work takes inspiration from an man-made mountain built from adobe (hay and mud) illustrating bible stories, rock shops in Utah, and mountains named after Biblical subjects.

Portfolio Launch: 2009 SP Weather Reports

Sunday, August 22, 4pm

The artist-run SP Weather Station, currently based on the roof of Flux Factory, invites you to a release party for its 2009 Weather Report portfolios. Each portfolio in the edition of 30 contains 12 works produced by 12 different artists who were invited to respond to any aspect of one month of SP Weather Station data in any format they desired. Works from the portfolio, including audio, books, drawings, and prints, will be on display in the gallery; the portfolio will also be for sale.

Participating artists include: (January) Mike Estabrook and Vandana Jain; (February) Susan Goethel Campbell; (March) Emily Larned; (April) Luke Strosnider; (May) Andrea Polli; (June) Mark Nystrom; (July) Patricia Zarate; (August) Jane D. Marsching; (September) Stephanie Rothenberg; (October) Graham Parker; (November) Isaac Gertman; (December) Birgit Rathsmann.

SP Weather Station is an interdisciplinary project that collects weather data, hosts a guest lecture series, and organizes weather-related publications, events, and exhibitions.

For more information, please click here.

I didn’t go to “Maker City”, but the press and images have been flooding in and its pretty obvious that this was a HUGE success – so BIG UPS to Detroit for organizing the Midwest and hopefully catalyzing a generation of Makers on the rise!

Click any of the images to go to their respective press articles, or read these press releases:

Maker Faire Detroit: Try This at Home!

Maker Faire shows off wild creations

Hackerspaces at Maker Faire Show and Tell How to Build a Better Detroit

Maker Faire Taps Into Detroit’s Sense of Mission, History as City of Tinkerers and, Yes, Entrepreneurs

Maker Faire puts the spotlight on creativity

Make It Up!

and some images from the net:

search Flickr for more images of query “maker detroit”

With glorious weather above and slightly breezy wind constantly testing my projection screen, for the final installment of Sci-Fi July we watched Serenity (aka Firefly). Around 20+ people showed up but unfortunately I didn’t snap off any crowd shots. I think it was a wonderful conclusion to a series, and I hope all 4 films together show how diverse, fun and eye-opening the sci-fi genre can be. My introductory text for Serenity is below, with some screencaps at the end – so if you’re piqued by my words and those visuals I really recommend giving the TV show and film a viewing. Thanks to everyone who came out, gave me their time, I hope you had a really wonderful sci-fi-time!

Welcome to the fourth and final installment of Sci-Fi July, a rooftop film series of the science-fiction genre.

The movie you’re about to watch tonight is the afterstory to one of the shortest lived television series of all time. A television series marred by extremely low ratings and botched maneuvers by the FOX corporation that led to its premature cancellation. A television series built around nine characters in space, a motley crew aboard a spaceship and their run-ins with the law, morality, political and ethical corruptness of their – our – universe. A television series that was a failure by certain specific measures, was resuscitated by fanatical reverence and given new life in 2005 with the release of Serentiy, the story of a Firefly-class spaceship.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a movie unto its own – it stands it’s ground independent of the television show, but I am an author and artist intrigued by history, so I want to tell you some. And what’s really beautiful about Serenity once you scratch below the surface is that this is not the history of some galaxy far, far away, but an intricately-woven history of America’s past projected into the future. Less a space opera and more a space western, Serenity is an allegory about America’s frontier, anti-government sentiments of the Old West, and a reflection on the Civil War and the proclamatory fight for freedom of the Reconstruction era.

As a line from the theme song goes, “Burn the land and boil the sea, you can’t take the sky from me.”

Of course there are some leaps of faith to understand the where and how of this story. Again I’ll reinforce that this story stands on its own, but I want to clarify some historical underpinnings. The opening scene of the film helps lay the foundation for a brief understanding of where this story takes place, and how we got there, but just to clarify:

The year is 2518. Over the first 450 years of the 21st millenium, the American and Chinese superpowers eventually grew to dominate the world’s political and cultural spheres. They would eventually merge, forming the Anglo-Sino Alliance. Thus throughout the film you will hear Mandarin phrases spoken, key expressions as the characters subtly acknowledge their Chinese “ancestry”. The dialogue will also reference America’s past, particularly names or events crucial to the outcome of the Civil War.

In this future, the Earth’s resources are spent. Human civilization has migrated to a new solar system made up of dozens of planets and hundreds of moons, leaving behind Earth-that-Was. New earths are terraformed and colonised – some are rich in resources and materials, while others are barren and lawless.

This “space frontier” is the setting for a future war between the Alliance and the outer planets – the Independents. After five years of war the Alliance emerges the victor and brings a system and code of law to all planets. With the defeat of the Independents whose soldiers are known as browncoats for their western-like trench coats, some decide to buck the norms and status quo of this new “civilization”, and attempt to make a living as space couriers of questionable cargo.

Meet Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, his ship and crew. Along the way they pick up two kids, Simon and River Tam – River is something of an Alliance government experiment gone good or bad, depending on whose side you’re on, and Simon is – was – an accomplished doctor who is now a fugitive after rescuing his sister, the love of his life.

Serenity is a “total narrative”, and if you’re at all intrigued by tonight’s film I totally recommend going back to watch the television series, which is an intricately woven history with deep character developments. Some of those developments were never expanded upon due to the television series getting cancelled, while others are “put to rest” too early in this film, which is disappointing, but such is the nature of fandom. I’m a BIG fan of Serenity. And I hope you will be too.

This film contains some of the most remarkable visual effects to date, includes a hacker known as Mr. Universe, cannibalistic space zombies known as Reavers, and with all good sci-fi there is some trivia! In contemporary techie culture the Google application known as Google Wave is named after the Firefly series, and referencing literary history is the planet Miranda, named after Shakespeare’s Miranda in The Tempest, who says in Act V, scene I: “O brave new world, / That has such people in’t!”

This is the story of those people.

And in conclusion, a small back-story.

Sci-Fi July emerged because during the winter when it was cold out and most of us were holed up and trying to stay warm, I started screening films informally. One night I screened one of the best sci-fi films of all time, Dark City, and to my amazement NO ONE else had seen it before. I was baffled, stunned. As I scrolled through the names of other films, it turned out there were numerous films that only one or two people had seen this film, but not that film, etc. Thus emerged Sci-Fi July, and my attempt to screen a film that while popular within sci-fi circles, might not be so acknowledged by a larger public. With each screening, only one or two people in the audience had seen the movie previously, so with 15-20 people showing up for each screening I consider that something of a success.

Other films that were considered but eventually passed up because I could only screen one film per week, included:

Cherry 2000
The Running Man
Dark City
Final Fantasy The Spirits Within
Black Hole
Tetsuo the Iron Man
Gattaca
Innerspace
Metropolis (1927)
Quartermass and the Pit
Westworld

the list goes on and on. And in my quest to compile my own lists I encountered Moria which is a wonderful database of sci-fi, fantasy and horror films. Enjoy!

In the near-middle of that trapezium-like state of Connecticut is the city of Middletown and near that near-middle city is a world unto its own. I’m talking about Wild Bill’s Nostalgia Store, which is home to many many things – as in piles of piles of things and boxes of things stacked on stacks of stuff, leaning against walls made from containers full of objects. I mean this place has it all – one of everything.

And some things which are the only one of their kind, in this case the World’s Largest Jack-in-the-Box, a 600-pound behemoth of a head mounted on a log housed inside a giant brick silo. When this thing emerges it floats more than 30 feet off the ground, yet manages less to terrorize and more to strike awe and inspiration into all who see it! Perhaps because the only reason you would be at Wild Bill’s is because you know how freaky and strange this world already is, and a giant floating head is simply a punctuation mark on something already understood.

Originally a traveling sideshow item, the head was retrofitted to live in the silo:

the mounting mechanism:

the 600-pound counterweight! including antlers and hopefully-dead bullet rounds!

more photos of Wild Bill’s at my Flickr

let’s see, there’s still an Open Call for Makers to submit projects: go here

you can get one FREE adult day pass with a MAKE magazine subscription: click here

you can download the above image as a PDF, print it out and e-share it: download here

There’s a new and nifty and incredibly awesome resource in Long Island City these days: a LASER!

Designglut in association with Length Width Height (a fabrication lab in the “incubation” center at NY Designs), hosted a laser party last night and invited designers and artists to try it out with some free etching & burning time. Awesome!

All projects were cut on a Trotec laser with double gull-wing doors – made it look like a DeLorean when both the doors were up! This thing is proper, and capable of some really remarkable and remarkably precise cuts. Some people cut out little keychain shapes; a piece of fabric with a lattice-like design; or some flexible wood made into bracelets. Like I said, AWESOME!

Big ups to Ben W-R from LxWxH for organizing the event – there were some great people there, and I definitely need to organize some shop time myself and get involved.

super-duper punters:

the exhaust vent needed to keep the laser cooooooool:

So yesterday morning, real early like, my phone beeps me awake. It’s early, around 7:30am. My phone never beeps this early, or if it does I never wake up to it. For some reason this particular morning I not only woke up to it but was even further-bothered to actually pick up my phone and see why I was being prompted. I glanced at the home screen – oh, new email. Go figure. Nothing new there, I get new emails every hour, whether I’m awake or asleep. Then I actually opened up my gmail, which I NEVER DO, at least not at 7:30am! WTF was I doing!?

Well, I had this short-n-sweet email waiting in my inbox, from someone named Jason whom I’d never met before – the subject was simply “makers notebook”:

Found a notebook of yours at a swap meet thing a while back. Was just flipping though it and it looks as though it might not be something you want to lose. Let me know…

Around 7 weeks back you’ll remember my notebook was stolen at a public swap event.

Stolen. Swapped. Pinched. However you describe it, I went 7 weeks without some very valuable information. But it’s just information – names, websites, notes, drawings, etc. Nothing very valuable, and nothing I couldn’t recompile over time. Granted time was a factor in my planning of the forthcoming World Maker Faire, and after my notebook was swapped I went a couple days without going outside because I was so shook up. But the event eventually made me start thinking differently about information, how I record it, how and where I access it, etc.

Don’t get me wrong I’m super-happy to have the very physical and analog book back in my possession. But as I mentioned to Jason during our conversation over a couple rounds of beers at the Bohemian in Astoria, I’ve started to migrate more of my sensitive data to the cloud, and automate my backups more frequently. Oh yeah, that was another weird thing, was that of all places Jason lives in Astoria, and I in Long Island City, and that he’s even biked by my studio on numerous occasions, so pretty wild to think that my book was so very close to home all those weeks!

A full-time practicing nurse and self-avowed biblioholic, Jason admitted that he originally swapped the book because he recognized the “MAKER” label, and thought the book might be something about maker culture at large. Like I said, a biblioholic, the book sat in a pile of piles of books until he got around to “flipping through” his swap items. He quickly realized the mistake, and thanks to my information (POBox, phone number, email, even a bit.ly shortlink to my web domain!) being written on the inside cover, he contacted me with the above quoted email.

And while we both operate in completely different worlds it turns out we had other ideas and interests in common! Jason is originally from Albany and just happens to be the announcer for the Albany All-Stars roller derby team – a sport which I’ve developed an interest in over the past year or so. We also talked about Creative Commons licensing, copyleft and hacker cultures, cloud-based storage, how we hope Google never become evil like other info-giants, and the interesting dilemmas that technology forces us to reconcile given our previous multi-millennial dependence on analog interactions.

I also showed Jason how I moved on to a new notebook, and even had a section in my new notebook titled “stolen notebook notes” – notes I was attempting to remember or recall, or which I was reminded of in conversation or email. Jason had some regret in recognizing how much trouble I went through, but I let him know that there were no hard feelings, and it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t intentional – so in turn I gave Jason a brand new Maker’s Notebook!

Mostly I was just happy to see my notes again:

I have this method of blocking out data I never need to see again, while highlighting other information that is “done” but which I want to recall if necessary – everything that isn’t blocked or highlighted means it’s still being worked on!

