| My name is Jason Eppink and this is my blog. At some point in time I will write three succinct sentences that clearly express who I am and what I do. Alas, we have not arrived at that point in time yet. (More!) |
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Ilya programmed an ambitious indie pop-rock festival at Wonderland last weekend called Exit 44 (referring to the exit on the BQE one takes when driving to Wonderland). It was a runaway success, and introduced me to some wonderful new groups in a crowded genre I generally don't have the time or patience to sift through. Here are some highlights!East Hundred: download "Slow Burning Crimes" (MP3) or watch the video
Project Jenny, Project Jan: nothing for download, but check out their great videos
Hank and Cupcakes: their studio work at this point doesn't reflect even one iota of the magic they bring to the stage, unfortunately
Tiger City: download "Are You Sensation" (MP3)
Auto-Tune the News makes me so happy. It's just consistently exceptional. Michael Gregory takes clips of TV news talking heads, runs them through an auto-tune program to filter them into synthetic sing-song, and assembles them with original green screen footage into a fast-paced, stream-of-conscious style hip-hop medley.
The series is smart, swift, clever, absurd, and meticulously crafted. I can't wait for the next installment.
Start with episode #1 (below) and then continue with episodes #2, #3, and #4.
Did you know I hold a world record? Now you do!From The Universal Record Database website:
Jason Eppink and Matt Green threw a pineapple back and forth 67 times in one minute while singing Camptown Races, a new world record. They stood exactly ten feet apart while achieving the feat.
The duo set the record on May 20, 2009 at a World Record Appreciation Society event in New York City. Dan Rollman and Corey Henderson were present as witnesses.
Matt and I are working on our next world record involving flying fruit and vamped folk songs. In the meantime, witness history being made all over again by watching the video!
A couple weeks ago I followed my friends I Am and Posterchild around with a video camera as they participated in the amazingly successful New York Street Advertising Takeover. The ambitious project, orchestrated by Jordan Seiler of Public Ad Campaign, whitewashed more than 120 illegal billboards and replaced them with artworks by dozens of artists. I made a time lapse video of nine art installations by I Am and Posterchild (with one by Teeth)!
(Also on Dailymotion, Vimeo, blip.tv, and Flickr.)
A few weeks ago, I noticed an uptick in the number of random French women attempting to befriend me on Facebook, along with an increase in non-referred traffic to my website. This could only mean one thing: the documentary I was followed around for in February had been completed and was airing on French television.
Indeed, here's my clip on blip.tv. (Or here if you like giant Quicktime files.) The hour-length documentary is called Global Resistance, and they devote a generous amount of time to Pixelator! If you watch the clip, you'll see me emerge from my secret bookshelf door. I have yet to document that myself!
I'm honored to find myself in the same documentary as The Art of Bleeding, Alexandre Orion (reverse graffiti), and Ji Lee (Abstractor and Bubble Project).
Also I was on a radio talk show called "Bulldog and the Rude Awakening Show" a month or so ago to talk about Take a Seat, and it went really well until I brought up Pixelator. You've got to remember: radio people really love their advertising.
Less press-related but totally just as sweet, Ryan put up a bunch of crosswalk instruction sign remixes in New Haven, CT a la Total Crisis Panic Button that are totally awesome! I really love this one because it involves high fiving:
Getting to Newark International Airport from NYC on public transit is mind-numbingly complicated and unnecessarily expensive. Most plebeians take the subway to Penn Station, then hop on NJ Transit and transfer to the Air Train. This ends up costing a total of $15 and a couple hours. You can get to Boston with that kind of money!
But I found a secret! The 107 Local bus from Port Authority Bus Terminal! It's $4.40, and usually faster, even in rush hour. It's totally sneaky too: you're dropped off across the street from a long-term parking lot, so you have to find an open gate, hop inside, and snag a free shuttle to your terminal. Saving $10.60 never felt so good.
Thanks, Ask Metafilter!
