The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for the ‘Art’ Category.
I’ll be at the Switchboard Music Festival on March 28th.
Join me!
I heard about it from Zoe Keating’s performance calendar (she’ll be there as well!)
The bits of music I heard on the Switchboard website have me very excited.
And gosh darn it, if I strain my neck, I can see the performance location, The Dance Mission Theater out my apartment window just 2 blocks away!
These 360 degree full sphere panoramascape images really capture the energy of Burning Man in fantastic dynamic style! Check it out! (they use Flash). Look up, look down, look all around!
Niladri wrote to the SWARM list a few days ago:
I reflashed the daughter board on Orb 3 and Michael Toren and I roll tested it. The moment I hit the joystick the orb took off and wouldn’t stop even when I let go of the joystick.
…
P.S. 1 – The kill switch is not easy to hit when the orb is running away from you very fast.
P.S. 2- The box shop is out of band aids. I would grab a box but it will be a few weeks before I am back.
…immunizations.
In preparing to go to India to show off SWARM, I had to get stuck with a bunch of needles. Joy.
I got my immunizations at the San Francisco Department of Public Health Adult Immunization & Travel Clinic
They knew which vaccines I needed but I checked up myself with the CDC here and here.
I made an appointment a few days in advance. It took about 1.5 hours with the interview, shots and discussion.
I received
Total bill from San Francisco Department of Health: $307
I have to pick up the Cipro and Doxycycline prescriptions from Costco. (you don’t need a membership to buy from their pharmacy)
A day later, both my arms hurt and are stiff from the injections.
I’ll have to pick up some permethrin for my clothes to and maybe a mosquito net from REI and I’m ready to go.
Whooever said international travel was fun was in the middle of a psychotic episode from the mefloquine.
And it sucks but this post belongs in the “Art” category.
Last week at The Exploratorium After Dark (which was loads of fun), I saw “Animanemone”. Fittingly, it looks quite a bit like an anemone in motion. Alan, one of the creators gave me the whole skinny, starting with “Well, my friend bought 2,000 stepper motors for like $0.23 apiece on eBay. So we needed to find something cool to do with them…”
Ah, here’s more about Animanemone from the artists!
It’s a really nice piece! I’m pretty psyched to say that I took the photo to the right with my iPhone. It came out awesome. Use the power of the Google on “Animanemone” and watch it! They’re from Minnesota.
It’s great to mull on…. it’s like watching grass in the wind. Totally fun to put your hand on it and feel the buzzing of the motors. And it’s just so many fun tiny pieces. It’s zen and not zen. :-)
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And Ken Murphy’s awesome “History of the Sky” was there as promised. I zoned on that for a while. Tototolly groovy!
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I only got to look at Cubatron from afar :-( … not enough time in a night :-(
Charlotte and I were wandering around the October 17th San Francisco Open Studios. We stopped at several artists’ studios and Charlotte found many orange and bumpy paintings to admire (she has a thing for orange and bumpy, but that’s a story for another time). At Fort Mason we found ourselves in one room, she was totally keen on some paintings by Jeff Grove, including one with a plastic garbage bag on it. That one turned out to be a terrific painting of a woman in rope bondage, covered up to keep the neighboring Kinkade devotee artists from freaking their shit out. While they chatted, I wandered over to some photos on the wall. There were some nicely shot “common” architectural images… doors, front stoops, cars. Some nice work with light play. And then I fell in love with the most unusual image.
I got in a conversation with David Booth, the artist. After a while he asked me what I liked about it and I said something like, “It’s just such a curious image. I’m looking at this railing and I see how perfect it is in this boringly common scene and I want to ask ‘why is this railing here?’ Why would it be put there? I mean, nobody needs a railing in just that spot, so what’s it doing there? ’Why are you there, railing? Who put you there? What are you doing, being so perfect there? It’s like your hanging with turkeys when you could be soaring with eagles! You’re just sittin’ there like all in your quiet perfectness. And what are you doing there anyway? I can’t see why you’d be put there, nobody needs a railing there. Nobody would spend all that effort to put a railing there. Come on, tell me what you’re doing there! What are you really doing?’ And then I realize that I’m yelling at a railing in an alley in a photo and I laugh and I laugh and I laugh!”