And of course some drawing notes and other projects that have already happened or should still happen in the near-future I hope:

In total around 60 pages of notes, spanning 4+ months. I’m almost not even bothered to write in the old notebook anymore, because I’ve moved on to a new one which has a different layout and purpose. But damn was it rewarding to open that thing up and read all those names and details again! Hell my neon green push-pencil was still in there even – man I missed that pencil!

Most important to me now is that there are a good few dozen names that I’m reminded of, people with projects that I want to participate in the forthcoming World Maker Faire – and there’s still time for them to apply to the open call so I have a lot of work ahead, and suddenly it feels less stressful, more exciting again! And I told Jason that I’ll get him some tickets for his good samaritan assistance. It’s going to be a blast!

Once again big ups to Astrid’s Buznik blog for the remarkable shots. For the third installment of Sci-Fi July, we watched The Brother from Another Planet, which only one other person in the audience had seen before, but it was pretty unanimous at the end that this was a big hit. Especially for its visuals and street scenes of NYC from the early 80s, but also just because it’s a very fun film, with natural dialog and almost hilarious human elements throughout. My introductory text is below.

Welcome to the third installment of Sci-Fi July, a rooftop film series of the science fiction genre.

So far we’ve seen a mid-90s film pretending to take place in the 21st century; we’ve seen an early 70s film that was no doubt about it set during the early 70s! In the 90s we were led to believe that a pair of VR gloves and wrap-around shades were all that was needed to “place a long-distance phone call” and enter the computer; in the 70s our spaceship designs were wholly believeable but everything else that we understood about space was a flop – this is understandable given that film was released 6 years prior to the launching of the Voyager I and II space probes.

But what about the 80s?

Although it was not my original plan to choose a film from each of the past 4 decades, it became a natural logical extension to focus on the 80s after reflecting on the impact of the previous two films in this series. The 80s were something of a high-tide for science fiction, immediately after the rise and popularity of space opera. It’s hard to deny the originality and influence of the 80s – movies which Hollywood is now attempting to remake as it runs out of ideas. Ideas like Predator from 1987 whose franchise was attempted to be revived just a couple weeks back, or Tron from 1982 whose game will be updated at the end of this year.

While by no means comprehensive, other notable 80s sci-fi films include:
Blade Runner
Aliens
the Ghostbusters films
Highlander
The Running Man
Brazil
The Abyss
Howard the Duck
Mad Max II
Weird Science
Dune
Gojira
Terminator
Back to the Future parts I and II
RoboCop
E.T.
Maximum Overdrive
and 4 of the original Star Trek films and 3 of the original Superman films

Other cult, anime or fantasy crossover films included:
The Dark Crystal, Repo Man, Cherry 2000, Akira, Flash Gordon, Flight of the Navigator, Tetsuo, Transformers the Movie and Spaceballs – whose tongue-in-cheek style summed up the parody-genre that was also pervasive during the 80s.

The 80s were marked by other extremes, milestones and conditions that the world hadn’t experienced before or since. Without going into details:

Reagan was elected; the first Space Shuttle Columbia lifts off; the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrates 73 seconds after launch, killing 7 crew; Margaret Thatcher, the first female elected leader of a western country, ruled for the whole decade, and a year before and after; the IBM PC was released and the Commodore 64 became one of history’s best-selling computers; Solidarnosc is founded in Poland; the Berlin Wall fell, or was sledged apart rather; MTV launches; Michael Jackson introduced the Moonwalk; the Simpsons debut; the Nintendo Entertainment System launches in 1983 in Japan and then in 1985 in the US; John Lennon was assassinated; Chernobyl melted; the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and the accompanying television images and magazine photos brought to popular attention our attachment to the sludge; military dictatorships fell throughout much of South America while they were consolidated in regions of southeast Asia like Burma which became Myanmar under the State Law and Order Restoration Council; and of course the recognition of a new disease, and the ensuing AIDS pandemic.

In short, the 80s were definitely an era that you either experienced or you didn’t, and I’m personally thankful for my time and place in it.

Now of course it’s hard to screen a film on a rooftop in New York City without thinking about New York City. The water towers in the distance, the subways – aboveground – rolling along nearby 31st Street, the honks horns and hollers of this city’s inhabitants. Now these words might immediately evoke images of Escape From New York – whose many scenes were shot throughout East St. Louis and St. Louis where I grew up. But I’m not interested in perceptions of future New York environments, I’m intrigued by real-world street scenes.

And while science fiction is often not employed as a genre to critique or understand the social milieu, what better way to understand the above-mentioned extremes, conditions, perceptions, realities, problems, dilemmas, and blessings of the 80s than via a mute alien who has escaped his captors, crashes in NY harbor, and eventually gets dumped in Harlem where he befriends the patrons of a local bar, thanks to his ability to fix electronics by simply touching them!

Joe Morton plays “The Brother”, who remarkably manages and makes believeable his ability to go for 108 minutes without saying a single word! It is those around him who speak for him, or rather about him and get us to first pity, then embrace the alien inside. A movie whose characters go largely un-named, some are simply social archetypes: Hispanic Man, Islamic Man, Haitian man, Korean shopkeeper, etc.

Interesting moments include two “Men in Black” who perceive NO stereotypes when entering an African-American bar in Harlem, perhaps because as aliens they don’t comprehend such base racisms; an eyeball used as a recording device; some extreme frame-rate arcade game-playing; those steam-pipes in the streets of New York City haven’t changed in over 25 years; encounters with graffiti; intravenous drugs and the Wall Street brokers that sell them; and a remarkable subway card game!

as the tagline of the movie goes:

Welcome to a world of crude beauty… of danger and excitement… of wonders, legend, and imagination… Welcome to Harlem

The Next HOPE is over, but as the closing article in the Android app said now we all go back to wherever we go to do whatever it is we do, but hopefully walk away with the spirit of the gathering. See you next year – I hope. The convention was incredibly impressive, and there are certain attributes to hacker culture that simply can’t be found elsewhere. Notably the approachability, you can just walk up to anyone and start talking about their project, and they’re normally incredibly inclined to talk – usually holed up in their offices, workspaces, in front of their terminals for days on end, then suddenly – finally – human contact. And a culture of trust and openness is pervasive – money was just left on tables for donations or purchase of hardware, laptop rigs were abandoned for hours on end while people went to a talk, and nothing gets stolen, nothing gets pinched. The culture trusts itself.

Highlights included Mitch Altman discussing “do what you love”; Alpha One Labs‘s sunrise party – dubbed “The Party”; the Hackerspaces Forever panel discussion; extensive discussions around IPv6; geotagging and GPS; and of course lockpicking!

a Food For Geeks workshop, this part of the workshop focused on sous vide cooking and using industrial equipment to regulate food temperatures:

the Hackerspace Village where you could set up shop, hack away, solder and do other experiments, and discuss with other hackers your projects:

the Maker Faire team had a booth; that’s Becky attempting to pick a lock and Matt coding up some mad python script:

full set of images on my Flickr

turned into this:

which quickly turned into a spontaneous street parade:

1 goal. That’s all you need to get people dancing in the streets!

Seen in the subway on the way to day 2 of The Next HOPE conference – a simple hack involving a piece of white duct tape. You should hurry to waste your money, there are only a few days left! Clever.

So the opening film for Sci-Fi July was important to me because it was in my formative teen-adult years, and it was at a time when net lingo was just beginning to gain awareness and usage in popular culture, or so my naive teen-adult memory recalls. But for the second installment of Sci-Fi July, I decided to turn back the dial, to 1971, to a time before time-as-I-knew-it, and screen a film with a much slower pace, virtually no plot, that was pre-Star Wars and thus before space opera – my hope was it was a movie wholly unfamiliar to the crowd (whereas Johnny Mnemonic was “known” from most peoples’ youth, but simply never seen because it was so bad). I was right, and I introduced the film with the following text (btw the screening took place inside the Flux gallery due to a consistent threat of rain – which did happen for about 5-8 minutes during the film, so I thank everyone for putting up with the humidity of the space – thus the fans!):

Welcome to the second installment of Sci-Fi July, an informal rooftop film series of the science fiction genre.

The movie you’re going to watch tonight has consistently returned a mixed bag of emotions and responses for nearly 30 years. Regarded by some as seminal influence, and by others as a complete flop, I would argue for the staying power of tonight’s film, Silent Running, and its pivot point in film history. It’s influences and its influence are far and wide.

It’s no 2001 A Space Odyssey, but it is directed and produced by Douglas Trumbull, whom some would recognize as a special effects supervisor on that 1968 blockbuster, and who would go on to supervise special effects for one of the truly greatest sci-fi films of all time, Blade Runner. However it would seem Trumbull’s trade was best put to use in the special effects department, and less in the director’s chair – nice try though.

Made on a budget nearly 1/10th of Kubrick’s space masterpiece, Trumbull did employ some genius techniques to achieve his desired shots, notably filming aboard a decommissioned NAVY aircraft carrier, the USS Valley Forge, which also happens to be the name of this film’s space freighter turned botany ark.

You heard me right, I said “botany ark”. The earth has been completely defolliated and the last remaining forests and plant life float in space inside geodesic domes while humans apparently debate over whether plant life is necessary or not for the continuation of the species. Domes whose design was influenced in part by the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Climatron, a Bucky Fuller-style facility in St. Louis housed not but a mile from where I grew up.

Oh and there’s robots! Or “drones” rather. Drones that wobble and never fall down, somehow. That’s because housed inside them were multiple amputee actors, again another genius Trumbull technique. Domes and drones which can easily be seen as influence on other sci-fi titles like 2007′s Sunshine or even Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

However the science falls short: are you seriously telling me you didn’t know light was needed to grow plants? and why are geodesic domes in orbit around Saturn anyhow – what’s wrong with an orbit around Earth? And not about science, but why is it called Silent Running anyhow? If someone from the audience figures this one out, please, enlighten us.

But do look out for some incredible sets, including vector waveform monitors, American Airlines freight containers, and a truly remarkable scene with a sort of microscopic integrated circuit soldering machine – wow!

and once again some great crowd shots by Astrid Bussink’s digital diarrhea photostream

Flux Factory is an artist-run not-for-profit organization that provides residencies and work spaces for 14 artists and organizes group exhibits in-house and worldwide as an arts collective. The premises include a gallery, a coworking office, a screen printing lab, and a wood shop. It also has a shared kitchen, library, and lots of great people. Residents benefit from an engaged and creative community, studio visits, monthly art salons, and exposure to a large community of creative collaborators who both maintain personal practices and also develop projects together. All residents have a voice in planning programming and sustaining the organization as a whole.

We’re looking for an artist, community member, and friend who enjoys being part of a wonderful and active social milieu, and has a willingness to work collaboratively and/or socially.

Applications are due on August 1st.

All rooms have big windows and range from $550-700 per month plus utilities. Square footages range from 120-207. Residents must find their own funding for their residency.

Apply here.

my good pals – thanks Dan! – over at the New York Hall of Science ( @nysci ) sent me a secret special flyer for a FREE kids pass to that most-awesomest science museum (the rocket pad, tornado chamber, and articulating sound pattern alone are worth the trip). What a great place to explore and have fun, and it’s in my favorite NYC park, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. There’s so much to see and do there – NYSCI, QMA, Unisphere, Futurama, USTA, Light Cycles, Meadow Lake, Queens Wildlife Center, and more! – but it’s also just so peaceful and tranquil (there are some great cattails and walks to be had around Meadow Lake for sure!).

Anyhow, you can download the reduced ticket either as PDF or GoogleDoc:

nysci-friends-and-family.pdf or view the online GoogleDoc

GO QUEENS!

Ahhhh how things have a way of coming back around on themselves, and how art has a way of blurring the boundaries of itself, life, and entertainment.

Socrates Sculpture Park opened up their 2010 summer film series, Outdoor Cinema, last week with a screening of the “road movie on a river”, Flood Tide directed by Todd Chandler. The movie was a “remix” in the director’s own words, since it was specially adapted to feature a live score by Dark Dark Dark:

Genius! At times their score was seamless, to the point where I was watching a film and the music started to effect me in such a way that I had to remind myself that it was live, and I had to glance over at Dark Dark Dark on the adjacent stage to confirm that indeed they were playing the music I was hearing. And as always, set against the backdrop of Roosevelt Island and the Upper East Side of Manhattan makes any trip to Outdoor Cinema a blast!