Here are a few terms that have only recently entered my vocabulary but describe concepts with which I was immediately familiar. Hurray for precision in language!
FOMO:
An acronym for "fear of missing out", FOMO describes my existential crises when I walk into libraries and my intense panic when browsing through the dozens of events lists to which I subscribe. FOMO is pre-regret. It's ante-disappointment. It's never quite being content. It's going to a party and not having any fun because all you can think about are all the parties you could be at that are probably so much more awesome.
Individuals prone to FOMO often spend time in FOMO-management, in which they calmly and rationally remind themselves of their finite nature.
One can have varying levels of FOMO. A little FOMO is healthy and motivating. Unchecked FOMO can be crippling. For me, FOMO reaches deeply into my time-management, creativity, and relationships. I'm told FOMO wanes with age. I really, really hope so.
(c/o Lizzie)
completism:
If you search for "completism" on the web, most returns relate to collecting music, but it can also refer to, for example, an effort to read all writings by a particular author, to watch all films on a particular "Top 100..." list, or to take a dump in all fifty of the United States.
Completism appears to most normal people a tad obsessive. The idea of walking over all the bridges that touch Manhattan is interesting, normal people think, but why exert effort actually going through with the whole the idea? What is gained? To a completist, this line of reasoning is frustrating, even absurd. Why do people climb mountains? Because they exist.
Completism is also about finishing what one has started, about concluding perfectly. It's about closure and structure and clearly defined boundaries of "done" and "not done". I posit that individuals with backgrounds in engineering, science, and math are more prone to completism than writers, artists, and designers.
full-ass or full-assed:
To do something "half-ass" or "half-assed" is to rush through it, or to do it poorly and without attention to detail. Doing something full-assed, on the other hand, is to exert every effort, however impractical, to complete the task perfectly.
"Full-assed" is clearly similar to "completism", but while the latter describes the concept or practice, the former serves better to describe specific instances.
(c/o Matt)
hangry:
This is a portmanteau of "hunger" and "angry". You know how you can get irritable when you haven't eaten for a while? That's "hanger". You are "hangry".
(c/o Lizzie)
I guess I've been thinking a lot about social media and social network sites, and balancing my growing distaste for the behaviors surrounding them, their potential misuse/abuse, and their fleeting nature (coupled with my desire to only invest my finite time and energy in things that last, relatively), with the sites' utopic possibilities, and more practically, their usefulness for relationship-maintenance as well as self-promotion (which I'm also coming to terms with, separately).
So this paragraph from Do You Own Facebook? Or Does Facebook Own You?, yet another article about Facebook in this week's New York Magazine, struck a chord:
Maybe it’s claustrophobic to know this much about other people. Maybe we like the way the way we’ve been able to live over the past 50 years, the freedom to move where we want, date who we like, and insert ourselves into any number of social cliques, before we cast aside those who bore us and never look back. Independence is a gift, even if it’s lonely sometimes, and solving childhood mysteries may make people happier, but it doesn’t necessarily turn them into the people they dream of being. So we keep perpetuating the cycle of birthing and abandoning new online communities, drawing close and then pulling away, on a perpetual search for the perfect balance of unity and autonomy on the web.I don't want to leave without pronouncing some sort of less-than-satisfied judgment on the article, or without offering my own analysis, because that would imply endorsement of the piece and create an appearance that I didn't spend much time in critical thought about the writing or its subject. But I don't want to appear dismissive, like I was obligated to take a swipe at the article from some absurd need to posture about my own obviously expert knowledge about These Things.
So I'll leave it at the meta-comment!
(via Debra)
Yes, yes, and yes! I've been meaning to rant on URL shorteners since their recent Twitter-fueled comeback, but Joshua Schachter's piece (via Kottke) succinctly says everything I wanted and more.
Next up, a full rant on Twitter (not the service, which is certainly not uninteresting, but the behavior it's spurred and the attitude that surrounds it). Unless I find one to link to first.
But it probably won't use my favorite new portmanteau: narcissystem.