David was excited. He said he had a similar response to the railing and was glad he could project that in this art. He had walked past it many times, hardly giving it any notice and then it struck him!
You can find the magical railing here, at about 1941 Stockton / 100 Fielding. Here is David Booth describing to me where to find it.
I have a much higher resolution version of this image but I thought it appropriate to only post this low res version. David Booth is an excellent artist and deserves the recognition.
This is an excellent guide for people wanting to make fire effects and fireworks.
FIRE SAFETY
MANUAL FOR FLAME EFFECTS
&
FIRE PERFORMERS THIRD EDITION
TAUGHT BY LES IZZMORE
FIRE SAFETY EXPERT
Portions of this manual have been copied from the World Wide Web and compiled specifically for artists and performers that use fire. This manual is for educational purposes only and is
NOT FOR SALE
Ken Murphy, a supremely cool guy that I bump into a lot is presenting his recent and ongoing art project, A History of the Sky at the Exploratorium January 5-31. There will be a premiere event at Exploratorium After Dark on January 7th, 2010. I will be there. Maybe you will join me?
I don’t understand quite why but this piece fills me with emotion and sometimes tears every time I experience it. I am very much looking forward to seeing this piece in person again.
A terrific video series for people that love children (but not in the way you think… and not that way either!)
Holding Flame was at Burning Man 2009 and I missed it.
wow. Built by Poetic Kinetics.
Oo OO! Look!
They built those giant flowers too!
check out their photo gallery on their site. They’re amazing, ten times so in person!
I shoved together all the video footage I took at Maker Faire 2009 and… well, here you go. Enjoy!
After having my bike stolen at Burning Man, I bemoaned to my friends that I now lived in Walk-in camping with no easy way to get there. A 10 minute bike ride is pleasant, a 35 minute walk is not. My friends welcomed me into Illumination Village at 4:50 and Esplanade :-). It took a few hours to move but was well worth it!
One of the nights where fire was reigning supreme, (maybe Monday night?) I had a very nice talk with Dex. He talked to me about his plans for this incredible fire poofing vehicle. We spoke about it and exchanged ideas with glee. The thing that most impressed me was that he was showing off these amazing poofers on the back of his truck and we were talking, appropriately so, as equals. That’s really cool.
Later in the week I spoke with Nate Smith, creator of Fire Vortex and 2BLEVE, among other things. We spoke about my plan for making my upcoming Fire Fog and he offered some really good suggestions. He even told me about his novel design for a mechanism that dissolves propane into liquid fuel! It’s part of the design that makes 2 BLEVE work so well. I might use part of that design for Fire Fog :-)
Nate Smith! I talked shop with Nate Smith! That’s super cool.
Via Maura… from Symphony of Science
Tom Kennedy would certainly have laughed heartily at the winning entry of this Craption contest with Tom and Haideen Anderson’s Dr. Strange McCain Bus.
To view my local copy, you should right-click on the image below and view it in another window, or download it or something. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.
Read more about Tom Kennedy and Haideen Anderson’s vehicle art on TomKennedyArt.com
Last night Charlotte and I went to the Metreon to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I really really enjoyed the movie but more on that in another post.
The Metreon is a curious place. As we walked through it last night we alternately got the feeling the place was struggling, up-and-coming, deserted, and the weird sense that we were in the Zocalo in Babylon 5. On an upper level, in place of I don’t remember what, is a live theater showing Point Break Live, a quirky theatrical production. Downstairs where the Sony Store used to be is an art gallery showing the works of Robert Cameron. There was one guy at the entrance and a sign requesting a $5 donation. We had time before the movie and thought it was quirky enough so we went in. We asked, “You don’t mind if we go in without paying, do you? We promise we won’t get too much enjoyment out of the art.” He consented and we roamed the space. Yes, his art is taking up the entire 4,000 square feet of where the Sony Store used to be, wow. The person in front said how Mr Cameron was 98 years old and in poor health. We wandered around.