And then this really wonderful moment occurred where one of Swoon’s Switchback Sea boats, floating down the Hudson, was projected onto the blow-up screen and reminded me of 2008 September 7th when I took a similar shot of another boat from that same armada floating down the East River, passing via the same park I was now sitting in – watching a filmic representation of that similar moment! Funny how life does that to you, eh?

In the blink of an eye the World Cup final is upon us. ¡Viva España! I say. They’re both exciting teams up to this point – and what’s really exciting is that neither of them have won a World Cup before – which means one of those two countries will become still only the 8th country since 1930 to win the coveted trophy, and joining England and France as the only countries to win once. With the last World Cup final being played between Italy and France, with Germany taking 3rd place against Portugal, and this time the final being played between Holland and Spain, with Germany having just defeated Uruguay, this signals a return of the dominance of European football, which many Latin/South American bloggers and journalists are hush-hush about – since a South American team has won the Cup every other time since 1962, this will be the longest drought in their history since Italy won twice in ’34 and ’38. Just sayin’.

the opening of Sci-Fi July, a weekly month-long rooftop film series for friends and friends of friends, was a resounding success! Around 23 people showed up for an unknown screening of Johnny Mnemonic.

I introduced the series, or the film more-specifically rather, with the following text:

The movie you’re about to watch is based on a short story by William Gibson, regarded by some as the father of cyberpunk, who coined the word “cyberspace”, and sought a “combination of lowlife and high tech” in his often dystopian novels.

This 1995 screenplay of Gibson’s 1981 short story stars Keanu Reeves as Johnny Mnemonic, post-Bill and Ted and pre-The Matrix, whose realization of his role lies somewhere between the “duuuude” and the “whoah” of those respective films.

Set in the year 2021, Johnny is a digital data courier who stores clients’ information in a cybernetic implant in his head. It holds a whopping 80 gigabytes – which is a laugh today given our phones hold nearly this much data, and we’ve easily achieved the multi-terabyte compression level.

Johnny’s “pride in profession” rests in the security of his data-envelope, which is protected by seemingly randomly generated images, yet also reminds one today of fffffound images, delicious gif streams, and image macros: I want room service!

I won’t sugar-coat it, this is an especially bad film! A special movie to a lot of cult sci-fi fans, yet IMDB rate it at 4.9 and I think that’s being generous. Keanu’s acting is horrendous. The editing is choppy. And at 1 hour 40 minutes it can appear to go on forever. But there are some special full-minute VR scenes, some incredibly geeky one-liners, oh and performances by Udo Kier, Takeshi Kitano, and none-other than rapper Ice-T as a tattooed & dreadlocked hacker, Black Flag’s front man Henry Rollins as a saviour doctor, and Dolph Lundgren as a street preaching Jesus freak-cybernaut.

Welcome to Sci-Fi July.

the remarkable crowd shot above was taken by current Flux Factory resident from the Low Countries, Astrid Bussink.

Sci-Fi July is an informal rooftop film series curated by moi, and will happen every Tuesday in July – you will not be told what movie will be screened, but they will all be of the sci-fi genre and they will all reward you in one way or another!

click for giganto-big image composite

their words, not mine!

another good line from the article author: “Chicago was trying to win consecutive games for the first time since June 16-17.”

The Madagascar Institute will be running Chariot Races at Maker Faire NYC, September 25th and 26th at the New York Hall of Science out in Queens. (we will also be doing a whole bunch of other stuff, like running ten years’ worth of dubious carnival rides and a whole rube-fueled midway- more to come on that later this Summer). We want you to be a part of it. We want you to make a chariot, and race it, and if you survive we guarantee that you will get so, so laid. (or, at least: screwed. Whatever.) .

We are going for something like that classic scene from Ben Hur ( ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpoKdPNM10M ) except without horses, but with more whips, dirty tricks, and Charlton Heston.

To keep things interesting, we have decided to distill out the essence of chariot-ness and leave that as the only necessary condition, and pretty close to the only rules: the thing has to move, and it needs to have at least one person standing, nobly, exposed and unsupported from the ribs up. If it fits those criteria it is a chariot. All the rest (how it is propelled, how many people ride on it, the defensive/offensive weaponry) is up to you.

There are a few more things- not rules, per se, but caveats and things you should know:

-A web entry form will be live soon, but before that e-mail chariots@madagascarinstitute.com if you want to build a chariot. Include a team name, contact info, the size of your crew and number of riders, and a little something about your chariot.
-No projectile weapons. If you want to hit your opponents with something, by all means go for it, but take responsibility for your actions and tie that water balloon to a stick.
- No whining. There will be blood: We expect, and are looking forward to, mayhem. You will prob be crushed, burnt, spindled, poked, and ground into a fine paste. People will laugh at your misfortune. If the possibility of the Hurting is too much for you stay away. Riders assume all risk. Also, the races might or might not be “fair”.
- There is no money. We are operating on a budget of zero, which after our expenses leaves zero to give you, so we will not help fund your Chariot, no matter how awesome, there will be no prize money, and we will not pay to repair you or your thing after it is destroyed during the race. However, we might provide transportation to get your Chariot from Gowanus to Queens, and there will prob be beer for participants. Details will come in September.
- No fake ideas. We do not want to hear about the awesome thing that you thought of but will not actually make.Reality is a lot more interesting. -If you want to be a part of the Chariot races but do not know how to make anything and don’t want to learn, or if your talents lie in other areas we can still use you. For example, we are willing to act as a conduit to link up workers without ideas and idea people without tools and so on, but it would be better if someone more organized than us stepped up to do this. Also, there will be a ton of work for costuming, set dressing, barking, trumpet playing, and on and on. If you want to be a part of this in any way e-mail chariots@madagascarinstitute.com.

We want this call to go out far and wide, to all the people out there making cool, dangerous shit (or, at least, really really wanting to) that we do not know and have never met; the people who are inspired and scheming and building but have been lacking a concrete goal and solid deadline. Forward this on to all of the metalworkers, gearheads, and builders, actual or aspiring that you know. Maker Faire has been a big deal in the Bay Area for a few years now, and it has become yet another chance for grubby, Burning Man obsessed Oaklanders with their ginormous spaces and repetitive fire art to shine. Enough of that- Maker Faire is coming to NYC, and this is your chance to represent.

Excelsior,
Hackett

…

the above was copied verbatim (minus the image which I inserted) from a “Mada” email. For another example of not only how serious but honest they are about their call to arms, check out this video from Gadgetoff ’09 featuring a DIY jet-powered merry-go-round they built:

(takeoff is around the 1:20 mark)

seen on Jay Street in downtown Brooklyn, this mosaic clearly comes from a time of yore, maybe before “technology” was really what we know if it today, in terms of HD video, capacitive touchscreens, and widgets-everything. Still, it’s kinda cute (actually, it’s totally awesome!).

View Larger Map

I’m not generally a braggard but I am pretty damned happy with myself that I got to see the premier NYC performance by South Africa’s own Die Antwoord. What’s that stand for? The Answer. The answer to what? Whatever man… fuck it!

A ninja, a hooded-masked DJ and a butterfly with the weirdest haircut ever. If that’s their “answer” then you should be even more confused now! And they put on a SICK and RAWKUS show, totally high-octane from start to finish. It’s unfortunate how many people left the room after their first full song, their Enter the Ninja anthem whose catchy chorus combined with wtf-visuals made them an instant YouTube phenom some months back, whose viral numbers now stand at over 2.1 million views. And I’m personally responsible for watching that video on about 3,000 computers. But like I say some people left, maybe they simply couldn’t handle Zef Side. I mean shit got rowdy:

First off there’s the all-day Intel & Vice collabo Creators Project. And by all-day I mean 2pm-2am!

Film screenings, graffiti walls, DIY satellites, Spike Jonze, eyewriters and installations galore, this is the event to be at today… alllllll day! Did I mention that Die Antwoord are playing!? If you don’t know who I’m talking about then check out this ZEF SIDE post I threw up back in February about 4 minutes before they went viral. I mean they went viral to the point where when I saw people the next day or week, we would both start singing that butterfly-samurai chorus, and know what the hell each other were talking about! Meanwhile, anyone around me or us had no clue. So this is a big exciting moment for me to finally get to see The Answer… to what? Fuck it man!

If that’s not your thing but gelatinous molds are, you’re in luck!

Sponsored by some great organizations including MAKE, CRAFT and core77 – don’t forget Jell-O itself! – this annual event is taking place at the superbly awesome Gowanus Studio Space from 6-10pm and will feature a juried panel deciding the most hot-shit jell-o molds based on criteria not purely aesthetic but also structural/sculptural ingenuity and culinary “appeal” – how subjective! Electro-DJs and jell-o shots are also expected.

And if that’s not enough there’s a HAM radio party taking place from 8pm-1am at the new NYC Resistor space:

I haven’t been to the new space yet, and I’m really itching to pay a visit – Die Antwoord go on stage at 10:30pm so I’m trying to think if I can actually leave the Creators Project before 6, see the Jell-O event, bike back to Union Square to see Die Antwoord, then leave for the HAM radio party. … ? ! … !?@)$)O$J#!!! Just another day in the life of…

so I bought this Bell helmet with the intention of modifying it and making it more “cautious”, hazardous, and look-the-eff-out. Eventually the idea is for the whole thing to be fluorescent orange, but first I wanted to do a test. I learned long ago to put faith in rubber cement as an agent to apply to plastic and inorganic surfaces in order to later pull up the cement and anything that might find itself attached to it, in this case some spray paint. Painter’s tape is good for the foundation because it’s easy to apply and cheap, but the rubber cement allows me to make a much finer line, on curved surfaces without worrying about spray paint running underneath the cement – once the cement sets it won’t let anything through.

So first thing I did was lay my tape line in the area I wanted to test:

and then I applied the rubber cement around the edges of the cavity:

I taped off the perimeter where I wanted the design to be, and I taped the interior of the cavity space so no spray got inside the helmet. Basically with the interior tape, hold the helmet up to a light and look inside the helmet. If you can’t see any direct light, then no spray particles will be able to get in either! This will keep the inside of your helmet nice-n-clean.

then I taped a plastic bag around the entire helmet to protect the areas I didn’t want sprayed:

Get out yer paint! I probably should have painted the helmet white first, but 1. I didn’t have any laying around and 2. I was lazy to get some and 3. eager to test it out!

The helmet after one coat:

Then remove the plastic bag and perimeter tape line:

The remove the tape in the cavity area and you’re left with something like this:

Then use any tool to remove the rubber cement. Since it was only recently applied it will pull up quite easily. I’ve found a graphite pencil is ideal for most applications, because it can even be erased from certain surfaces, if necessary. Not necessary with the foam of a bike helmet, but it does work well:

I’m not sure how these things are made because the top of the helmet is like some sort of plastic, but the foam is overlapping the plastic in some places. Basically I’m setting myself up to allow for some wiggle-room in how smooth my lines are, or how strict I am about the design. In the end I think this came out really well! I plan to tape off the rest of the helmet cavities, get another can of spray paint, and finish the job – I just need a half-day or day where I can let the helmet dry and still use my bike for daily commutes. And of course I plan to keep adding to the helmet in the months ahead.

caption this:

Continuing on with the Parade, it got a little too sparse at times. I mean some sparseness is expected, as some acts take longer to proceed down the parade line than others. There was a little gap midway that seemed to really deflate the atmosphere, but the last quarter of the parade really picked it up a couple notches with some spectacular outfits, great color, a couple bumpin’ sound systems and general flare. But before we even get near that point, there was Krunkle Aaron:

now we can continue!

and lastly, WHO IS THIS GUY!:!??!j;(*(J@!

and what better way to round off a trip to see the Mermaid Day Parade than actually going to and relaxing on the beach proper:

niiiiiiice! See you mermaids next year!

