fetusmart

I was doing some research for work and came across this interesting site where one can adopt a fetus from Fetusmart. Enjoy...

I adopted a cute lil' halloweeny fetus
from Fetusmart! Hooray fetus!

maker faire

I went to maker faire this weekend on both saturday and sunday. Laughing Squid has a great bunch of photos on flickr and they even caught Forrest and me talking over the Atom electric car. I wasn't able to make it last year and I was upset about it. A friend that went last year told me that maker faire wasn't very impressive and it was full of a bunch of 80's style nerds. After going this year I have to differ with him on that. I thought the people and the atmosphere was incredible. There was a large burning man style contingent which I identify with combined with straight up science geeks (again I felt very at home). Maybe my friend is afraid of being seen as a nerd or a geek, but the people I met at maker faire were all very cool. You can count me in that group any time. Besides the booths and the people the live music was also a hit. All in all maker faire had a bit of a carnie feel, but I think that is why I liked it so much!

Some highlights (in no order):

• 3D printer using sugar -- this is hands down of the of the coolest, most inventive thing I saw. They gals and guys built a 3D print out of an old HP plotter, a heat gun, and a bunch of sugar. They are able to get 10 DPI by fusing layers of sugar together with a simple heat gun! Amazing and ingenious!


• SRL -- always one of my favorites! They have some new things (switchblade robotic arm) and they put on a great show at the end. It sounds like they may have gotten into trouble and had some of their machines impounded. I talk to Mark for a little while on saturday about some new projects that I might be able to get involved with. We'll see. I sounds like fun.


• Cyclecide -- this group of bicycle freaks / clowns with the human powered carnival rides were great. The rides being human powered is brilliant and the clown show they put on is funny as hell.


• techshop -- this is a fully-equipped open-access workshop with some very nice equipment in Menlo Park. You can get a membership for as little as $100/month. I have been look for something like this closer than The Crucible in Oakland. I will have to go by and check it out.


• 3D maze -- there was this great 3D spherical maze toy, where one had to rotate this maze, which was mounted in a gyro so it had a full 3 degrees of freedom, to get a rubber ball to follow the maze. This thing was cool and huge. I wish I could describe it better.

More to come as I think more about what I saw...

idiot

It has been a crazy couple of weeks and I am a bit behind on my blog. But...

Last weekend I went to a great art opening at Varnish for photographs by Kate Garner of Haysi Fantayzee fame. The show is called I-diot. It is a series of photographs of alter egos and performance artists mainly from London's nightlife. She has photography of people, such as Leigh Bowery and Pete Burns. My friend Andy has had an email friendship with Kate for awhile now and he (and we) finally got to meet her in person, if for only ten minutes. She seems quite interesting. I recommend checking out her show and the Varnish art space.

jan saudek

The tragic kingdom post started me thinking about my favorite artists, one of which is Jan Saudek, who I just discovered has a new website (finally!) and it seems a new permanent gallery. Jan Saudek is a Czech photographer, whose work I was first introduced to back in 1996 in Prague. I was spending a lot of time in Prague back then because the orchestra I was working for had started playing there. I really enjoyed the industrial grit of Prague and I felt that Saudek's photos really captured that grit as well as the weathered lack of innocence and the youthful innocence that lived in close proximity in the Czech Republic at that time. Most of his photographs date back to much earlier/darker times in Czechoslovakia, but you could still see the ghosts of that past in people's faces and in the cities themselves. I have never been to Moscow, but I always think of Prague when I hear the song "Moskau" from Rammstein (Sie schläft mit mir doch nur für Geld. Ist doch die schönste Stadt der Welt). I think like Saudek they really capture the grit of an ex-soviet city in the song.

Suadek's portrait subjects are both grotesque and sexy all at the same time. I enjoyed that fact that he was willing to explore different types of human bodies, bodies that are interesting and have a story to tell, not just the western fantastic ideal.

If you are ever in Prague, you must visit his new gallery!

tragic kingdom

Camille Rose Garcia is a pop surrealists painter out of LA and she has an exhibit coming to the San Jose Museum of Art. Her art really captures the discontent and cynicism felt by many in the puck, post-punk, and goth subcultures. I think her work sits nicely between Andy Warhol and H. R. Giger, if one were to ask me to categorize it. I, for one, love her work and would love to have a tattoo based on her stuff (so many ideas, so little skin).

gotan project

I haven't posted in a while. I was very busy last week and got sick towards the end of the week. I did go see a great concert on Sunday evening though. Alisa and I went to see Gotan Project. They are a very interesting / amazing group in the somewhat bland world of live electronica. We are lucky enough in live in SF, which as far as I can tell is their only stop in the US except for Couchella. I get the feeling that a lot of bands like to play SF. I think we make a good crowd. Anyway, they had three violinists, a cellist, a pianist, an accordion player, singer, guitar player, and two DJs. Even with that many people on stage, it worked well. Their mix of electronica, tango beaks, and indigenous Argentine music is truly a mashup worth it's own genre!

ruben's tube

I found this great video on YouTube of a Ruben's Tube. This kind of stuff makes me really want a warehouse space or at least a garage to mess around in!