At last night's Dorkbot at the Exploratorium, we got to see the engine from the Raygun Gothic Rocketship up close and personal. Beautiful, buzzy, high-voltage scupture makes me happy.
Karen Marcelo, Dorkbot-SF's organizer, has a great video on her Flickr feed. Check it out.
Visualization courtesy Adam Cole/NPR
Some of you know me from my culinary blog, Gastronomie. Though the blog is now in hibernation, I continue to be an avid cocktailian. Making tinctures, seeking out small-batch spirits, and buying obscure tonics is something I'm still pretty fond of.
Those of you who know me professionally, on the other hand, know that I'm a bit of a data geek, and really love finding ways to present data visually so that more people can know things they might otherwise not be privy to.
No surprise then, that NPRs "Cockail Chemistry: Parsing the Bloody Mary" made me a little giddy.
I'm pretty sure I know what I'll be doing with the data visualization software I'm beta testing right now.
I don't remember when or where I heard my first LCD Soundsystem track--it might actually have been a remix. But once I heard them, I was hooked; in many ways, James Murphy's music has been a backdrop for the past few years of my life.
From the early stuff that I discovered much later ("Losing My Edge") to more recent tracks like "All My Friends" and "I Can Change," these are songs that I've danced to, moped to, and driven really fast to.
This week, LCD play their final five shows. I'm pretty sad to see them go, but also incredibly grateful that I saw them play an amazing set at Treasure Island last year.
It's times like this that I remember why I, a wee thing of 5'4", push my way to the front row to see the bands I love. Thanks for the years of great music, LCD Soundsystem.
A piece from Transmutations: Sound, Data and Mechanics. Currently on exhibit at GAFFTA.
Grey Area Foundation for the Arts is everything I love about San Francisco, embodied in one amazing organization. Data scientists, visualizationists, designers, fabricators, musicians... nearly every show here represents all of these clans.
I love that GAFFTA is the place where artists and scientists come together seamlessly to create a digital record of our rapidly changing culture.
During a particularly difficult moment last year, when I was feeling lost and overwhelmed, a friend told me to "Act as if."
"As if, indeed," I responded bitterly. "You have exactly what you've always wanted. The house, the social circle, the family, the career. You don't know what it means to have to act as if."
All these months later, I recall those words and think about how very different everything is. I think that maybe he was right. If you "act as if," maybe you do get closer to the things you wish for.
Or maybe, you just get closer to being happy with exactly what you have right now.
Last night, I saw a band, Acá, that I can only describe as ambient, jazzy, futuristic post-rock. Their MySpace page has more about them, along with a few tracks for your listening pleasure.
The sheer passion and rawness emanating from their saxophonist was stunning.
This past January, I spent a weekend in Bodega Bay at a friend's weekend home, reading, shooting (photos!), watching movies, and doing very little else.
I took this photo at dusk on our first evening there, just as the mist was rolling in over the bay. It's hazy, out of focus, blown out. I took the photo again, adjusting setting to make it a technically better image.
But the truth is, it's this one that turned out to be the perfect one.
I've only recently been inspired to shoot in RAW mode on my dSLR. I'd long avoided it, mostly because I didn't want to deal with the massive files, and because I'd been pretty satisfied with how the camera converts images to JPG.
But once in a while, the conversion takes away from the beauty of a scene. The image above is a perfect example. The JPG had none of the striking contrast or unnerving blues of the RAW file.
Even visually, truth can be stranger than fiction.
From a friend's Facebook status update today:
"...feeling that small, nagging sense of doubt that (may) precede a personal growth spurt and hoping I have the fearlessness, confidence & energy to turn it into greatness."
That level of honesty and self-awareness is totally inspiring, and leads me to wonder what patterns I'm missing in my own life.
"Untitled", Larry Bell. Vacuum-coated glass
A few years ago, on a trip to Washington DC, I took a walk through the Hirshhorn Museum's sculpture garden. There was a cube there, highly reflective, chest-high, beautiful. The piece stuck with me for its simplicity and the beautiful way that it echoed its surroundings.
Fast forward to September 2010. I'm walking through the Oakland Museum of California, and stumble across the piece above. I know it instantly. It's not the same piece, but I know it's by the same artist.
This piece reflects its surroundings, yes. But more magically, from certain angles, you can also see THROUGH the cube. Forward and backward at once.
Full circle and then some.
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