Last weekend, I had the distinct pleasure of taking part in Improv Everywhere's latest mission, Best Funeral Ever. Similar to past missions Best Gig Ever and Best Game Ever, several dozen agents descended onto the scene of a random funeral to make it tons better.
What an awesome way to say goodbye to a loved one, right?
You saw how the freeze craze swept the globe after Frozen Grand Central. I can't wait to see what others do with Best Funeral Ever!
EDIT: If you haven't figured it out already, this was an April Fools' joke and we didn't actually crash a real funeral. Here's the real story. The comments are just hilarious, but the best part is that a local NYC news channel reported the prank as real!
Jen and I collaborated with Charlie Todd and Improv Everywhere to throw an art gallery opening on a subway platform last fall, and we all finally got around to putting it up on the internet! Charlie's write-up has nice photos and detailed explanations; my write-up has curator mumbo jumbo and a bunch of prior art! Check them out!All of us took great effort to make the opening participatory, not just to create a spectacle. The evening featured a cellist, a bartender serving sparkling cider, a coat check, printed hand-outs, and a guest book. I think everyone who encountered the opening had a good time!
I was especially interested in how we convinced ourselves and those around us to play the game and to believe, for a couple hours, that these everyday objects were actually art. Jen did a fantastic job of setting the tone with the wall text, but everyone who attended the opening was complicit and added tremendously to the collective fiction. Together we were inventing new meanings and alternate histories, all of which could have been entirely plausible explanations for the objects we were examining.
This may seem like a silly exercise, but I think it can be pretty useful! It puts you in a position to re-examine the mundane, imagine others' intentions, and create new contexts for the objects and ideas you encounter every day. Usually we would just call that "acting", but in this case, so much of the pretending is internal that maybe it's not exactly theater? I'm sure there's an argument for both sides. Regardless, I found the gallery opening to be an exhilarating, tremendously creative experience, and the hundreds of people who passed through, even if they didn't join, at least encountered a fun, unexpected, disorienting moment.
Jose remarked to me as he was leaving, "this is a slippery slope." And he's right! There's something a bit dangerous, actually, about this game. A little distance is enlightening and engaging; a lot of distance is detaching or disorienting. I'm reminded not only of bad conceptual art, but of corporate speech and military euphemisms. The Museum of Jurassic Technology straddles the line perfectly, a straight-up existential thrill-ride.
(One little tidbit from all the research I did: wall text's beginnings were in legislation, to spare the public from paying for expensive catalogues at national museums! Fascinating!)
I feel so free! I just deleted all my Facebook friends!
My "friends" expected me to keep abreast of, participate in, and and respond to things they did inside the walled garden, I think, even though I explicitly expressed in my profile that, for very clear ideological reasons, I don't. I thought I was pretty clear on that? (It's hard to navigate these waters sometimes. How do I do what I think is right and not sound like a complete holier-than-thou tool when explaining why?) So to accommodate those expectations better, I "deleted" all my friends! Now they can't send me messages or "write" on my "wall"!
There were also absurd questions from people I haven't spoken to in years, like, "Hey how are you?" Dear lazy person: if you're really curious, I've written about my life in public for the last five years. Feel free to catch up and then we can have a further conversation on a specific topic of your choosing.
Maybe I expect too much? Probably.
After much consideration, I did not completely delete my account. Only now my profile image looks like this:
I should be clear: I still love you. Can we get tea some time?
Last week I lead decor execution for Kostume Kult's Bioluminescence fundraiser! It was a boat party!Specifically, I made some el-wire jellyfish!
I also got to plunder Material For The Arts for all the cloth and notions we turned into seaweed and coral! I have 501(c)(3) envy like never before. You guys, 501(c)(3) is worth its weight in gold around here.
This winter I've been thinking about ways to crowdsource sidewalk snow removal. I was inspired by the Johnny Applesandal, a sandal with "phytoremediating" plant seeds built into the sole, which are slowly deposited as the sandal wears away.
