This Friday, June 26th we will be celebrating the 4 year birthday of Microformats at B Restaurant & Bar in San Francisco. From 7pm until the place closes, we will be partying down, honoring the hard work of the many people who have contributed to the Microformats initiative & raising money to fund this summer’s MicroformatsDevCamp in July.
And if that’s not a good enough reason to go, we’ll have some free drink tix to give away to earlybirds, stickers, t-shirts, and swag from the event’s sponsors: Object Adjective, Ribbit, and Spinn3r.
Microformats 4 Year Birthday
June 26, 2009 7 – 10pm @ B Restaurant & Bar 720 Howard Street (Yerba Buena Gardens Upper Terrace) San Francisco, CA 94103
Come celebrate the 4 Year Birthday of Microformats! $5-20 sliding scale donation. All proceeds go toward the microformatsDevCamp this summer!
Add to my calendar:
So if you’re a Microformats contributor, user, enthusiast for portable datasets, or just a web developer or geek, come on out tomorrow night to show your support and have some fun!
And if you want to promote the event on your website or blog, I’ve created a bunch of badges & banners on the Microformats 4 Year Birthday Page (at the bottom) that you can grab.
Artists have been making a scene doing performance paintings since the late 1950’s when Yves Klein created works from female models (yes live nude girls) covered in paint and “stamped” against his canvases - the result of course was something of a messy blue rendition of “finger painting with benefits” but the point is someone did it. And it’s been all downhill since…
A quick art history lesson a-la-wikipedia:
In 1958, as part of a live performance, Klein choreographed female models who applied his paint to their bodies and then pressed their painted bodies on canvas or paper spread on the wall and on the floor. These “living brush” paintings, which left a distinct figural impression, were followed by his Anthropométries series, which employed the models in a variety of motions and left the canvas with a gestural impression. On March 9, 1960, Klein conducted a 20-minute performance of his Monotone Symphony while his models “painted” new pieces of art.
However, just when you think you’ve seen it all in performance painting, the power of YouTube reminds us that there are others out there with new, amusing ways to make art:
Worthy of a slot in the history books? Probably not. But certainly worth passing around the office and emailing to your friends…
The art exhibition Algorithmia at Root Division closed yesterday, and while it was sad to take it down, I am proud of how well we, the curators and artists, executed this unusual (to say the least) art exhibition.
Now that I have time to catch my breath, I’d like to offer a few closing notes.
For curators Bryan Hewitt, Vita Mei Hewitt and myself, it all started Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, which defined algorithm as:
Any particular procedure for solving a certain type of problem.
Our curatorial aim was simple: to bring together a group of diverse artists working in media both digital and non, to explore the theme of problem solving from various conceptual angles.
The exhibition was a huge success, and included a cache of 15 artists from all over the world, all working in media as diverse as web, soft sculpture, installation, video, sensor interaction, a live fish maze, application design, psychological brainwave assessment, 3d animation, digital sound and image installation, memory assessment, and much more. Read the rest of this entry »
As of late I am reminded of Alvin Lucier’s 1970 recorded composition, I am Sitting in a Room, in which he recorded himself narrating a speech, then played it back into the room, recording and rerecording the output, in order to capture the room’s characteristic resonant frequencies. Over and over again, the full text is played back and rerecorded in the space until it completely breaks down:
I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.
I remember learning about the recording in a college music class and immediately going home and trying it out in my bathroom because the tiny room with the tiles was ideal for quick results. The breakdown to pure resonant tones took only several cycles. And it was beautiful. Read the rest of this entry »
San Francisco is known for its tech industry, its rich artistic culture (and counter culture), and its beautiful hills and stunning views. I would be hard pressed to find a better place to live. That said, we are also known for having one of the largest and most daunting homeless problems in the United States.
It’s not just San Francisco though. Homelessness has always been a huge problem throughout the entire United States. However, as of late, with the real estate crisis, it’s gotten a whole lot worse, and has been effecting more and more people throughout the country. That is why, for blog action day, I am writing a bit about the current state of homelessness and what we can do to help.
The Numbers:
San Francisco has one of the highest percentages of people living on the streets of any major city in the United States. Even though there has been a recent reduction in homeless rates both nationally and locally, experts agree that San Francisco’s known homeless population still totals 5,000 to 8,000 people, with many others going uncounted. Read the rest of this entry »
