Here’s a bit of video I shot during the setup of the last SRL show in LA. It runs about 10 minutes. I’m trying out YouTube’s embed to see how it looks.
January 29, 2006
Hey my DC peeps. This is a bit last minute, but if you’ve got the day free tomorrow you should check out the BrainJams collaboration geek pow-wow event happening Monday. It’s the brainchild of Chris Huere and Kristie Wells who have done two such event here in the SF Bay area. If you’ve got a project you need some geek help with or you’ve got mad geek skillz and are looking to help out on someone’s cool project, BrainJams DC is the place to make that a reality. It takes place at the DC Improv in downtown DC from 10am-5pm. If you can’t make the daytime shindig, catch up with the Jammers during happy hour at the Lucky Bar. Tell ‘em I sent you.
January 26, 2006
Another great Dorkbot at RX Gallery last night. Marc Powell, hacker chef and hacker hostel hotelier extraordinaire, showed us the science behind making taste buds dance. He followed up with an awesome dessert made from liquid nitrogen and purple gloves. That’s mad skillz. Pix I took.
Marc was followed by Jennifer Granick, a Stanford Internet lawyer, who described how Bush’s overstepping of authority on wiretapping is an unprecedented erosion of our democratic system. No surprise there. The comparison of democratic principles to Star Wars was amusing.
January 24, 2006
The SRL mayhem in Chinatown LA was a great little show, smaller than last year but just as scary, freaky and fun to work on as ever. The show titled “The Fish Boy’s Dream” ended in a nightmare for poor little Fish Boy as he was poked from a puking alligator above, tossed around like a floppy halibut by the shaker and finally seared from a fiery blast from the Boeing jet engine. Fish Boy lived a short humble life, but his spirit lives on in that stinky, fish water coated parking lot in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. Jack Nicholson would be proud.
I ran this sneaky soldier with Nina during the show, which performed admirably within it’s constraints. With the right pulsing movements on the remote control, Sneaky would inch forward slowly and zip backwards more quickly. Turning was out of the question, though with several tons of other fast moving machines dancing around, there really wasn’t anywhere to turn to. Sneaky survived the ordeal, though decapitated. He can be seen or bought along with his head and a couple of his brothers in the Fringe Exhibitions gallery until Feb 25th.
Here’s pix I took, mostly during setup. More links from the official SRL page, BoingBoing and Laughing Squid.
January 20, 2006
Survival Research Labs is doing a little show in Los Angeles this weekend as part of the Fringe Exhibitions gallery opening in Chinatown. I’ll be there working it, so stop on by and say hi if you’re in the ‘hood. Gallery opening is 6-8pm and show starts promptly (heh!) at 8pm Saturday, Feb. 21st. FREE!
January 9, 2006
Saturday night was fun with fire by the ocean. In the annual San Francisco tradition, hundreds of people spontaneously show up to the beach at night with hundreds of retired Christmas trees for the Post Yule Pyre. I shot this video which captures some of the mayhem. Also a GETV episode. 56MB QT - 4 min 00 sec.
January 7, 2006
There’s a company called locatecell.com that for $110 will sell you the calling records of any cell phone number in the US. There’s no way this can be legal. There’s serious fraud through social engineering or “pretexting” going on, whatever that is. This Chicago Sun-Times article has the scoop.