I walk 1.3 miles to work every day in the morning, and in my experience, half of the landlords in Astoria don't salt or shovel the snow off their sidewalk after a snow storm. As a result, frequent traffic and daytime warmth pack the snow into dangerous ice. (I took a spill this winter, and I am a sprightly, active young man!)
Legally the onus to clear the sidewalk is on the landlord, but really, shouldn't the people who use the sidewalk be responsible for it? I think there may be a distributed, casual way to solve this problem. A lot of kinetic energy goes into compressing the snow under each step that could instead be harnessed to move or melt it.
Below are a few sketches. They all have flaws, but hopefully they will inspire better ideas. My design requirements were that the solution be casual (nobody wants to spend more energy on their morning commute), comfortable, affordable (rich people don't walk), and sustainable.
Salt Shaker Shoe: A shoe with a hollow sole for storing deicing salt, and holes on the bottom for gradual distribution.- Can it be comfortable?
- Can it be structurally sound?
- How difficult would it be to refill the salt?
- Would people be willing to spend money on their own salt?
Salt Shaker Backpack Attachment: A clip-on backpack attachment that stores salt and sprinkles it on each step.
- How much would it weigh?
- Do enough people wear backpacks to make this worthwhile?
- Would people be willing to spend money on their own salt?
Salt purchase and distribution seems like the biggest issue with these first two designs, which is not a technological problem at all and could be solved municipally. Imagine bins of salt on each street corner free for public use, whether for a landlord's sidewalk or for your own salt distribution device.
Bellows Shoe: A shoe that uses the force of each step to blow snow out of the way. When the shoe is lifted, air is sucked in; when the shoe makes contact with ground under the weight of walker, air is quickly forced out.- Can it actually move snow?
- If so, can it move snow out of the way?
- Can it be comfortable?
- Would walking require extra effort?
Heated Shoe: A shoe with a rechargeable battery and a heater built into the sole, which melts snow upon contact (and keeps your foot warm in the process).- Can it melt any snow in that short time of contact?
- If so, can the melted snow stay liquid long enough to flow off the sidewalk or will it immediately refreeze into ice?
- Can it be safe?
Introducing the Light Ripple!
I spent pretty much the entire month of January on a crash course in basic physical computing and electrical engineering, thanks to the generosity of my friends Patrick, dr.light, and Kevin. The result is the Light Ripple, which was commissioned for and debuted at the Newmindspace fundraiser last month.
The Light Ripple is really a simple concept (one button, when pressed, initiates a sequence of concentric rings of electric blue light that starts at eye level and spreads onto the ceiling) but I'm terribly pleased with how it turned out and how well it's being received. By the end of this month, the Light Ripple will have been exhibited, in whole or in part, at three events!
Check out the Light Ripple project page for video and artistic mumbo jumbo about interaction models and social currency. (The video is also on YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, and blip.tv if that's your cup of tea.)
If I have been silent on this here blog, it is because I've completed several other projects that I still need to write up! More soon!
Improv Everywhere recently posted a new mission called High Five Escalator, which I was honored to be a part of. The idea was to communicate something positive in a series of signs along the super long escalators at the 53rd St. E/V station during the morning commute. We brainstormed a lot of ideas (including rhyming couplets a la Burma Shave) but in the end settled on straight up high fivin'! It was super excellent times, especially for Rob who gave about 2000 high fives in 45 minutes. Epic!
I made the signs! (Do you recognize that font? It's Futura Bold!)
The (fantastic) video, tons of photos, and scores of germophobic comments are all available on the Improv Everywhere High Five Escalator write-up.
A few months ago I was one of ten artists asked by the fine folks at Fame Game to submit a proposal for their new project Trust Art, "a stock market for cultural renewal". Essentially, investors raise capital for a project and recoup their investments after an artifact from that project is auctioned off. Remember that 555-hour long database documentary I proposed a few years ago? Yeah, I submitted that.