[full set of images and videos on my Flickr]

The Mermaid Day Parade 2010 opened with a bang! A great procession down Surf Ave and then onto the boardwalk featuring last year’s King Neptune and Queen Mermaid, that is Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson respectively. Lou rocked the push-throne with his baseball-cap crown and pink-n-green cape-robe. Brilliant! Freaks to follow:

This was a pretty timid Mermaid Day Parade in my mind though. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but there were a couple points to reckon with:

the BP oil spill theme was a little too much. I mean one or even two costumes dealing with it seems okay, but I counted about a half-dozen if not more, including some entire sections that were just BP-related. Yes, it doesn’t effect NY yet; yes, it will someday; yes, people who live in NYC are from areas effected by the spill; BUT, I think the overt, acute nature of the costumes really doesn’t do any good. Straight up.

not enough Freaks on the whole. Just an observation. Not sure what it means.

per above comment, that means I must get involved next year! even though I’m Normal.

stilt-walkers these days just buy their stilts – not sure how I feel about this.

not enough electro-art costumes – again, I must get involved!

most of the music – save the Hungry March Band – sucked. banging on wooden boxes out of rhythm doesn’t justify your participation in the parade! At least figure out ONE tune and play it well – within 50 feet I can’t hear you so it doesn’t matter if you’re on repeat.

group and collective thematic sections were the HIGHLIGHT: from the sailor booty-bass section to the Flea Circus even to the Coney Island Brewery girls, it was the sections that were driven by a group energy that proved the most exciting for the audience to cheer on!

Please someone tell me you know who this is! I’ve seen her around town before and I want to involve her in some upcoming projects. She’s totally wicked!

And finally for part 1, the Hungry March Band. They rocked, without a doubt, and their gold-n-white theme showed how to unify a section and really drive the energy levels UP! The kids up front were absolutely adorable and the puppet in the rear was a great finishing element!

[full set of images and videos on my Flickr]

Hanging out with Becky Stern yesterday at the FIGMENT NYC festival on Governor’s Island, the boat disembarked and within 50 feet I ran into Doc Advencha and then Ohio Mike aka 0h10m1ke. The rest of the crowd proceeded on when somehow Becky and I were picked out of the crowd to have our 1-minute matchbook portraits drawn!

Simple! and Lovely! a 1-minute contour line-drawing on the inside of a labeled and numbered matchbook. Having passed the 8k mark the day before in this series, Mike says the matchbook project will end with the 10,000th portrait – how soon, where and when is unknown, as Mike walks the streets of New York and attends events like Figment to fulfill his drawing volume dreams!

BIG UPS to Becky Stern and Collin Cunningham for their excellent work on these videos from the Bay Area Maker Faire 2010. These videos will show you just some of the many excellent projects that were taking place at and in some cases being made on-site at the Maker Faire! And even I need to watch these videos to see what I missed! Like the aerial photography pole project – yup, didn’t even know about that until I saw some photos after the event was concluded! With over 670 projects happening simultaneously over two days, me and the pole-guy must have ran laps around each other in Expo Hall! Hah!

Tomorrow is Flux Thursday @ Flux Factory (directions), and it’ll be a special Flux Thursday not only because of the awards ceremony for Flux’s current exhibition The Science Fair (I wonder who will win the award for “BIG VIOLENCE”?!), but especially because I’ll be giving a slideshow by the working title The World’s Longest DIY Slideshow.

Don’t worry it won’t be as painful as it sounds. Since returning from the Bay Area for Maker Faire, a lot of people have asked me how was the trip, what did I see, do, etc. So rather than repeat the same story to a dozen people, I’d rather spit it to many dozen people at the same time – and be merry with drink and eats, Flux Thursday is a potluck event so if you plan on coming bring something for others to enjoy. And I will plan to make it worth your while with my roller coaster slideshow – my plan is 300 images in 30 minutes! 10 a minute or one image every 6 seconds, with explanation! Strap yourself in! It’s gonna be fuuuuuuuuun!

It looks like this. It has 5 stickers on the front, that fit into those rectangular areas; and my name on a sticker on the back. Inside, my contact details, including: POBox, phone, Google Voice, skype, email, web, etc.

SCORE! is a free-stuff popup swap.

I got there early, helped volunteer, busted my balls setting up the books and electronics departments while people were flooding in. I did my best. This was my payback – for the 2 minutes I had my back turned, someone stole my notebook. It was behind the electronics table, in a pile of obviously-personal stuff. It was not an “accident” – it was an obvious quick-pinch. The analogy is like taking off your shoe to remove a rock, setting your shoe down to wipe your foot, and someone stealing your shoe: SCORE! FREE SHOE!

Why would someone do that?

There was clearly a culture of people there who understood the intention of the event: keep waste out of landfills, exchange, dialogue, talk about stuff, the aesthetics of life. And then there were people who were there to simply cart away as much free stuff as they possible could get away with. Sad but true.

This reminds me increasingly of why I’m a “digitalist” – specifically, why I like to keep as much information as possible “in the cloud”. Unfortunately, I hadn’t transcribed all of the information contained within my notebook yet. And most of my notebooks, once they finish just sit on a shelf and collect dust. Unfortunately, this notebook wasn’t supposed to “finish” until the end of September.

School of the Future, Holocenter, Maker Faire, Flux Factory, etc… if I had a meeting with you, if I took notes, they’re gone. Just GONE.

6+ months of notes and ideas, snatched in a single breath.

Gone.

Needless to say I’m pissed, upset, and depressed. Like I say I helped Alpha One Labs setup shop, and volunteered my energies. I barely got to talk or network with anyone because the pace was so hectic. The event organizers seemed plenty nice and there were a number of cute girls there. The lady running the book area was super-cute and there was a barkeep I would have liked chatting up. Now, I’m sitting at home sulking on a sunny Saturday afternoon and frankly I DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK OUTSIDE.

I know at some point I’m going to cry, I just lost so much work and time. And I’ll have to spend double-time the next four months in preparation for World Maker Faire (NYC) recovering or following up with a “sorry” to everybody I was supposed to get in touch with and now… my mind is so overworked and flooded with information, I simply can’t remember everything anymore. I have to write things down. But now it’s like I no longer trust writing it down, or taking a notebook outside that might contain sensitive information if lost. But it wasn’t lost, it was stolen.

I’ve coordinated events before with 2, 4, 900 people. In my home and elsewhere. Always left doors and rooms unlocked because I felt safe for my stuff. Now, now I no longer feel safe. I’m not sure if I trust a free-swap style event anymore. In near-6 years I’ve never had anything in NYC stolen from me.

My information is clearly labeled inside the book. Will someone go out of their way to return it? Please please, I hope so.

if you’re near Union Square Plaza (“U.S.P.”) on Fridays, Saturday or Sunday look for this guy Alex somewhere around the perimeter, where artists-folk setup shop. He’ll cut out one of these silhouette portraits of you or any head off the top of his head for only $5. He’ll date it, sign it, and affix the paper cutout to a paper ticket for you to string wherever you want!

Genius work, and the detail is amazing – he did my likeness in about 7 minutes!

paper_portraits twitter

Where to begin?

This is one of those megaposts that makes me sad, because it reminds me of how much activity just happened, and how poof, it’s all gone now. I’m still nervous with excitement – okay maybe that’s the late-night coffee talking – and unclear what exactly to say other than if you missed it, you seriously missed it!

It’s incredibly difficult to explain in a blog post what Maker Faire is: what it excites and instills in people, and how it operates. The best way to explain it is to participate in it, to see it live, and to flow through its channels. Maker Faire isn’t a thing that tells its Makers what to do. Instead, Maker Faire is whatever the Makers make of it! There’s a point at which the floodgates open and the crowds come rushing in, sure, but more-so than that there’s a point when the team who put it together kind of give it up, and let the Makers run the show! It’s really remarkable, really incredible, not something you find much of anymore. So much of society elsewhere is “curated”, orchestrated, composed. Maker Faire is LIFE. It’s fluid and organic and sometimes it doesn’t work – and when shit breaks down, you understand it that much better, and you hack it back into place!

And perhaps the most impressive element of Maker Faire was how it natively procured a platform of dialogue that is lost in so many other facilities. You could easily walk up to a complete stranger and ask them a question – be it technical or conceptual – about their project and get a response. They were there to talk, to exchange, and to expand the minds of those attending, to open up new possibilities through language and presentation. Here is this thing, yes, but now I will tell you here is why this thing is here! Ah-hah! That’s when it gets really interesting.

I really want to mention and caption each and every single image with its own essay, but that simply might not be possible. This page will never load and this server will crash if I tried to load all 400+ quality photos I took at this amazing event. Instead I’ll post a couple dozen now, and I hope to mention a couple more choice images and projects in the days ahead; because it’s pretty clear to me that as I twitch and type that I’m completely overwhelmed with the mass of experience I just encountered, I’m looking for a way to unload, and I want you to participate in the tidal wave of awesomeness that Maker Faire has to offer:

this is like one of those centrifugal spinning solar system devices, only GIANT and DIY!

a Make workshop about marketing your hand-made products

I gave the PaperBot one of my blue ribbon Editor’s Choice awards. Here’s a video showing the PaperBot in motion:

Kids having so-much-fun in the Young Makers building

Also, kids and adults alike could learn how to solder for just $1 – and you actually made a blinking LED device!

embedded arduino lilypad in fabric – wearable electronics

giant… cardboard… robot… AWESOME!

Madagascar Institute – from Brooklyn – Invents The Wheel at Maker Faire! I have yet to take this thing for a spin!

a custom bike wheel with embedded LEDs that display images as you cycle! in this case, the Matrix code.

a crafty theatre set for teaching middle schoolers the principles of stage lighting design and sequence-programming (cue calls, basically), driven by a MaxMSP patch with iCamera and servo-lights. Brilliant!

Angus operating the ShopBot… HI Angus!

hi Tramaine… Shouldn’t You Be… (Tramaine was the resident sign-painter and made some lovely hand-painted signs chock-full of info’mation)

lots of crafters at Maker Faire!

glowing boxes of DIY-whats-it-dos!

a solar charging station, reminiscent of gas stations of yore, for you to recharge your mobile devices with sun-ergy

learning basic smithing skills, taught by Oakland’s The Crucible

the Midway fairegrounds. And yes, that’s a rocket in the background. And yes, it’s 40′ tall. And yes, you could go in it. And YES, it’s capable of space exploration, they had all the knobs and dials and viewports to prove it!

Like I say, if you missed out on this you missed out on one of the most exciting events in this country. That’s saying a lot, but it’s also true that there was something for everyone at Maker Faire – from kids to adults to hackers to solar enthusiasts to gardeners to pyro-maniacs to music and performance. And it was all Do-It-Yourself! See you next year – I can’t wait!

More pictures on my full Flickr set!

my first full day in the Bay Area, technically still going as I jot some notes down at the I/O after-party (not to be confused with the “after-after party”). Just notes, because there’s too much going on around me to write any serious synopsis or review.

The day began around 7am, with a splash of water to the face. After that it was a blur. Between there and walking into the main hall at the Google I/O conference there was: a breakfast burrito, a 1/2 mile walk through San Mateo, a Caltrain ride past the city metal scrapyard, a tour past South Park where Wired and other dot-com sites of fame were founded, and then finally the convention center where the conference is being held.

First impression is it’s good to see so many PCs. Sure there are plenty of Macs to be seen here, but Google being Google means they use whatever is available, and in the case of their check-in machines that means classic IBM ThinkPads, and PCs for many of their presentation stations. Basically, they aren’t pompous or pretentious, they just use what works for what they need.

I caught most of the opening keynote speech. Again, Google being Google means the keynote has a different flavor to it than other tech companies. I’m not going to bother breaking down the speeches that were given, instead just flip through the GoogleDeveloper YouTube channel or watch part 1 of the keynote below, and go from there with related videos:

The seminars were hit-and-miss to be honest. The first one I went to – Bringing Google to Your Site, part of the API column of seminars – was spot-on! In the past two weeks I’ve had several conversations with various individuals, non-profit organizations and for-profit ventures, and some of the ideas we were bouncing around in our conversations were answered by Google at this seminar! Very fortuitous! The third seminar I went to – Fireside Chat with the Google Chrome and Chrome OS Teams – was a bit of a flop though. No one from the Chrome OS team was actually present; and the “chat” wasn’t really a chat but a town hall. Granted, I like town hall meetings, Q&As, and open forums, but I was actually expecting to be presented with a chat. And there weren’t any major Chrome developments to report, so it was a bit banal.

