SRL in LA



Sneaky in LA
Originally uploaded by ekai.

I’m in Los Angeles for a Survival Reseach Labs show tonight, Saturday night. This past couple of weeks I’ve been putting a bunch of time in over at the SRL shop for this LA show. It’s outside the Dangerous Curve gallery in downtown Los Angeles. Deets are on the site. FREE, no tix, just show up. Get there early for a good vantage point. Show starts at 8:30pm. Lots of remote controlled machines and mayhem. And Kimric’s merry-sheep-go-round. This will be a good one. Look for me, I’ll be the dork in an orange jumpsuit.

It’s been fun operating heavy machinery again. Cutting, drilling, sanding, lathing, lifting, twisting, screwing, unscrewing, bumping, grinding, etc. All in the name of art. Big ass art. These shows are so few and in-between that it’s not hard to dive into the mix for awhile to help realize the madness. Weeks of preparation for what amounts to an hour long show. An hour of mechanized mayhem, disorder, consciousness bending reality that you just can’t see anywhere else. Seriously. Mark gets approached by Hollywood all the time and he tells them to fuck off. This LA show is no Hollywood production. Yes, we’ve got kick ass catered food, but that’s about it. Personalities, salaries and stand-ins step aside. It’s all blood, sweat and fucking amazing art. Come on down.

Mashing the Beatles

Been listing to Revolved lately, a mashup of the Beatles Revolver album. I know there’s a bunch of Beatles mashups out there now, DJ Dangermouse’s Grey Album and The Beastles two name a couple. Revolved is done right, matched tempos, beats and rhythms with songs from The Cure, Madonna, Jimi Hendrix and even Glenn Miller.

That Subliminal Kid



Blackster
Originally uploaded by ekai.

DJ Spooky is friggin’ brilliant, let it be said. He kicked off Rhythm Science, a lecture last night on art history, philosophy, hiphop and remix culture, by invoking the gift economy. He handed out free mix CDs to everyone in the audience. He then proceded to pull out a personal stash of records that are obviously the tools of his trade and shared them with everyone in the audience. Not for keeps, but show and tell like, letting everyone fondle and caress each piece of vinyl before passing it on to his and her neighbor.

And then the lecture started. Here’s some notes I picked up along the way.

-the culture of copy
-information ecology
-the source code is human expression mediated by human interpretation
-the Beats of the 50’s gave birth to the beats of the 21st century
-fuckitall.com
-discourse of the nation state
-Internet inheriting the remixing from the streets (the first network)
-the artist as font, moveable to different compositions
-Spooky is a French lit and philosophy major
-dialectics of sound
-streetlights as controls of the original network, the streets
-music is liquid architecture
-copyright as it is written and as it is lived is diverging
-electronic music is the folk music of the 21st century, everyone knows and plays each other’s music
-Birth of a Nation was the first film to play in the White House

And then there was the other reason he was here. This free lecture proceeds a $40 a head gig he’s doing this weekend at Yerba Buena in San Francisco. Spooky uses the 1915 silent KKK propaganda film The Birth of a Nation as source material for video on 3 giant screens and an accompanying composition he created. Too rich for my blood right now, but I’d love to hear report backs.

UPDATE: Some pix I took. Steve Rhodes has more.

Some Webzine Thoughts

Webzine

Been thinking a lot about Webzine lately. Some ideas:

-500-1000 people
-2 days over a weekend
-in San Francisco, though East Bay is not out of the question
-July, August or September 2005
-not Labor Day weekened +/- 3 weeks
-increase diversity in race, gender participation
-one room with panels & speakers, so no conflict in choosing which one to attend
-lounge w/comfy couches, tea, coffee, snacks to encourage schmoozing/connecting/networking
-“masters” area where knowledge experts of varying disciplines can casually engage with interested attendees. possibly open signup list.
-encourage participation by all attendees
-host brainstorming session mid-April, let me know if you want in

Oh, and if you just dropped in and have no idea what I’m talking about, we’re getting the band back together. The Webzine band that is. The band that is a conference, party and expo for independent publishing on the Internet. Just as relevant today as it was then.

Home again!



Yeah boyee!
Originally uploaded by ekai.

What a week! SXSW Interactive in Austin is just what I needed. I hadn’t planned on going until Scott pulled me in, like the good friend he is. It was a Webzine reunion of sorts, with at least a dozen people there who were panelists and speakers at years past. Seeing all these fine folks again has got me thinkng it just might be time for another Webzine in San Francisco. 5 years seems about right.

Some takeaways from SXSW:
– met lots o’ cool brilliant people who I can’t wait to collaborate with in the future
– wordpress is the shit, as is its creator
– lots of panels got me hot, but it’s all mush right now
– discovered the awesome culinary power of Las Manitas
– parties, parties, Bruce Sterling, parties, cheap beer, parties and after-parties
– dude, I could have so been on that panel!
– vowing not to pay for admission next year (kinda goes with above)
– discovered the joy of using an RSS reader, where the fuck have I been??
– podcasting – ready to receive, yo!
– running into ex-SF peeps living in Austin who weren’t at SXSW. hi Clay, hi Cathy!
– smooches
– Flickr continues to rock ass
– will remember not to forget the data cable for my digital camera next time so I can play in the realtime photo stream
– blogging can be fun, gonna make it a point to do it more often
– human beings are a fun species
– I can’t believe Austin is in Texas
– Flavor Fav was not there, but damn it would have been cool to see him interview Ana Marie Cox about ass fucking. He always knew what time it was.