Seth and Jose are out at TED this week and are unveiling the project today! Maybe you would like to check out the full site and also more info on The Documentary Starring Everyone in the Entire World!
Pro Pants returned again this year to prank Improv Everywhere's annual No Pants! Subway Ride, this time with more hand outs. We had questionnaires, not one but two pamphlets, and free pants! Thanks to everyone who came out to brave the snowstorm and spread the good news about pants! Within 24 hours, roughly 100% of the pantsless riders we encountered had accepted pants into their lives!
Read all about it on the Pro Pants! 2K9 project page.
I never finished my report on Burning Man 2007 last year. Much of what I wrote was critical, and I never really rounded out the criticism with what I found so wonderful about it, so a lot of friends were surprised when I said I was returning.
I wanted to write up my experiences before the year finished. So here are my long overdue, hastily-assembled notes from Burning Man 2008. Maybe this will explain it all a little better.
This year, again, Burning Man was everything. It was miserable, and it was transcendent. I think maybe you can't have one without the other. If real life operates on a scale from -5 to 5, Burning Man operates on a scale from -10 to 10. That's the best way to describe it.- In general, I had a much better time than last year because of my campmates. I love Mike and Ben very much, but we didn't have the same expectations about how camp should work. Debra, William, and I, and to some extent Jeff, did. And it's funny: somehow I got a lot of credit for bringing a project manager, an architect, and a lighting technician together to form Camp Monoplaya, but it was really just sheer luck.
We created a space that all of us were happy to return home to, just a great vibe. William liked to play house and cooked consistently delicious meals. Debra kept us focused on what needed to get done and made sure we all pulled our load. Jeff was the wild card, bringing over random people and keeping us (or at least me) spontaneous. And I'm sure I contributed somehow. - The biggest let down for me was the lack of great dance parties. I could find good music after a little work (and really, I didn't realize I was so picky!) but even with the good music, I couldn't find a good dance vibe. Burning Man 2007 is where I really figured out how to dance, so it was disappointing to return with a year of experience and realize maybe I'd outgrown that part.
- The other bummer is that my shoes had vents in the toes, so the fine sand easily found its way inside my shoes and, coupled with my foot sweat, consistently bathed my feet in mud. You know how wet socks can ruin your day? Yeah, like that.
- I knew from the beginning that I didn't want to return to Burning Man without bringing a project. I'm already obsessively driven to make stuff, but this place amplifies that feeling. The timing of the Google Dance party was perfect, because I was planning to bring the Über Lite-Brite anyway, and now I wouldn't have to pay for it! But man, having an art project at Burning Man is hard because you spend so much time and energy on upkeep.
Despite coming from a family full of engineers and engineers-to-be who are friends with engineers and engineers-to-be, no one could figure out how I should power the thing. In the end, I settled on a 50 amp-hour deep-cycle battery on bad advice from a battery shop owner. This battery lasted about 20 minutes before dying. The Newmindspace guys were kind enough to lend me a battery, but it didn't last much longer. Finally, on advice from the Artery, I met Bill from Snow Koan Solar (an amazing group that helps power tons of the art) who pointed out my incorrect math and lent me a battery and let me charge it on their giant solar array. The battery only lasted for a few hours each night, but at this point, that was miraculous.
By the end of the week, the Über Lite-Brite was covered in white dust and a little beat up. I didn't want to deal with the hassles of bringing it back home, so I burned it. And that felt great. I have plans to resurrect it in a version two (with water jet cut, powder coated steel) if the opportunity (and funding) ever arises.
All in all, I had high expectations that were not met, and spent part of the week disappointed. But by the end of the week I had come to terms with it all and was satisfied with my contribution. - For many people, Burning Man is a community experience. It turns out that for me, it's more of an individualistic experience. I don't feel special at Burning Man. I don't feel different, and I like (and am comfortable with) playing that role, so in this environment, instead of participating, I retreat and get really quiet. Plus, the vibe is just overtly sexual, and I don't like competing in that atmosphere, so I shut all of that off. As a result, I really learned a lot about myself. I will return to Black Rock City some time, but probably not next year. I don't belong there anymore. Not right now. I need to grow some more (and so does Burning Man) before we meet again.