However the HTML5 seminar (about Chrome and Google tools) made up for any shortcomings:

and unfortunately I missed the Ignite seminar because it was completely full-up.

One of the most interesting – and almost easily simple – ideas that Google presented was their Font API, which allows you to print custom fonts to webpages with a single link src call, like this:

…

Then there was the after-party, not to be confused with the after-after party. What can I say, Google likes to party. Actually, there were elements that worked and elements that didn’t. The mini-Maker Faire in the after party, ROCKED, of course. As a preview of what to expect at the Faire this weekend, the very-mini event had a whopping 10 Makers – the Faire this weekend will have over 600! The food, however, sucked. The lines were long and the quality was edible but unexciting. Sort of unexpected. However the DJ and VJ element was pretty good – of course you can thank Google for owning YouTube for that! It made the VJ process very… obvious. Just queue up a YouTube playlist and watch some mash-ups on HD projectors! BAM! But seriously I think the mini-Makers and tech projects stole the show:

the I/O was mostly successful. And this post is relevant to yesterday’s events, I didn’t get to see the conclusion of the I/O today, as I’ve been busy at the San Mateo Expo Center helping with Maker Faire prep, so I haven’t seen what Google announced; there was buzz yesterday that they were saving the “big news” for today: TV, Android 2.2, etc. – I don’t know but I’m sure it’s all very exciting. All the Google engineers and employees I talked to were all very driven by being a part of something that was bigger than them, yet something that they knew they were absolutely contributing to the ethos and longevity of. All in all really strong energy, and a sort of alternative approach to a conference compared with historical big-name hardware and software companies.

Oh yeah, and they gave me a Verizon Droid phone with 1 month free data service – in essence, they bought me! However I can’t use the Droid, and I WANT the Nexus One. So anybody out there want to buy an upgraded Verizon phone for under-market rate and help me achieve my dream?

“School of the Future is a project about what a school can be.”

For the month of July a bunch of artists are constructing a free school in a park in north Brooklyn; collaborating with architecture graduate students from Columbia University; and engaging the surrounding community to bring them free classes and workshops on subjects they want to learn, or conversely, teach! There’s a running list of current learning deficits and you are free to suggest your own – just visit the School of the Future website or visit Sgt. Dougherty Park and fill out one of the slips and drop it in the yellow box!

the School is currently running a kickstarter campaign (yes, another!) to raise a measly $1000 to help buy materials to build the school. C’mon help us un-learn education!

It only happens once a month, and its more popular than auto-tune songs in the Top 10.

It’s Flux Thursday @ Flux Factory, your and my favorite non-profit arts space in Western Queens (DEFEND IT!). Don’t get the jest of my jibe? Is that even a word?

Either way there’s only one way to find out: c’mon down! There’ll be a meal (hopefully HOT with this textbook Spring weather) but it’s also a potluck, so bring something for your fellow punters. They’ll appreciate it. And there’ll be some art, maybe some theatre, and if you have works-in-progress yourself and want to show-and-tell, now’s your opportunity! See you there.

Sunday, May 9, 2-6pm & Monday, May 10, 5-9pm

721 Broadway, 4th Floor NYC

One of the more diverse and eclectic dorkbot presentations in recent memory (look at what was parked outside versus what you saw inside!), the May 2010 installment – officially labelled the 5g5s^th installment – featured homemade satellites, craft vans, computer-assisted composition and live music, and finally anaglyph audio-visual projections. As always Dorkbot NYC is held at the incredible Location One non-profit gallery and performance space; and big-ups to Levi for running the show!

Song Hojun made a special presentation, in town from South Korea. His project, the Open Source Satellite Initiative seeks to plant a homemade satellite in low-orbit, and talk back via blinking (in morse code) super LEDs:

Nick Didkovsky presented some JMSL-language computer composition software that he wrote, which creates unpredictable scores, some of which were performed live by loudbang:

Julia Vallera is a Parsons MFA candidate and converted a Ford Tuscany van into her current social practice art project Color Wheelz:

and finally Daniel Iglesia is a Columbia Computer Music Center graduate candidate who presented some anaglyph audio-visual projections – he passed out glasses to assist in the viewing and the results were pretty spectacular! The video doesn’t seem to have the same effect when embedded across the internet, but the pictures do capture some of the moment (yes I keep a pair of anaglyph glasses at the ready in my studio to check things like this!):

Now this is what I call a scouting report!

Phillies in San Francisco, you can see almost the entire Giants team in the frame – all but the left fielder. Ryan Howard eventually hit the ball to the second baseman, in the outfield. An outfield single that resulted in an out at first! Howard may be a “natural home run hitter” but this frame shows to me why he’s an over-valued $25million/year player. He doesn’t posses opposite-field threat the way Rodriguez or Pujols do. Maybe it’s a left-handed hitter thing, but Howard almost always pulls the ball. When he goes the other way it’s usually not intentional, and you can see even with two outs the Giants were willing to give up a double (he doesn’t run that fast) if he did go the other way because odds were he was going to pull it to right field and at least force a play.

from the same game click here to see a video of one of the most spectacular double plays imaginable – at the 30second mark

so strange. Earlier today I was listening to Faith No More’s Angel Dust, only to then stumble upon these brilliant videos of Mike Patton performing songs from his newest solo album Mondo Cane, which was released today. Is there anything this guy can’t do? It’s like if it involves the voice and awesome he’s got it on lock. You can listen to other song samples on the album amazon page.

found via Flavorpill’s Daily Dose

what do a bike parade, instrument making, a dance floor and a choir of YOU have in common?

Absolutely nothing. That’s what makes contemporary life so exciting! Action-Club artists will be leading a costumed bike parade from north Brooklyn to your and my favorite low-cost salvage surplus building materials supply warehouse: Build It Green – B.i.G.! – at 5pm. Once there I suspect musical instruments will be fabricated from… low-cost salvage surplus building materials. And then at 5:30 a one-song album recording and simultaneous music video and dance floor will ensue!

An anonymous tip suggests the song will be a foot-stompin’ classic.

simple in its execution: just do it; but complex due to its commitment to time, and depth: the meaning not of one image but of 999 and all the readings in-between.

it’s a shame his website isn’t linked-to better. Then again it’s a hodge podge of links (including an expired geocities link) and thus pretty difficult to navigate or figure out the meaning behind his work. But who am I to talk my crap is all over the place too!

Or the dome the size of a small country that could be built with the Sahara!

Or best yet a pair of those BOOTS she’s wearing:

The video is all in Italian but, you get it. This printer uses a process or is called d-shape – either way the website has plenty of English content.

If you don’t know Swimming Cities then you just don’t know.

And their next project – The Ocean of Blood – will be to float down the Ganges, as in the Indian sub-continent Ganges. On a few of these:

Anyways they’re having a fundraiser on Friday night and you and everyone you know should be there because they really need the funding – me I don’t plan on wearing a costume that way I’m obliged to pay more, actually. Although I am looking forward to any infomercial costumes that might make an appearance – I wonder if anyone will show up as one of those Hawaii Chairs?

Here are the event deets:

Me, I’m like… totally confused! loL!

This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The type of signage that had people walking one way, then literally walking back past me 30 seconds later scratching their heads.

It’s not like straphangers can check service advisories on their mobile devices while underground. We depend on signage. So MTA, please, make it work!

(seen at 2nd Avenue F/V on 17 April 2010 at 6:06pm – eventually the C train came and I took that because I overheard another straphanger say they saw 2 C trains already pass, and NO F or V!)

[original image on my Flickr]

Maker Faire New York 2010 Open Call is now… Open!

This has been in the works for a long time now, and I’m really happy – beyond words – to say that I’m a part of it!

If you know me you know I love culture. I love events. I love people and artists and crowds and activities and mobs and spectacles and life. Loving is the easy part though.

The best culture is D.I.Y. culture, and that means for it to happen, we have to make it happen.

WORLD Maker Faire NY is taking place later this year at the New York Hall of Science, and will provide one of the most exciting, dynamic and fruitful make it happen environments that New York City has ever seen – at least in my opinion, and during my near-6 years here.

If you Make something, I want you involved.

If you teach how-to something, I want you involved.

If you instruct-a-thon, I want you involved.

This IS the WORLD’S Largest D.I.Y Festival!!

IF YOU ARE A MAKER THEN NOW IS YOUR TIME TO SHINE!

Do you DIY:

3d printers
circuit bending
wind power
dorkbot
marching band
compost
arduino boards
origami
steampunk
LEDs
beer/wine
mycology
game-makers
telescopes
chocolate
permaculture
rube golberg
MIDI
scrap booking
book-making
silkscreens
photography
kinetic arts
circus
ceramics
beekeeping
radio transmission
CNC milling
model railroads
non-profit arts
hydro power
breadmaking
catapults
solar anything!

If YES to any of the above, then I WANT YOU INVOLVED!

How to submit a proposal? CLICK THIS LINK – It’s a VERY SIMPLE form, not complex or convoluted. It will require you to make an O’Reilly account, that’s just so we can keep track of your data and contact you through our backend if necessary.

Please please submit your proposal sooner than later. The Open Call will stay open for approximately 7-8 weeks but we are tight on resources and will start allocating them as soon as the proposals arrive.

I want to be accessible throughout the success of this project, so if you have any questions, comments, concerns, ideas or general thoughts please feel free to contact me. I’ll publish my details below, or you can access me through various social networks that I’m involved with.

THANK YOU SO MUCH for reading and I really want you to be involved!

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL TO MAKER FAIRE NY 2010

CONTACT:
email: nick [at] geekathon [dot] net
Twitter: @nicknormal
my Facebook profile
my Flickr account

…

Do you want to help spread the word about Maker Faire NY? Great!

Blog about it! Tweet about it! Or send people to this blog to talk with me or use this shortlink to send makers straight to the proposal form:

http://bit.ly/mfny2010

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

to see more of what MAKE culture is all about, visit

MAKEzine
Craftzine

or to see Maker Faire in other cities, including San Francisco and Detroit visit the main

MAKER FAIRE website

After coming back from St. Louis and seeing the Smashinistas v Stunt Devils ARRG derby match I was hooked, addicted, fiending for more. This time I was vying to see some All-Stars class sport with the Gotham Girls’ season opener at home against the Charm City (Baltimore) All-Stars. Some mates of mine wanted to go too, but we got around to the website too late and all the tickets were gone. I got in touch with the GGRD and asked if there was any possibility in getting on a waiting list for last-minute available tickets. There wasn’t, but a small batch of extra tix were going to go on sale on some day at midnight. 4 minutes after they went on sale they were GONE! I attribute that to a bug with their ticket software (that’s the nerd in me talking). Still, I persevered! A week later, just a couple nights before the bout, I got mention of a small – 20 – batch of post-press tix available, go, get them now! Needless to say within an hour of those final tickets getting posted they were snatched up!

The stress of getting a will call ticket was totally worth it, the payback was the excitement of the bouts and the top-notch class of sport played by Charm City and the Gotham Girls.

The opening bout was between Lake Effect Furies (Buffalo, NY) and the Wall Street Traitors, one of the local teams that make up the Gotham Girls All-Stars. The Traitors lost and it was unclear to me if this was in-part because some of their players (Hyper Lynx, Ginger Snap and OMG WTF) were playing on the All-Stars team and thus not playing in both bouts. It was good to see, but like I say I was really eager for the All-Stars team to make their debut.

Gotham v Charm City

It was back and forth for the first few matches, with Gotham routinely taking a lead and then Charm City coming back within a few points or to tie. Until! At some point it was 33-29 in Gotham’s favor. Then it was 44-30, then 48-30, then 57-30, then 71-30! Gotham just kept pulling away and pushing ahead and they went into the halftime at 89-34! Of course Charm City have given Gotham a fight in the past, so it was known that they could come out after the half and do just as much damage in return, forcing a tough 2nd half. But whatever pep talk the Gotham girls got was more riveting because the 2nd half saw some incredible teamwork and explosive action. Keep a watch out because if the Gotham All-Stars stay healthy and play the rest of the year the way they did, it’ll be a monumental season! Notable players that made a big impact were Em Dash (8212), Hyper Lynx (404), OMG WTF (753), Suzy Hotrod (55), Carmen Monoxide (12 – MVP), Fisti Cuffs (241 – Co-Captain) and especially Bonnie Thunders (340 – Captain) – those last two derby girls blocked and jammed their way to at least a hundred points! It’s understandable why Bonnie Thunders is captain – there were times when this ex synchro figure skater could hold her balance and skate through the pack sideways to get the lead jam and score points. Seriously impressive!