The art is engrossing reality. A 4′x4′ print of the side of a mountain cliff, after gazing for a while, you can finally make out 3 tiny climbers scaling the vertical cliff. A beautiful and odd looking marina shot from above with vivid colors; the artist statement points out that 3 nuclear submarines, the most powerful weapons man has ever created are shown floating in the docks. A joyous 4′x4′ image of the Transamerica Building shot from almost directly above is sitting on the floor of the gallery, making you feel like you are flying above it.
There are many more images of San Francisco, large nature scenes and others. It’s really a very good show.
I send my best regards to Robert Cameron.
On our way out, we told the person at the front that we had exceeded our happiness quotient for a free show and we both chipped in $5.
The show will be at the Metreon til March 2010.
Schuyler and I went down to the Box Shop Thursday night to experiment with the Fire Fog effect I’ve been trying to drum up. We certainly made fire!
Yes, that’s Schuyler with a Hudson sprayer filled with 87 octane unleaded gas. Don’t try this at home! Aww, do what you want, it’s your home!
Unleaded gas, kerosene, Coleman fuel (white gas), and Smirnoff apple flavored vodka were all underperformers :-(. The unleaded shows these pretty sparkles as if there were iron filing in them. Kerosene burns a little slower, Coleman fuel a touch slower still, and the vodka put the fire out more than it lit it.
In general, spraying makes “a big flame” which is pretty and fun to play with but not what I am shooting for. We couldn’t get it to reliably make the effect I was looking for. What I’m shooting for:
A 6′ tall, 10′ wide, 10′ long volume is filled with a flammable aerosol. A spark at one end of the volume lights the aerosol on fire. The spectator is able to watch the flame front slowly rip cross the volume. After it cools, another aerosol release and another spark from a different direction lights it up again.
Just once during the night I got what looked close to what I’m aiming for. There was absolutely no wind, I had sprayed a mist more or less in a column over the barrel, the fire caught and ate from the bottom of the mist to the top and over to the left a little :-)
Next tests will involve:
Charlie showed us this propane in a bottle trick that was pure magic. Stick the head of a propane torch in a clear bottle, the larger the better, he says a 5 gallon carboy is perfect. Turn the gas on to fill the bottle. Then light it. A blue flame rips through the air in absolutely beautiful and delicate ways. We tried with an empty hard liquor bottle and it was zowie! So Michael brought out a 5′ x 3″ pyrex tube from his pyrophone. Filling the tube and lighting it was tremendous fun! When on, it would resonate the tube and make music. Or if you put a lot of gas in and then light it, the blue flame would leap through the tube in fascinating ways!
From a discussion I had Saturday night… I talked about how I’m not passionate about many things in my life but right now I’m passionate about making my Fire Fog art piece. So do it!
Saturday night I went to an accordian rave. Nuff said.
But to say more, it was at the The Accordion Apocalypse Repair Shop store in Bayview at 2626 Jennings St. Denise had invited me. I met up with Prados and Erik. Happily, while we were there we had the idea to call SFSlim who was at the pub in Gerlach. He put Jesse on the phone and we were all able to confirm that the playa had not in fact killed him. I told Jesse “We love you very much and if you ever do that again, you’re grounded for life”.
More about the music: There’d be like 5 performers, unamplified, with about 150 attendees jumping, moshing and carousing. It was raucous!
Here’s an audio snippet of the event with terrible sound quality in .aiff format.
Mark Alexander took this super fly photo on Thursday or so at Burning Man with IR film of myself, Coreyfro, Rachel and Rebecca. Yes, that is a giant rubber ducky on a pole in the background, Mark is a part of Duck Pond Theme Camp!
Wow, that was intense.
I like machine art, fire art, machine art with fire on it, discussions and actions that try to improve the world, and burritos. I really like burritos! More about me...