I know this is kind of obsessive, but I think the rest of the narrative is best told linearly through an itinerary, which reflects the events to the best of my memory.
Thursday
Jeff joined me in the Bay Area at the Exploratorium (It's awesome! Thanks for the behind-the-scenes tour, Eric!) I was already in town with the Über Lite-Brite for Google Dance. But Jeff forgot his carry-on bag on a layover, which contained his ticket, as well as mine and William's that I myself had forgotten to pack. Oops. (Long story short, it never turned up, but months later, Burning Man kindly refunded the second round of tickets we bought.)
Friday
- William and Debra arrived and we began final preparations: picking up packages at UPS and Fed-Ex, renting a truck, picking up the Über Lite-Brite from LoBot (where I stayed with Avery, a brother of a co-worker. Thanks Livia, Leah, and Avery!) and of course, burritos in the Mission District.
- After dinner with William's friend Luke, we turned in and prepared for an early morning.
Saturday
- Goodbye San Francisco! Jeff and I napped in the back of U-haul as we headed north: probably illegal, probably dangerous, but way cheaper than renting another car.
- After making final stops in Reno for food, water, and to pick up rental bikes, we made it to Burning Man right after sunset. The four of us set up our tents and took a quick tour of the playa by bike. The city was effectively silent because the gates didn't officially open for another two days. We found some of our favorite pieces in that beautiful quiet: Illusion and Popaver Rubrum Giganticum.
- On our way to camp, we encountered what I presume was a DPW party. Jeff stayed out all night partying so on...
Sunday
- Jeff was so smashed he couldn't help us set up shelter until mid-afternoon. This set an unfortunate tone for his interactions with Debra and William for the rest of the week.
- We erected William's shade structure design (consisting of bamboo, tarps, wood palettes, and plywood) in the midst of heavy winds and lots of dust. The design was very cool, though we had to make some adjustments to the original plans to combat the heavy winds (and we continued to adjust throughout the week to fix some cracking bamboo). I had a great time constructing, even under the punishing sun in the miserable dust storms.
Monday
The dust storms continued and grew worse throughout the day.- My $20 tent collapsed in the unrelenting wind. I continued to use it as a closet, but slept underneath the shade structure for the rest of the week.
- Jeff helped me set up the Über Lite-Brite in the heavy wind. We used the U-Haul truck to block the gusts.
- Debra had signed the two of us up to greet new arrivals at the gate from 8pm to midnight. She found us some beers, so I had a great time, despite the awful dust. Earlier in the day, the gates had been closed for 4 hours due to low visibility, so a number of people were, shall we say, disgruntled. Some had been in line for 12 hours! That's why you set up a theme camp and get early arrival, people! Half the people wanted hugs and wanted to ring the virgin bell (so many Burning Man virgins!) and half just wanted to get through and set up camp. We accommodated both desires.
On return to camp, Jeff and I left to dance at Opulent Temple.- (Sometime during all of this, one of our dear neighbors and porch-frequenters, Trent, was busted by an undercover cop for possession, and then within 24 hours, had a diabetes-related seizure and was rushed to the hospital in Reno. He was released soon afterwards, but had no way to get back to Burning Man! Luckily Chris, his campmate, had headed to Reno looking for him and arrived at the hospital at almost the exact moment he was being released. Crazy! They came right back and stuck around for the rest of the week!)
Tuesday
- Campmate bonding time!
Wednesday
- I spent the day alone in the deep playa, cycling from project to project, and came back in a wonderful, peaceful mood. I had finally overcome my frantic attempt to see everything and realized all of this is better in my imagination than it is in real life. This realization was of course a little disappointing, but it was also empowering: I'm not missing anything! I'm not going to regret anything! As a result, I shifted into cruise control for the rest of the week: I'd gotten what I needed from the trip.