That’s Fisti Cuffs (241 – Co-Captain) on the far right in the penalty box – notice how high up her knees come!

The Gotham pack trying to hold Charm City’s jammer Joy Collision (747 – Captain) at bay. For the most part they did a damned good job!

Another shot of Joy Collision (what can I say, she’s hot, and good!) maneuvering to get ahead of the Gotham jammer to put a block on her. Joy was the clear candidate for Charm City’s MVP, as she was about the only one doing any significant damage – blocking or jamming – against Gotham.

the final score was actually 201-75 – way to go Gotham!

and lastly a big THANK YOU to Louise and Anne Frankenstein from the GGRD crew. I asked around trying to find where either of you were but no one knew exactly where to find you. so I’ll see you at the next bouts and again, thank you for organizing such a wonderful sport!

[my full photo set on Flickr]

here’s the second half of the Gotham v Charm City bout, you’ll see Gotham simply blow Charm City out of the waters!

Watch live video from Modern Roller Derby on Justin.tv

Add English (“normal”) to that list and you’ve got yourself nearly 2 billion native speakers!

My latest excursion to St. Louis was probably bar none one of the worst trips I’ve ever been on. There I said it. The trip had a purpose, to move my parents after 32 years in one domicile. This wasn’t so much the burden, but the layers that got piled onto the project during the lead-up to the move made it exhausting and unrewarding. Who knows when I’ll next go back. I was only able to go out 4 nights over nearly 3 weeks; I had one brunch and one lunch with friends. Aside from that I was held hostage to not having a vehicle, and to spending countless hours migrating furniture and boxes across and around 4 floors of one of the best houses in the city. A quick after-thought count would suggest I walked up and down over 20,000 stairs to complete the job (it was 15 up and 15 down to the front door; and 31 up and 31 down inside the house; basement stairs were 17 up and down… do the math). Still, I’m all about hard work. I appreciate the physical exhaustion at times. But the exhaustion of family and other barriers shed light on how not to conduct a project like this in the future when it’s my turn.

While I was there my dad – the Dude – also had four stents put in his heart, which put an exclamation mark on the stresses of the project and daily life in Normalville. I wish I was there for the post-op but I barely escaped as it was. While I was there some good happened, but I really had to fight for it. Thanks to John and Octavia for their support; to Ash for his big biceps and stick shift super-powers; to ARRG for the awesome sport; to Leah for the brunch (I needed to get the FUCK outside!) and to everyone else who loaned an ear and listened.

* I worked on and off over two weeks boxing my own stuff up, rented a U-haul, and whisked it away…
* to my friend John’s basement! It looks quite good here. I would have liked to have skids on the floor, so fingers crossed there’s no floods ever. …
* Ash was a biiiiiiig help moving stuff – thanks to his dad’s truck – to my parents’ new digs. I rewarded him with Redbird memorabilia (below)
* Yes, I have THAT record on vinyl! Don’t make me RICK ROLL you!

When in St. Louis be sure to stop by the Royale on South Kingshighway for your fix of “food and spirits”. There are lots of great bars in St. Louis but the Royale really makes it a point to remind you you’re IN St. Louis. The fleur-de-lis painted on the building’s exterior is just a taste of what you’ll find indoors, including photos from years past, drawings of St. Louis imagined in the future, and maps aplenty, including one that I donated to the bar showing the layout of the city as it was built up around old forts. The proprietor Steven Smith also showed me a wall painting in the bar’s courtyard that showed the city from pre-Civil War years and depicted an Army Corp of Engineers project that was commissioned by none other than Robert E Lee – I never knew!

Old-school photos and new-school friends (and Juan-o): that’s me I guess from around age 15; Smarty McFly of the Stunt Devils derby team (who was quick to inform the table she won “Best Rack 2009″ – I didn’t see the competition, but sure!)(UPDATE: forgot to mention, she’s sporting my Dolabany otchkies); Juan-o and company playing a 2:40am game of “The Game of the House Located Upon the Top of the Hill” or something obtuse like that (Frankenmonster totally pulverized our asses with two punches!); and enjoying a brunch at the Benton Park Cafe with Leah – do go here, the food is delish, I had the veggie burger which is totally one of a kind!

It’s strange how some kids have “a thing”. And this little cutie’s thing is anything mask or head-wear! She’s game if it covers her face, goes on her head, tweaks her vision, or just generally looks awesome!

* BELLA BELLA BELLA!
* if you have a day, walk around Soulard in historic St. Louis – some wonderful pieces of architecture remain!
* I rewarded Ash for his contributions of truck-n-muscle with some St. Louis Cardinals ephemera I collected while going through literally tons of boxes full of crap.
* one of the few exciting things I was able to enjoy during my trip was the 1st anniversary of Binge & Purge on Cherokee Street

Of course an always-admired location to stop by, Vintage Vinyl in University City just west of the city limits. Still the largest and most-awesomestest music store I’ve ever been in, they have more vinyl than you could physically listen to in a calendar year! This place was a big part of my youth, and a large portion of my personal vinyl collection came from here.

and of course lastly a shout-out to APOP Records, also on Cherokee Street (two doors down from Binge & Purge, above). APOP are a record label and store, specializing in independent, punk, hardcore, gore films, counter-culture books, crust demo tapes, and unique LPs ranging from rock bands to Laurie Anderson. Stop in and say HI to Tiffany, tell her I sent you! Great store, great layout, and there’s always something I’ve never heard and quite like on the house speakers. Oh yeah, fucking rad cat too, that followed me around the store a couple times, acting like it’s looking at vinyl! loL!

Went to the Arch Rival Roller Girls event last night, the Smashinistas vs Stunt Devils. The event opened with the dudes’ match, local Gatekeepers versus some team from Indy. They blew those training-wheel players out of the water, although the play was a little weak at times I was told. I say “I was told” because I really had no idea what I was watching. I could clearly see there was some agenda, but it takes time to read and figure out the position players. Still, it’s really intriguing to watch and there’s definitely lots of good moments to be had.

Most-impressed am I by the fact that almost no one is getting paid. The event barely covers its costs and all the proceeds go back into continuing to sponsor future events. The athletes are simply doing it for the sport, the notoriety, and the fun. It’s almost addictive to watch because at half-time I thought, “That’s it!?” – thankfully there was more to come.

And there are certain elements you simply have to love: the outfits – especially the socks and helmets!; the movements, motions and shifts to be seen in sudden on the track; and of course the names, names like “Polkadot Yr Eyeout”, “Mayor Francis Slayer” (you know if you’re from St. Louis), “Punches Pileup” – some wonderful nomenclatures that hint at what to expect!

I saw a helmet-handoff, only way I know to describe it, similar to a lateral pass in American football; and also a slingshot in the last round of the girls’ match even though the Smashinistas by that point had no chance of winning it was still a pretty sweet move!

It’s almost impossible however to get a “really really good photograph” without some 300mm zoom lens, as all the action is yards away (and I was sitting front row!). But it’s really something to be seen and experienced, like so much of life really!

Oh yeah! Recap! Well the Stunt Devils won which I was (also) told was to be expected (they won by 47 points to be specific); however the Smashinistas were clearly the crowd favorite, as every time their jammer broke through they got a lot more respective applause and jeer from fans and anti-fans alike. And it all hinged on one breakout round early on where the Stunt Devils racked up some good points and pulled away; it was something to do with a 2 and 4 in the pack phenomenon – I saw it happen but didn’t really understand it, but knew once the Stunt Devils took a significant lead it was simply a chase the rest of the evening.

The culture attached to roller derby is pretty remarkable, and includes everyone from local punk rockers to chopper-riding biker gangs, hoosiers and ordinary folk looking for cheap entertainment for the whole family. It’s very inclusive, and very approachable. Again, however, I really knew nothing of what I was watching.

Now the dance floor! That’s a different story! And yes, there was a man in green the whole night!

FULL SET on my Flickr

FINALLY! And they’re pretty spot-on too. Like the map above, which I plugged in for cyclists coming from Greenpoint/Williamsburg up into Long Island City, the map actually recommends taking 23rd Street, which is also my preferred route. Of course there are nuances to the maps that I don’t agree with. Like how they recommend to ride out Jackson Avenue for a couple blocks until you get to 21st Street, then turn left onto 21st Street. If you know either of those streets, you know they’re riddled with fast-paced taxis, big buses and holes in the ground that gremlins live in. Not safe. I prefer to immediately head out 11th Street or even safer I cut over 49th Ave to Vernon Blvd then ride the Blvd BIKE ROUTE out to 44th or 43rd Avenue before cutting over to 23rd Street to head north. Also, once north of the Plaza I don’t like heading east on 41st Ave. It’s uphill, and crosses two major intersections that cabbies use to head towards the bridge. I prefer to head to 39th Ave and have to circle back a half-block, which I see as a fair trade in exchange for increased safety and visibility.

But it’s in beta and they’re taking recommendations. My Android phone is not yet updated with a bicycle icon, but soon enough – and this shows you why Google is so much more a pro-active company than Microsoft or Apple Mac (who make great hardware but never spend the capital to make socially positive apps like this for their user-base!).

JUST TO CLARIFY: The bicycle directions are available when you “Get Directions” – drop down the transportation menu and select “Bicycling”!

(just to clarify, I found this in storage. circa 1998-1999, when I worked at SAIC – probably a joke but knowing that institution maybe not. and yes, I keep things for long time.)

This is a little late, but not really. Flux Factory finally started its first Kickstarter campaign with a drive to purchase and install a new heating system (unit, ducting, labor) for our remodeled facility in Long Island City’s Dutch Kills neighborhood.

We’re only two weeks shy of the arrival of Spring, so we’re definitely through the thick of Winter, but this campaign is still as valid as ever. Oddly enough on the day we made this film it was also warm outside, but there were definitely days where everybody was wearing 3, 4, 5 layers in order to stay toasty. Plenty of times my sock-layer scene was lived out. Or hot water became super-chilled in minutes. It wasn’t always very pleasant. We survived – clearly – but the building still needs work, adjustments and improvements. So help us raise the money we need by pledging. With Kickstarter, your money is only pledged if we meet our target goal of $5000 – and our thinking is that if everybody we know gave us $1 we should be good (yes, we know mad numbers of peoples!).

CLICK HERE TO PLEDGE $ WITH KICKSTARTER

scroll down to watch the incredibly awesome and hilarious video made by Gregg Conde and Jaime Iglehart – big ups to them for their hard work on this project.

CLICK HERE TO PLEDGE $ WITH KICKSTARTER

The Ocean of Blood, a sub-project of the Swimming Cities, are having a silent auction tonight to raise funds to sail 5 boats down the Ganges River in India. Here’s a snippet from the event listing:

The SWIMMING CITIES art collective is holding our first art auction fundraiser for our upcoming sculptural boat and performance project on the Ganges River, in India, 2010. The event will include the unveiling of the first finished boat prototype, an 18′x8′ hand-crafted stainless steel catamaran, powered by a motorcycle driven paddle wheel.

My “Thought Island: Active” will be available in the auction (I’m not in the artist list but it’ll be there, so will I after 9). Here are the event deets and map:
7:00 – 11:00 p.m. – art auction
11:00 – 1:00 a.m. – after (dance) party
$10 door
@ 56 Walker Street, NYC
(facebook event link with more info)

UPDATE: full photo set on my Flickr

Some complications on my blog server meant I didn’t get around to posting these images until now, but the moment is still valid as the Brucennial is on view until the 12th of April. Hell between now and then I plan to travel a couple thousand miles and telecommute around the globe many times over, all while plenty of art lives in a storefront on West Broadway – point is go see it if you’re near, it’ll be there. I wouldn’t say it’s worth going out of your way to go see, but then I don’t say that about much these days. Most art, especially these smorgasbord-style showcases to me are a dime a dozen. There’s a lot of artists and a lot more art out there than one person can ever know or see. That’s not to downplay the importance of the event or the art, because there are some really smart pieces in the show, and chances are in the next six weeks you’ll be near Canal and W. Broadway anyways, so just keep it on your radar and go see it! But these pictures are from the opening night.

