| | | | | |

8 Days in Austria

Taugshow #9

Before I completely forget, it’s time for my Austria trip wrapup post.

Vienna: Vienna is beautiful old city, once the center of power during the Austro-Hungarian Empire empire. It has exhibits in it’s natural history museum that are older than the United States. This place IS real history. Austria is also known for it’s copious amounts of meat, chocolate, punsch and beer. I indulged in plenty of all of it.

Roboexotica Festival – The main reason for trip, this event is like nothing else. Johannes and the monochrom crew along with Magnus from SHIFZ put this thing on, now in it’s 8th mechanically intoxicating incarnation. Essentially, Roboexotica is a week long exhibition in the heart of Vienna, showcasing a variety of robots and other machines related to cocktail culture. Much media was made. GETV videos w/Violet hosting. LunchMeet w/Johannes & one with the Slovenians coming soon. My photos. Jake’s photos. Violet’s photos.

– Roboexotica Symposium – I was asked to deliver a lecture which became a multimedia presentation on undeground robot culture in San Francisco. I covered mostly my experiences with SRL. I was a bit nervous following the creative genius minds of Kal Spelletich and V.Vale.

Taugshow #9: This is monochrom’s live monthly variety/talk show which was brilliant and hilarious. Since there were so many of us from San Francisco in town, Johannes made this a special English language only edition. Highlights include interviews with Kal, Violet, Vale, the overhead projector song (acoustic and disco versions) and Krack the robot that dances to cheesy techno. Video of the whole thing is online.

Graz: The city of Graz is just 2 hours outside of Vienna and is the home to the football stadium formerly named after famous Graz homeboy Arnold Schwarzenegger. The city erased the Governator’s name from the stadium after his uncompromising pro-death penalty stance. It is amazing that the US is one of the last “civilized” nations to still employ this barbaric method of justice.

– Videoblogging workshops – Johannes asked me to give a series of videoblogging workshops to his students at the FH JOANNEUM- School of Informations Design in Graz. I did four 45-minute sessions to four different groups of students. It wasn’t really enough time to go into much depth but I was able to cover basics of getting video onto a blog using blip.tv and Blogger. Here’s the results.

– Lecture: Videoblogging, Webzines and Zombies – I gave another multimedia presentation, this time in Graz at the same university as the workshops, and relating to videoblogging, independent publishing and underground San Francisco culture. This was fun to do as there is such a wealth of documented material out there on all this, and they are all things I’m passionate about. I think Scott Beale alone deserves credit for the photos I used to illustrate the culture topic. I’ll try and output the presentation from keynote and post it.

It was a great 9 days and I know I’m missing tons. Thanks to Johannes and Evelyn for putting me up at their place for the duration and to Johannes for finding a way to fund this trip for me. It was an amazing time and it’s heartening to know that creative freaks are doing amazing things in other countries AND want to include us often self-centered Americans.

links for 2006-12-18

links for 2006-12-15

A Note from Josh Wolf’s Mom

Josh’s great friends and supporters in San Francisco
are really doing some incredible things to help. The
first thing is to have as many people as possible call
Nancy Pelosi tomorrow [Friday, 12/15] about Josh’s situation. The
number is (415) 556-4862. If you can’t get through,
please try later in the day or next week.

Thanks so much,
Peace,
Liz

5 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me

OK, Micki tagged me, so here’s my 5 things you probably didn’t know about me. This blog meme started with Jeff Pulver. Others who have been tagged are Irina Slutsky, Zadi Diaz, Steve Garfield, Chuck Olson and Bre Pettis.

— A first proud geek moment was when I created an animated version of the opening sequence of Monty Python’s Flying Circus on my Commodore VIC-20, in Commodore ASCII. If i ever find the data tape i saved it to, i’ll post it.

— I’m now working for my 5th San Francisco based Internet startup. In chronological order: Studio Verso, Phoenix-Pop Productions, Fast Forward Networks, Inktomi, PodTech.

— No, I didn’t cash out handsomely at any of the above, though I did turn down a job at Yahoo! in 1996.

— I once sold magic mushrooms to an undercover cop in college. That didn’t turn out so well.

— I’ve handled poisonous snakes and lived. This was when I was traveling through southeast Asia in 2002.

OK, my turn to tag 5 people. Paul Boutin, Jackson West, Ryanne Hodson, Schlomo Rabinowitz, David Pava, tell us your 5 things.

Roboexotica Going Well

Jake runs Vino-Viper
I’ve been here a week in Vienna, Austria for Roboexotica, the conference for cocktail robots. It’s been a blast hanging out with my new Austrian friends @ monochrom. Plenty of impressive drink serving bots abound. This photo is of the Kal Spelletich’s Vino-Viper, an articulated arm attached to a wall that is controlled by a glove and blow tube. You move the arm around by moving your fingers and then can serve wine by blowing into a tube. Only the hardy and ambidextrous are successful at getting a decent amount of intoxicant in their cup.

Other interesting bots include Anika and Daniel’s Digi Colada, the Cocktail-Katapult which launches maraschino cherries into a large transformer bot for delivery, the WERP-Bot which facially recognizes and launches a cigarette into a waiting smoker’s mouth. Much local SF representation here with David Calkins‘ drink serving Chapek & Tyler’s WaiterBot, Simone Davalos‘ El Espanol Borracho which makes a mean flaming spanish coffee. Also David Fine and Jonathan Moore’s External Combustion Engine which uses RFID cards to serve up various cocktail recipes. Pals Violet Blue, Jake Appelbaum, V. Vale & family are also here making mayhem. Much more I’m missing, though you can catch a bunch of it in these videos I shot. Also, Roboexotica GETV episode is up.

Josh Wolf Benefit this Thursday 12/7

Josh Wolf, free for now
FREE JOSH WOLF!

A night of speakers, film, spoken word, and music to benefit Josh Wolf’s legal fund

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7
7:30PM

BALAZO GALLERY
2183 Mission Street near 18th
San Francisco

SPEAKERS
MARK LENO California State Assemblyman
BRUCE BRUGMANN Publisher Bay Guardian
CHRIS DALY San Francisco Supervisor
ROSS MIRKARIMI, San Francisco Supervisor
DAVID GREENE Executive Director, First Amendment Project
JANE KIM School Board Comissioner Elect
SARAH OLSON Radio Producer and Independent Journalist

FILM PREMIERE
New short film about Josh by filmmakers
KEVIN EPPS and NJERI SIMS

PLUS SPOKEN WORD AND MUSICAL GUESTS

SPONSORED BY
The San Francisco Bay Guardian
The Free Josh Wolf Coalition
The League of Young Voters
Society of Professional Journalists NorCal Chapter
Reporters Without Borders
First Amendment Project
Youth Radio

Suggested donation $2 to $25
Cash bar available with ID
This event is ALL AGES

CONTACT
For more information and/or to participate in this event contact Andy
andy.blue(at)yahoo.com
www.joshwolf.net

JOSH WOLF is a San Francisco free-lance journalist being held for his refusal, based on journalistic principles, to turn over to a federal grand jury his news footage from a July 2005 protest. Free-press advocates from around the world have called his incarceration unjust and a grave violation of the freedom of the press. Josh is well on his way to becoming the longest-incarcerated journalist in US history. His case has prompted Reporters Without Borders to lower the United States’ ranking for press freedom nine points to 53rd in the world.

For his commitment to journalistic freedom Josh received the 2006 Journalist of the Year Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. On this occasion he was praised by Assemblyman Mark Leno who commended his “courageous dedication to protecting freedom of the press in our country.”

For more information on Josh’s case and to learn how you can help visit www.joshwolf.net