- There was a huge influx of campers that night. The vibe changed significantly and crazy loud parties went on all night long. Debra, William, and I were all exhausted and called it in early, but people were still partying (and loud!) when we woke up the next morning.
Thursday
William and I took a trip to the deep playa together. On our way, we stopped by the Titty Totter of Terror, a giant seesaw which one must ride topless, and happened upon Starfuckers Oasis Crappacino, which William frequented for the rest of the week.
- Debra convinced me to join her at the Billion Bunny March, and I'm really glad I did. I met her at Bunny Camp where we were made up as bunnies and took the bunny oath. Some marchers were dressed as carrots and protested the bunnies. Last year farmers protested the carrots protesting the rabbits! Silly cartoon-like tunes blasted from a sound system dragged in a red wagon, and we began our march, hopping. One bunny hung a Bunny Nation flag from the top of the radio tower, we interrupted a capoeira session at Center Camp, and then we made our way towards the Man. A bus with a giant carrot dangling in front of it got between us and the Man and started driving towards us. All of the bunnies played the part and were enthralled by the carrot; we could only think about following the carrot. Suddenly, the music changed to Ride of the Valkyries and dozens of Animal Control agents in red jump suits jumped out and started chasing bunnies, capturing them in nets, giving them "shots" and tags, and releasing them. It was spectacular! Absolute chaos! Exactly how interactive theatre should be. I've never inhabited a character so fully!
Afterwards, Debra and I stumbled onto the last performance of Cirque de Flambe, a completely insane fire circus. When we arrived, they were shooting Roman candles at a guy dressed as a robot, which were bouncing into the audience. Later, the ringmaster convinced three drunk guys to get naked, limbo under a flaming stick, jump with a flaming jump rope, and hoop with a flaming hula hoop. One guy set his pubes on fire, and shall heretofore be known as Flaming Pubes. Seriously: insane.- From there, Debra and I visited Illusion again, checked out the goings on at Roots Society, visited the Flaming Lotus Girls' Mutopia, and stopped by Opulent Temple before calling it a night.
Friday
- I spent some time at Sno Koan Solar, learning about the technology. Don't remember much more about this day. Probably spent most of it at camp.
- That night, a 24-pack of beers fell off a truck that was rounding the corner too fast. A gift from the gods! Party. Time.
Saturday
More dust storms. I stayed at the shelter most of the day.- The burning of the Man was delayed for several hours, but it finally burned. Debra does not like loud noises, which is a significant detail I forgot to tell her about Burning Man. So I helped her with that.
- Afterwards, I went from party to party, looking for good music and a good party vibe, but everyone was just going through the motions, which was disappointing. I hopped onto an art car for a bit and then turned in early.
Sunday
The day started out windy but not too dusty. Jeff helped me disassemble the Über Lite-Brite in the morning.- I was stressed because I was coordinating our exit strategy. I wanted to make sure we didn't miss our container load in and were able to burn stuff, but we were really low on gas and had to be careful about how many trips we took. In the end, it all worked out, of course!
- Debra stayed with the truck and Jeff said goodbye to his lady friend, while William and I watched the temple burn. It was a nice, solemn moment.
- The dust really picked up as we headed out. It was a beautiful final image: ghostly and afterworldly. You couldn't see 10 feet in front of you, except for the cone of dust lit by your head lamp.
- And then it was time for tens of thousands of people to leave on a single-lane highway: Exodus. We only had to wait for 2.5 hours, which is not bad, relatively. I drove until 4am when we found more gas, then passed the wheel to William.
Monday
- At 5am we dropped off bikes and soon after stopped for breakfast. We drove a little more, then stopped at a $35/night hotel to take showers (and a little nap).
- Once in San Francisco, we dropped off our U-Haul and headed to the airport!
Life is good! Since my victorious return from Europe, here's what I've been up to!