Of course the other main reason to go to these events is the crowd. I go for my people, and to meet or see new people, and to experience the vibe. It’s less to me about the art (you never get to see it all anyways), and more about the sea of personalities and joy of us taking over a (temporary) space for a limited duration of time. So meet Man Bartlett, Marin Tockman and Ian Montgomery (our hearts are fluttering, btw):

Eventually it got so packed that those who arrived fashionably late got stuck out in the impending Snowicane blizzard-storm. And yeah, all the Miller High Life was gone by the time they did get in (about a 1 hour 30 minute line!).

Oh yeah, there were outdoor plen-air porta-potties. Brilliant! Here’s a view from inside one of the stalls (I can multi-task, as I was pissing at the same time):

With Snowmageddon aka Snowicane aka Snownami outside, and every other bloody facebook-event driven happening tonight cancelled, it seems appropriate to watch… THE MOSQUITO COAST!

Who’s with me!?

If you can make it out tonight, in just less than 11 hours from now, will be Flux Factory’s inaugural exhibition, HOUSE BROKEN. We’ve been working since last April converting a former greeting card warehouse into a workable arts centre. We’re opening with over 80 artists’ installed works and performances. It’s going to be a mad house! These pictures don’t begin to show the half of it. The place is chock full of art almost to the point that you don’t know what is art and what is part of the building! Artists have designed our doorbell, tiled a bathroom, built chandeliers, installed NO SMOKING signs, and laser-etched kitchenware, designed table cloths, painted pipes! SO MUCH ART!

And yes, we have birds! In an aviary!

Great photo from yesterday’s Snowmageddon moving up the eastern seaboard and surrounding my home, NYC. the near-solid white line on the southern edge of the storm is particularly impressive. You can visit the MODIS web to see a larger version.

• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• artists human types – not sure what to make of this actually
• Top 100 Horror Movies: 2000-2010 (2000li Yılların En İyi 100 Korku … – pretty good list right here…
• Install and configure Microsoft® Xbox™ and Xbox 360™ controllers under … – ubuntu on xbox – controllers guide
• eth0: 2 days of high-tech geekfest – nerds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• batch processing – good tutorial
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• My Suit NY – custom-tailored suits
• inspirational eggs " Kate in the Kitchen – good eats
• CONSOLLECTION – finally someone did it.
• Google Person Finder: Haiti Earthquake – kind of genius
• Culture Pundits – while browsing on the train
• hdmi to dvi-d – this would work
• Can You Run It? Powered by System Requirements Lab – can your laptop run that game? clever, safe, analysis.
• gateway ec14 – my new netbook, should probably keep this link online
• 5 minutes of garbage to biogas generated electricity in the Zabaleen … – electricity made from biogas (used tea bags!)
• Monoslideshow — The ultra customizable Flash® image and video viewer … – Image Rotator is pretty good, but this one has some nice options too
• The Linear RPG by =GirlFlash on deviantART – pretty genius!

You heard it here first folks. Today is a good day to be alive, thanks to ZEF SIDE!

I know I should be posting my “art” online more often. I often gloss over the process of scanning and resizing and uploading and tagging because there’s only so much time. But this drawing is especially meaningful to me if for no other reason than I think it’s a really good drawing! I also had a really nice discussion at Heathers with some Turkish bird whose name I can’t remember right now – has a C and an O in it – about the accessibility and immediacy of drawing. Which was nice because the conversation emerged after I made this drawing, in a sketchbook in my pocket, and my mind was already buzzing around these very ideas: about how an artist can be anywhere at anytime and drawing is always at their dispose. Including sitting at the bar by one’s lonesome, surrounded by young hip people – all it takes is pen and paper. I plan on donating this drawing to Heathers the next time I’m in the East Village, so if you happen to be there (everybody goes there at least once I reckon) give it an ogle, and salivate as I did over this Whisky at Heathers (Maker’s Mark, Neat), pen on paper, 2010.

What I always liked about Howard Zinn was I never really thought of him as an Anarchist, but he simply was one. He rarely needed to use the word, instead he framed thoughts in an anarchistic manner, with particular attention to our comprehension and understanding of history via power structures – not your typical anarchist dogma-fare either.

read an interview here where Zinn uses the a-word probably more than all his other texts combined

Last summer when I was assisting with the renovation and remodeling of the current Flux Factory arts & residency centre, I removed a couple artifacts from the building that might have otherwise got built over, taken down or trashed without consideration. One of those artifacts was a “NO SMOKING” sign absolutely covered with white splatter paint, and aged to a yellow like a 35-year smoker’s teeth. I was attracted to the comical font, and the remnants of wear and tear on the surface of the sign. For Flux Factory’s upcoming inaugural show, my piece will be to replicate this NO SMOKING sign in silkscreen on sheet metal and install them throughout the building. As well as being a site-specific piece, the signs double as legal signage, since the organization is an office with commercial zoning the signs are a must. I plan on selling the works as limited edition (number yet to be determined), so if you’re interested in NO SMOKING your establishment, house or office, I reckon $10-$20/each once I price my materials and labor (3 color on sheet metal, with holes drilled for hanging).

The Holoscape was a real-time installation made during the 2009 Conflux festival by artists Martina Mrongovius and Nick Normal. The installation used social media services like Twitter and Flickr to generate a collective collage of experiences.

visit holoscape.net for more documentation

(As for guns for arms, does anybody else want a Major Lazer movie to happen now?)

Oh yeah, and MacGruber has a movie coming out!

I was having my double-fetus cake and eating it too!

Congratulations to JP and JP for making it to 30, they wasn’t supposed to make it past 25 but now the joke is on us because they’re still alive. And they know how to throw down! And a big thanks to Jack and Westrich for use of their space, that was really wonderful and was a perfect fit for the occasion. Thanks to Jeff for the Cubans, the Mad Titans for their near-2-hour solid set, everyone for their booze-n-food potluck, and of course Brenda for making this possible, after all these boys came out of her womb 30 years ago!

(complete set on my Flickr)

9pm. turn into St. Cyr Industrial Park. look for Westrich Trucking. if you don’t find us it’s because we cut you and left you on the riverbank.

Here’s the facebook invite – all are free to attend.

Wanted posters. Two-part portraits. Detective files. Booking photographs.

The mugshot is a pretty interesting phenomenon of photography. Most-interesting to me is that the notion of the modern mugshot we know today was conceived by Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton’s National Defense Agency – during the latter part of the 19th century they were two-faced, on the one face they were the first organized detective agency in the United States, and on the other face they doubled as thugs-for-hire to suppress workers’ unions or other semi-organized groups, through use of overwhelming force. They were interested in criminal justice, yes, but they were also very intimidating motherfuckers at heart, and the mugshot was merely a means to an end.

Anyhow! I was called up about 5 hours before the Thunder Gumbo III and asked if I had my camera available to take mugshots. A little ill-prepared but the results are wonderful. The lighting is a little off-mark, but works. I’m actually fond of the blue background but next time I plan on using this faux cinder block pattern I have, and some lettering or numbering to sequence the CRIMINALS!

If you recognize any of the faces, be sure to tag them on the Facebook album.

Wednesday January 6 was the first Dorkbot of the second decade of the 21st millennium – it is otherwise abbreviated as the “1g6s-th” Dorkbot. Hosted at the marvelous Location One non-profit space in SoHo.

The man as he is, and the man as he should have been. Douglas Repetto is the founder of Dorkbot and wanted to show me this recent photo of him sporting a ‘stache (mid-shower) not too different than the fur on my face right now.

Now for the dorks:

The first presentation was by NYCCNC.com, a milling workshop housed in an Upper East Side apartment! Quite impressive, and the presenter John Saunders had a working sample of this target-practice machine that was fabricated entirely by his milling machine.

Next up Natalie Campbell gave a presentation about SP Weather Station, which is a collaborative project between her and Heidi Neilson; the weather station sits on the rooftop of Flux Factory where I currently maintain long-term Residency. While the weather station’s main medium is digitally-collected data, they then turn that data over to artists who interpret the data visually through printing, book arts, photographs and silkscreens, among other artistic processes.

And the final presentation: co-presented by Victor Adán and Douglas Repetto, they demonstrated an antiquated pen plotter printer and how they’ve managed to continue using these mostly serial-driven devices with modern computers using drivers they compiled at chiplotle.org – now that’s a spicy plotter library! (the ebay screen above was because Douglas was showing his ebay search string to narrow results to find specific pen plotters at bargain basement prices!) The results of their pen plotter printing can be seen on the image at the top. Pretty exciting!

go here, get this, go there, do that, beat that boss, proceed to next room, cross bridge, keep going, don’t turn, just straight. booooooooooooring!

• James Grashow – Sculptor, Woodcutter, Mixed-Media Artist – another hot shit artist
• Main : pwilliamsart – hot shit artist
• Daily Drop Cap – daily fonts
• geekmap.png (image) – it's like someone did a psych eval on me
• c-jump: computer programming board game – if you ever wanted to understand programming logic, for NERDS!
• Template Tags/get posts " WordPress Codex – another template tag
• WordPress " Get Custom Field Values " WordPress Plugins – smarts
• The Book Cover Archive – nice. for designers but still nice.
• Big Text – ASCII generator
• WordPress " GD Star Rating " WordPress Plugins – best ratings plugin i've seen
• Newrock – nice boots!
• Issuu – You Publish – web magazine viewer
• Blank line before XML declaration (WordPress) – lame.
• machinarium – PLAY THE DEMO! no software download, all flash based. so nice.
• OOMouse: The Multi-Button Application Mouse – pretty funny… it's not real, is it?
• web development timeline –
• Design Fetish: The Real Simpsons House – The Siiiiimpsons
• E M P T Y L A – NOT possible in NYC
• spiders = awesome –
• democracy now video about WTO and 1999 Battle in Seattle anniversary –
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error

found via some random blog pointing to a random blogspot blog with a random link to a random image… geekmap!

sorry I’m a couple days late with this one. it’s the thought that counts.

Whew! That’s good to know!

On May 31st I took the above shot of some prefab “brick” walls sitting in some yard. I stumbled upon the lot during a walking tour of Long Island City south of the Plaza. Next door to the prefab pieces was the beginnings of some steel-structured building that I either didn’t get a photo of or didn’t upload to my Flickr. Regardless, during another walking tour today I stumbled upon the result:

the panels are seamless because they’re mounted from the inside, probably via some bolt and nut or rivet-esque system. Who the fuck knows. It’s ugly as hell and probably not even real clay to begin with. The glass top is nice and those two corner windows are kind of interesting, but the gridded smaller windows are too prison-y for my tastes, and again those faux brick panels are a complete put-off, and that’s coming from a guy who has a bricks tag in his cloud.

These images and more from my ongoing views around LIC/Astoria set

How far ahead do you plan? I remember seeing a Brownline brand day planner once that spanned two years. Yeah, 365 x 2 = 730 pages, minimum. Throw in those extra pages for currency conversions (that become outdated by the minute), distances between cities matrixes, and the accompanying non-adequate “black book” and the thing was well around 800 pages. A brick of a planner. Not the kind of thing I’d want to be carrying our when the End of the World is nigh.

