I will be presenting at Lucid NYC tonight! There’s going to be a bunch of good peeps, music and digi-art as well how to Making Love not Porn, Auto Tune the News team and construct Home-Made Rocketships!
In 2009 Fast Company wrote and article on Mindshare LA saying: “Mindshare is a far cry from the champagne halls of aristocratic ghosts. Its ballooning popularity is emblematic of generation steeped in chaos and an unabashed need for personal fulfillment. If you ever come to LA, come to Mindshare. We’ll have some drinks, make friends, play video games, and find you a business partner.” And 2010 is only showing a continuation of that path
Marilyn Manson’s very own stage magician Rudy Coby rounded off a set of speakers that included the high minded LA Ballet, the hilarity of the patent office, thoughts on the creative process and award winning photography. And of course we had to bring a few latex clad models from Fierce Couture in the bring a balance of sexiness to the program. Paul, where’s your latex?!
See you June 17th for some more Enlightened Debauchery!
A few times a year a group of adventures seeking individuals meet up and go on EPIC outdoor adventures. This is the 3rd year returning to the Eureka sand dunes of Death Valley to spend a night on the dunes, under the bright stars.
There’s nothing like retreating to the desert with some of the smartest people you know to discuss topics such as quantifiable morality, malleability of social order, altruistic incentive, interstellar logistics, routine hacking and continued experiments in experience engineering.
The “booming” dunes of Death Valley are just a handful in the world where the conditions are just right that the sand, as it shifts emits a deeply resonant groaning! A magical place filled with old mines, bizarre rock formations jutting up from the austere desert landscape. More pics here…
The first Syyn Tavern event was met with excited reviews and successful installations from David Guttman, Brent Bushnell and Eric Gradman – as well as the beginning of a great partnership with Matt Davis of Headtron. Lets play again soon!
In a classic mental hackjob, I spend a week serving a quiet week of Vipassana mediation center, chased up by the exciting new discovery of an organic farm between SF and LA that needs volunteers, and then high tailing it to SF, to surround myself with bizarre inspiration from wickedly smart people. Like young Andreas Stadler and his home made brain scanner:
After a few undercover days back in LA – it was time back into the insanity. First up, the noble President of Syyn Labs, Adam Sadowsky, presented the OK Go RGM music video (now above 13m hits on YouTube!) at the second annual TEDxUSC. This was a special honor made even more special by the fact that we had displayed projects at the first TEDxUSC (in fact the first TEDx anywhere!).
Next up was to MC Mindshare LA – and having missed the previous 3 while I was in South America I was excited to be introducing trippy artwork, Derby Girls, the Hero’s Journey, bamboo sculpture AS WELL as my own presentation on 3 highlighted stories from my travels! Aaah, it’s good to be home
OK, I might not have been at the taping of it, or at the launch party earlier in the week OR at the celebratory party tonight at LACMA but at least I dropped the jaws of a handful of backpackers in the northern Chile desert town of San Pedro de Atacama when I showed them OkGo and Syyn Lab’s video collaboration for “This Too Shall Pass”. In only 3 days the video has almost reached 4 million views!
Syyn Labs, LLC, a company I formed with a group of some of the brightest people I know in LA, worked on this video in a 2 story LA warehouse for the last few months. They slaved over countless takes to make sure that not only did it all get captured in 1 dipping and weaving camera shot, but it also went in time with the song! The video ends with a huge finale – AMAZING! Kudos to all involved!
It’s quite wonderful, thanks to amazing colleagues, both Syyn Labs and Mindshare,LA are doing amazingly in my absence. This is either a sign that I am good at building teams or that I should leave town more often! Hmm, ideally it’s the former with a healthy mix of the latter!
So, I’m heading into Bolivia tomorrow, and I know it’s certainly going to be the most challenging part of the trip so far. I’ll be heading through the Atacama, the driest desert in the world into one of the poorest of the South American countries. I already have a bunch of experiences to catch up on writing, and this 4 day journey through the through salt flats and desolate expanses, will certainly not leave me feeling uninspired.
I still have to write the update from Isla Chiloe to the Las Campanas Observatory but wanted to post my earthquake experience ASAP. See all the photos here…
It had been a wild couple of weeks while I raced to La Serena, in order to catch Stella Kafka, the most lovely observational astronomer that I know, on her last night of observation at the Las Campanas observatory. I blazed through Santiago and only spent about 8 hours in Valparaiso – the most colorful and expressive town I’d ever visited. I was sad to have to rush, but the invitation was too fantastic and in the end it was absolutely worth the race – the observatory felt more like a moon base and the stars were unparalleled in their clarity. I was Stella’s assistant for her final night and kept her awake while she searched for distant suns with orbiting planets that might, or might not, be appropriately stable enough to allow for a ‘habitable zone’. (I will write this story next – very cool stuff – thanks Stella!)
I have some pretty heavy video footage of Chaiten and an interview with Senora Hostencia, an inn keeper and one of the handful of the 6000 inhabitants that have returned. My netbook is both very slow to edit the HD video and I don’t have a sufficient editor to cut the footage, but hopefully will get access to one soon. For now you can see all the pics and read notes below to give some context to the pictures.
Everyone was right: there is truly nothing going on in the old oil production town of Rio Gallegos. I didn’t even know where everyone was until I found the main street. I only call it ‘main street’ because it had more on it than the idle dog and tufts of overgown roadside grass that were the staple of most of the streets here. Oh yes, did I mention the wind? It was so strong at times you could lean into it at quite an acute angle without falling down.
Truly boring, and I couldn’t have been happier. After a distracted time in Buenos Aires I spent the two days catching up on some writing and sampling some wonderful baked goods. Each town, no matter how small seems to have an carb-injecting, endorphin-inducing bakery or ‘panaderia’. NOTE: I’ve given up trying to figure out how to enter accents on my laptop, so please don’t confuse my laziness for ignorance. These wonderful places spill their scents of fresh empanadas (meat, cheese or vegetable stuffed pouches), loafs and pies onto the sidewalk. It’s bordering on the use of unfair subliminal advertising. There’s also a lot of pizzerias, An obvious sign of the Italian influence in Argentina from back in the day. It’s often topped with the most unexpected yet delicious items, such as beets or palm hearts with’golf sauce’. I’m not sure where the name ‘golf sauce’ came from but it had to be sampled; a sort of mayonnaise ‘special sauce’ was the rather indulgent surprise.