A brief overview, with pictures, because you don't have time to read the details, and I don't have time to write them:
Open House New York! I got to peak inside the High Bridge Tower and tour the World's Fairgrounds with William. Why is OHNY only one weekend a year? WHY?
Honkfest in Boston! An awesome weekend of punk rock marching bands, culminating in a parade to kick off Boston's, uh, "Oktoberfest."
Jenna took me to the Institute of Contemporary Art to see the Tara Donovan show. Donovan just received a MacArthur genius grant, and rightfully so. I really really love her work.
Hey I'm Walkin' Here #18 on Staten Island. I only caught the second half, but we encountered an abandoned freeway overpass and an unattended dock with an oil tanker.
Bike Kill! My favorite event of the fall, but I ducked out early because the nasty weather made it even messier than usual.
Decompression. The NYC Burning Man decompression party has recently been in hard-to-reach locations (this time at Floyd Bennett Field) and thus only draws the most committed revelers. It was one excellent evening.
Halloween was an epic weekend starting with a less-than-successful renegade parade from the Meat Packing District to The Danger warehouse location in Bushwick. The riffraff left and the music got good at 2am, the cops disbanded everything at 4am, we retreated to the House of Yes until sunrise, and made a final stop at the Marcy Hotel where I met my doppelganger, returning home in full costume at 10am. And then I did it all over again the next night at the Rhythm Society all-night dance celebration, in the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. Success, my friends. Pure success.
Doctor Atomic @ Metropolitan Opera. The design was beautiful, and I liked John Adams' score. But I'm still coming to terms with the form of opera. It's just so...inefficient.
Hey I'm Walkin' Here! #20 on Staten Island. Scaling rocks, docks, and a lighthouse in the cold rain. Also, the first and last Take a Seat drop in Staten Island.
"Underground" at Eyebeam. An art party that didn't suck. Who knew? Apparently I was the hipster posterchild of the evening, judging by all the photos.
Shrek The Musical. I finally saw my first Broadway musical, thanks to dr. light, who did video work for the production and scored me a comp ticket. There were some great moments, but a lot of it was mediocre. Better than the movie, but I didn't like the movie. A couple weeks later I got a backstage tour. Sweet!
Cloud Cult @ The Bowery. I'm not one to attend concerts, but Cloud Cult is one of my new favorite bands, and I'd heard good things about their live shows, and a co-worker's girlfriend is their publicist, so I got in for free. The live painting was actually rather moving, and the show was pretty good!
New York Times Special Edition. Steve asked me to help man a distribution point, and I was so all over that.
Salute to Ben Stiller. The museum's annual fundraiser featured Jack Black, Robert De Niro, Diddy, Will Arnett, and more, all upstaged by Triumph the Comic Insult Dog.
A flavor-tripping party, in honor of the day of my birth, two months belated. Such a fantastic evening! Fifty great friends from all walks of life made it out to Astoria for an evening filled with screwed up taste buds, fantastic conversation, and revelry. A huge thanks to Debra for making it happen.
Jenna and I spent Thanksgiving together in NYC and upstate NY with Debra and sister and crew. It was excellent to get away from the city, even for only a couple days.
Blip Fest! Saw my favorite chiptune artists and heard some new ones at a great new venue (The Bell House). Just watch the videos.
Organic Motion. Played with a demo of an awesome new markerless motion-capture technology.
Santacon and Unsilent Night. Donning the Mistletoe Hat v2.0 (with much success), I caught up with the mob at 4pm (Santacon starts at 10am) in time to catch the Staten Island Ferry back and forth, helped direct the crowd to Santos Party House, took a break to take in Unsilent Night, then finished the night at Rubulad.
Hey I'm Walkin' Here (Winter) Solstice Walk. Fourteen of us started at sunset in Sunset Park. Fifteen hours and twenty-nine miles later, we were watching the sun rise at the East River. Oh, and we live MoPhoVlogged the whole thing.Latest Projects
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