The Top 100 Broken Down One-by-One:
• 1. The Amazing Beat-box Kid
• 2. Elephant Sneezing
• 3. Surprised Kitty
• 4. Weird Animal Gets Tickled
• 5. Cat Kicked By Breakdancer
• 6. Mambo Dog
• 7. Two Dogs, One Cockroach
• 8. So Your Cat Wants a Massage?
• 9. The Horrifying Sleeping Dog
• 10. Baby Does Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”
• 11. David After Denist
• 12. Baby Jack-In-The-Box
• 13. Little Girl Flushes Fish
• 14. Talkative Baby
• 15. The Stay-at-Home Dad Workout
• 16. Dog Freaks Out Upon Soldier’s Return
• 17. Sad Giants Fan
• 18. The Matrix in Legos
• 19. NES Game Cartridge
• 20. Soccer Gutar Hero
• 21. Post-It Note Animation
• 22. Cardboard Animation
• 23. 20-Foot Front Flip
• 24. The Tree Bike Trick
• 25. Bruce Lee Plays Ping Pong
• 26. Man and His Exercise Ball
• 27. This Guy is Good at Everything
• 28. Human Mattress Dominoes
• 29. Little Kid Break Dances on Ellen
• 30. Glow-in-the-Dark Dancers
• 31. Choreographed Wedding Entrance
• 32. Fat Kid Gets Served
• 33. The Crazy Shirtless Man Dance
• 34. Insane Japanese Backpack Commercial
• 35. Ghostbusters A Cappella
• 36. Great Mascot Dance
• 37. Smoking and Singing in the Shower
• 38. Ping Pong Celebration
• 39. Amazing JumboTron Performance
• 40. The Breakfast Song
• 41. Close Call With a Bus
• 42. Man Defies Death Twice
• 43. Woman Passes Out In Front of Train
• 44. Kick to the Face #1
• 45. Snooki Gets Punched
• 46. Russian Prank Gone Right
• 47. Accigone
• 48. WoW Freakout
• 49. Bad UPS Man
• 50. Butt Acrobatics
• 51. Bat Prank
• 52. Saving Private Ryan Prank
• 53. Be a Smart Bully
• 54. Fat Kid Sings About Being Fat
• 55. Vanilla Ice Says Sorry
• 56. Extreme Faith
• 57. Jesus Pwn3d U
• 58. Jesus Christ Bail Bonds
• 59. Vince With Slap Chop
• 60. Shamwow Guy in Jail
• 61. Take U to the Movies
• 62. OK GO – WTF
• 63. Billy Mays Re-Dub
• 64. Fat Kid Loves Bacon
• 65. Balloon Boy Pukes
• 66. 80s Video Dating
• 67. Chicken Tetrazzini
• 68. Phillies Fan Ruins News
• 69. The Problem With Live News
• 70. Giant Seagull Ruins News
• 71. Will Ferrell Crashes Newscast
• 72. Students Define Grinding
• 73. Crazy Georgia Fan
• 74. Susan Boyle
• 75. Sharon Osbourne Vs. Charm School’s Megan
• 76. Jimmy Kimmel Vs. Melissa Joan Hart
• 77. Frisky Ewoks on Today
• 78. Kittens! Inspired by Kittens
• 79. Kanye’s Imma Let You Finish
• 80. Mad Men’s Lawnmower Fiasco
• 81. Wrecking Ball Vs. Mini Van
• 82. Conan Hits His Head
• 83. Hot Water Floor Prank
• 84. Terrible Singers, Great Production Value
• 85. Sleepwalking Dog
• 86. Japanese Sniper Prank
• 87. Unbelievable Baseball Catch
• 88. Baseball Spin Swing
• 89. Impossible Baseketball Shot
• 90. Double Bicycle Kick
• 91. Fantasy Football Players Show Off
• 92. 9-Year-Old’s Amazing Hockey Goal
• 93. Oops, Wrong Tackle
• 94. Taco Explodes in Slow Motion
• 95. Crazy Soccer Girl Fight
• 96. Redhead Kid Dances
• 97. Strange Kid Sings
• 98. The Most Drunk Guy Ever
• 99. Risky Business Fail
• 100. Keyboard Cat
]]> http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/12/17/this-should-keep-you-busy-for-a-while/feed/ 0 http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/12/17/mom-this-ones-for-you/ http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/12/17/mom-this-ones-for-you/#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:55:19 +0000 nick http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/?p=4726

FOLLOW ME! loL!

]]> http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/12/17/mom-this-ones-for-you/feed/ 1 http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/12/14/pretty-cookies-pretty-delicious/ http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/12/14/pretty-cookies-pretty-delicious/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:34:21 +0000 nick http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/?p=4714 I decorated some cookies for Sarah-n-Annie-n-Francois-n-other-girl’s party this past weekend. Can you guess which ones I decorated?


(click for larger image)

]]> http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/12/14/pretty-cookies-pretty-delicious/feed/ 0 http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/12/10/tonight-art-in-a-box-fundraiser/ http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/12/10/tonight-art-in-a-box-fundraiser/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:47:36 +0000 nick http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/?p=4701

Tonight is Flux Factory’s end-of-year fundraiser featuring a wonderful collector’s edition box set of multiples by some hot shit artists including yours truly. The entire list of artists is impressive: Brandstifter, Bread & Butter Collective, Andrea Dezso, Kerry Downey, Heather Jones, Aya Kakeda, Miwa Koizumi, Simone Meltesen, Nick Normal, Ward Shelley, and Swoon. That’s not all! There will also be goody bags available with edition works from: Parfyme, Paula Castro, and Georgia Muenster. ALSO! There will be audible entertainments and visual screenings by the following: April March, Adira Amram and Nick Jones, Marie Losier, Nick Yulman, and Sxip Shirey! OH YEAH! And AVE BFF DJs laurendarling and soh luvlee will be spinning throughout the night!

…

AND! there’s an Open Bar and cocktails served all night, care of Campari, Vine wines, and local food distributors (big ups to all of them!).

It’s a $20 suggested donation but with that line-up and hot art available for sale, it’ll definitely be the hottest thing going on between now and tomorrow! See you there, I hope!

Here are some sneak preview shots of our installation currently in progress:


my working prototype for the box set – a facsimile box of JT21/T27 Arrow brand staples


preparing the art for the boxes (seen on floor, right and drawers in back-right area)


Nick Yulman’s computer interface for his solenoid musical devices!


the stage!


the box set to-be! nice install.

]]> http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/12/10/tonight-art-in-a-box-fundraiser/feed/ 0 http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/11/29/anyone-care-to-explain-this-one/ http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/11/29/anyone-care-to-explain-this-one/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:21:19 +0000 nick http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/?p=4674

from this year’s Fluxgiving event (full Flickr set here)

ALSO! BEWARE this man. He could be a WEREWOLF!



]]> http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/11/29/anyone-care-to-explain-this-one/feed/ 0 http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/11/15/recent-delicious-bookmarks-september-25-through-november-15/ http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/11/15/recent-delicious-bookmarks-september-25-through-november-15/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:01:29 +0000 nick http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/?p=4427 These are my bookmarks for September 25 through November 15:
• GreenStuff Sculpting Tips from a Master – last one, promise. green stuff!
• Gene Van Horne pictures by LostInTheWarp – Photobucket – some photos of green stuff in action
• how to work with green stuff – nerd alert!
• www.<b>kozyndan.com</b>/_qt/Nakano in Spring_lg.mov – hot shit net art
• ArtStars* – great toronto arts vlog
• Bubbles Girl | Know Your Meme – effing brilliant!
• Transient global amnesia – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – I was diagnosed with this once, when I was a teenager… maybe 12 or 13. I lost about 3-6 hours of memory.
• InstallationGuide < Open2300 < Foswiki – install guide for SPWS
• Batman Details — Fight – sort of genius.
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• Separating Pings from Comments in WordPress 2.7 | Sivel.net – straightforward guide to separate comments from trackbacks/pings
• Sripraphai Thai Restaurant – Woodside – Woodside, NY – maybe the best Thai food, ever
• DJ Red Alert – Official Web Site – http://www.kooldjredalert.com – YES!
• Dylan’s Candy Bar – supposed to be a hot-shit candy shop
• Cherry Tavern – East Village – New York, NY – supposedly an OK bar in the east village, whenever I'll be there next who knows
• 9 Ways to Make Your WordPress Blog "Smart" " Weblog Tools Collection – six months old and still relevant
• Flash components and Flash files at FlashMint – flash components. mostly XML, WP configurable
• Строим домик из спичек – what a weird interpretation of "collapsing new buildings"
• Klingons For Christ Jesus – KLINGONS FOR CHRIST JESUS! YESSSS!!
• PdaNet — Use your Android as a USB Modem – genius! I'm posting this bookmark from this service!
• CapedWonder.com. Superman-The Movie. Christopher Reeve Superman Images … – AWESOME!!
]]> http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/11/15/recent-delicious-bookmarks-september-25-through-november-15/feed/ 0 http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/11/15/wordcamp-nyc-2009-day-1/ http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/2009/11/15/wordcamp-nyc-2009-day-1/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:56:04 +0000 nick http://www.nicknormal.com/normalblog/?p=4647

Yesterday was day 1 (of 2) for WordCamp NYC 2009. Wow. What a brilliant and wonderful event!

I missed the opening remarks and first few series of workshops, which I ultimately regret but had no control over given my recent workload and absolutely need the night before to get at least 5.5 hours of sleep (yes, when I need sleep I sleep more than 4… I wound up waking at the 5 hour mark but staying in bed until the 6 hour mark – but I digress!).

I wound up arriving at around 11:48am, and as soon as I registered and received my kick-ass tee-shirt and badge, I was standing in the middle of the room glancing over the post-lunch programme when I turned around and suddenly there were over 500 hungry participants standing behind me! FTW! I was the first in line for the vegetarian sandwiches – sweet!

I had a great conversation with Jim of zemanta.com, and met a couple other really wonderful people before the afternoon sessions even began. Which is one thing I’ve always really liked about geek and tech meet-ups and gatherings like this, is generally people are very approachable and friendly. Not to say people in the art world aren’t, but it’s a completely different set of standards, and, well actually people in the art world aren’t as approachable! There, I said it. Yes it is difficult to explain how as an artist I work with WordPress – usually the response is, “so you’re a Designer?” , “no, I make installations” (like holoscape, which is built on WP) – or how I work with NYC-area non-profits and always recommend WordPress as a tool for their projects and missions. But whereas in the art world people usually just don’t care about “code” (or the political ramifications of blog culture and terms or language like Creative Commons, GPL, XML, etc.), at least at these events people are always willing to listen to what you do, or in this case why you do it with WordPress!


I first went to the WP in Education round table. I forget all of the presenters’ names, but that’s Matt Mullenweg on the far left, and two of the other blokes (middle and far right) were from Virginia of all states, which was interesting – and they both had very strong ideas and opinions about how WordPress has pro-actively been used to advance pedagogy and educational enlightenment! A wonderful topic indeed! It’s a shame there was just not enough time for Qs & As because this one in particular could have gone on for another hour.

While I noticed as the day went on that most people went to one room and stayed there all day, I bounced around, probably walking a whole mile inside the building from class to class.

I nipped over to the WordPress for Non-Profits seminar:


This lady Amanda was a hoot, and she had one really great message in particular:


(I only wish I could convince more non-profits of the why!)


Don’t be fooled by this image! The WordCamp was packed, over 700 people were in attendance! These big rooms were definitely a bit intimidating, but I guess better this than a room for 30 and have 80 people show up!


A random encounter in the hallways – Matt Mullenweg must get stopped all the time to be asked a simple question, and the question turns into an informal discussion and seminar! He’s so pleasant and positive about people, and code, and discussing real issues, in this case the topic was canonical plugins and language localizations.


Are they sharing notes? LOL!


My laptop went kaputz less than 48 hours before WordCamp (anybody want to donate to help me get a netbook?), else I totally would be one of these people, and probably would have been drafting this post then.


One of the most interesting seminars I went to, because it’s a hot topic I’m developing for my own intents and purposes right now for another project, this notion of “hyperlocal” and community building with WordPress. This speaker was talking on behalf of InJersey.com which runs on WPMU and BP.

All in all a wonderful day! I wish there were more events like this, which is why I’ll have to follow through on my plans for some hyperlocal-wordpress-for-artists-meet-up-tech-exchange-and-talk thing to do on my own soon!

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No matter how crazy this city gets, it’s never worth leaving else you’ll miss scenes like this! I didn’t notice until I dumped these photos onto my computer that the two sets of window lights went on in the second frame while they were off in the first (I normally take at least two or three shots of the same photo to get one that is most-steady and framed the way I like, but in this case they make a wonderful GIF) – which also makes one realize that behind each of those windows, in every building, someone lives or works there.

Gotham is FULL of lives.

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